“I know what you mean,” I agreed. “Purse-duty is no fun.”
I had known what it was like to be left to it on more than one dreary occasion. Tonight I was carrying my money, driver’s license, and cell in a small pouch that I wore cross-wise like a very miniature messenger bag, the leather strap falling right between my breasts. I paid the cover and we went inside.
It was still early and the dance floor was pretty empty, but it wouldn’t be for long. Inside the music beats became tangible, not just something you heard but something you felt. Could Luke feel the music anymore? I had read that deaf people could feel the vibration of music and dance to it. Could Luke feel vibrations? When we were in college he had been a sublime dancer. So supremely confident of his masculinity, he would simply have fun, giving himself over to the music, spinning and dipping, rocking and gliding wherever the music took him. Luke doing the Moonwalk would have made Michael Jackson proud. But that was gone now. What must it be like to have lost it?
We saw our group, which included, Corrine, Becky, and Sandy. They were holding two tables, pushed together to make one, next to the wrought iron railing that bordered the dance floor. Sandy was waving at us. We were supposed to be six tonight, but Sophia, the sixth one of our group, arrived everywhere fashionably late, including to work.
When I ordered a white wine spritzer, Corrine rolled her eyes.
“What?” I asked.
“Live a little, Rachel,” Sandy said.
“Yeah, get something fun!” Becky chimed in. “They make the best appletinis.”
“I’ll have a cosmopolitan,” I told the waitress.
“Now you’re talking!” said Melinda.
“I do have to take my mother to church in the morning,” I reminded everyone.
“So it’ll be ginger ale the rest of the night,” said Sandy.
“Diet ginger ale,” Corrine corrected her laughing.
“Well all I’m saying is God bless Spanx!” Melinda raised her glass.
And we all toasted the miracle of spandex.
By the time Sophia showed up, which was of course after ten o’clock, the music was much louder and the dance floor was jammed with sweaty, writhing, wriggling bodies, the six of us among them. Our table was popular. Somebody—we didn’t know who yet—seeking to impress one of us—we didn’t know whom yet—had bought a round a drinks for all of us.
I loved to dance, and as long as I was alone in my room or anonymous in some exercise class, I would give myself over to the music too. Tonight being jammed up on the crowded dance floor of Sensations was providing just the kind of cover I required to let loose. As one song ended another one began, and the dancers, as if we were all parts of one big body with many arms and legs moved to the repetitive rhythms practically in unison. There was something powerfully urgent and earthy about the scene, like we were caught up in the madness of mob rule, a primitive, energized herd, nearly unaware of ourselves as individuals.
In college disabled students had “danced” in their wheelchairs at the student union. They had been guys mostly with their able-bodied partners, gyrating around them and sitting in their laps. They had required a lot of space to accommodate them. A wheelchair would never fit on the Sensations dance floor, unless it was a slow night, or one set aside for people with special needs.
My current partner, Brian, an attractive man with a nice watch and heavy cologne, kept pulling me up against him so that our bodies rubbed together. I’d push away and spin around only for him to catch me again and hold me close. It was all a part of the dance, the ritual of modern courtship, or rather seduction, because it always came to that. People wanted to rub their bodies together. AIDS may have given us pause, and forced us to deal with condoms, but it couldn’t stop it. We didn’t want it to. Eventually the mobs always broke up into pairs.
Another song was starting up again, but this time I took the ending one as my opening to leave the floor. I wanted a drink of water. As I headed back to our table, Brian came with me, keeping a proprietary hand at the small of my back. He was going to ask me for my telephone number, I was certain of it. But I wasn’t certain that I wanted to give it to him. That was the main reason why I had gotten caller-id, my tendency to be too free with my telephone number and then regretting it when the conversations took the budding relationships to nowhere.
Back at the table, Brian held my chair for me to sit down. Then he kept his hand on the back of the chair and hovered over me, making small talk, which he had to shout, and even still I wasn’t catching all of his words. Corrine was escorted back to the table too, but her partner thanked her and moved on. She sat sipping the remnants of her margarita and smiling at me knowingly, as Brian continued to work his magic.
The executive business card made its appearance. Suavely Brian took it from his wallet and placed it on the table, sliding it towards me. “Maybe I could take you to dinner sometime,” he said. Corrine’s eyes widened as she waited to see what I was going to say in return. Despite the dim lighting I could see it was a nice business card. He was a marketing executive. He looked successful. He was well-dressed. He’d be disappointed when he learned that I was very happy merely being a counselor. I wondered if he was a Republican too. Oh well. At least my bait seemed to be luring a better class of fish. It wasn’t likely that I would find my Mr. Right in a night club, but Brian could easily be a Mr. Right Now, so I had no good excuse not to take him up on his offer. I just had a reason. But it was a dumb reason, and I was supposed to be smarter than that twenty years later. Moreover Corrine was going to gloat relentlessly if I turned Brian down.
Smiling up at him I began patting down Brian’s torso and then his trouser pockets, all of which took him by complete surprise.
“Whoa!” he grinned looking pleased. “You’re a feisty wench, aren’t you?”
“Hardly,” I coolly replied. “I’m looking for a pen. I didn’t bring one.”
“Oh,” he said a little deflated, as he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a pen.
Taking it from him, I jotted down my cell phone number on the back of his business card and then slipped the card and pen back into his trouser pocket.
“I’m old-fashioned,” I said giving his pocket a final flirtatious pat. “You have to call me.”
“Okay,” said Brian, smiling again. “I’ll do that.”
“Great,” I continued. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to the ladies’ room.”
Where there was naturally a line, albeit a short one. I was glad for the delay anyway. I had needed an exit after what I thought was a pretty fine performance. The cosmopolitans (I had had more than one) must have helped. All the AIDS brochures talked about sex for drugs, but they ignored alcohol, as if that drug only led to domestic violence and vehicular homicides. People took risks for an assortment of reasons: for drugs, and money, for hope, and appearances, for text messages. There was no such thing as safe sex because there was no such thing as safe living. We were too tied together, constantly colliding and crashing into each other.
Once I had the privacy of a locked bathroom stall I checked my cell phone. There were no messages and no missed calls. No Luke. Suddenly the phone started vibrating in the palm of my hand I nearly dropped it into the toilet. I didn’t recognize the number so I didn’t answer the call. Seconds later there was a message indicator light. I listened to it.
“Hi this is Brian,” the message said. “Just checking. I’m looking forward to your TSA technique.”
I deleted the message and slipped my cell back into my purse. Well at least, I supposed, I had a prize too.
TEN
After a vigorous Saturday night, and scarcely five hours of sleep, Sunday was a very long day. I didn’t even get home from Mommy’s until close to eight o’clock. After feeding the cats and cleaning their litter box, I took a shower and put on my PJs. Brian had called again and I really owed him a call-back. So I brewed myself a mug of decaffeinated green tea with lemon, retrieved my cell phone from
its charger, and settled in for that all important getting-to-know-you-getting-to-know-all-about-you conversation.
Being a marketing executive, Brian was really very adept at selling himself, plus he did have a lot to offer. Like too many of us, according to Reverend Milton and Mrs. Sterling, Brian was also divorced, but it had happened a long time ago he assured me, and their only child, a girl, was an honors student at the University of Texas.
“That’s my alma mater,” I shared with him.
“You’re a Longhorn?” Brian asked elatedly.
I laughed.
“I guess I’m entitled to that,” I replied, thinking that it was just barely.
All of that school pride stuff had been Luke’s thing. Occasionally I had gone along as a spectator, not so much for the sport of it but as a future sociologist observing the cult-like dynamics. And to be with him.
“Maybe we can take in a game sometimes,” enthused Brian. “Austin’s just a short hop from Love Field, and my daughter’s constantly after me to come down. She’s a cheerleader.”
Oh God, I was thinking, no way was I going for that. Tailgate parties with too much beer and roasting meat, and freezing miserably in hard stadium seats, all to watch behemoths crack each other up on Astroturf while very pretty girls threw their legs up in the air, and bands played brassy tributes to metaphors of war.
“Sure,” I said. “That’d be great.”
It was dishonest, but Brian would figure out soon enough that I was probably not his type, and in the meantime going out with him occasionally would please Mommy and throw Corrine off the scent. Naturally Brian would get something out of the bargain too, good company for sure, and maybe even something more. I wasn’t exactly immune to his charms. I just wasn’t particularly interested in them. But sometimes you simply had to settle for what was in front of you.
While Brian was in the middle of explaining the virtues of German automotive engineering (he drove a BMW) over American car manufacturing, I took the cell phone away from my ear to check the power bars. They were running out. My own battery was running low too.
“I’m not too much into luxury cars myself,” I said. “They’re a little out of my price range.”
“Oh but you have to treat a good car like an investment,” Brian instructed. “You buy it to last. Not to mention how much safer they are to drive.”
I wondered what Luke had been driving the day of the accident. Was that why he drove a Mercedes now, to be safer? Wouldn’t that be like closing the barn door once the horse had run away? What had the texting teenager been driving? He was dead.
“Corollas have a good track record,” I said.
“They do, they do,” agreed Brian.
“And decent gas mileage.”
“German cars get good mileage, particularly on the highway.”
“Oh yes the autobahn. You think they have our kind of rush hours?”
“Pretty and smart, I see,” said Brian chuckling pleasantly.
“And a little pooped right now,” I added.
“Oh—I’m sorry,” he quickly replied. “I’m talking your ear off and keeping you up passed bedtime.”
“That’s okay,” I assured him. “I called you.”
“So how ‘bout it, dinner this week?”
Football and fast cars, but I didn’t sigh out loud. He’d probably take me somewhere nice. It wouldn’t be good if the show opened and closed on the same weekend.
“How ‘bout I call you,” I countered. “And we’ll set something up.”
“In demand too,” Brian surmised. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”
I chattered something about his own schedule being busy too and got us quickly to goodbye before some kind of truth leaked out by word or tone.
Minutes later I was saying my prayers. I crawled into bed. Because I usually had a harder time falling asleep on Sunday nights, out of habit I turned on the TV and found a sitcom rerun, then set the TV timer for thirty minutes. I didn’t make it to the first commercial. When I woke up the telephone by the bed was ringing and the television was off. Sleepily I reached for the phone.
“Hello,” I mumbled.
“Never let it be said I don’t keep my word,” a man’s voice came to my ear.
I sat up straight up, my heart racing.
“Luke?” I asked.
I must be dreaming. It was Sunday night. We didn’t talk on Sundays.
“Just under the wire,” he chuckled. “But a promise is a promise.”
“What promise?” I asked.
“You must have had a good time last night. You don’t remember I told you I’d call you today?”
Because it was his shot and the winner was going to get the prize. My heart was settling down.
“We don’t talk on Sundays,” I said.
“Now why is that?” asked Luke.
“I-I don’t know.”
“Could it be because you never call me?”
“I call you. I called you last night. But you were too busy to talk.”
“Am I detecting a tone?”
“No. You were just busy that’s all.”
With another a woman. His prize. Like old times.
“I was that,” said Luke. “And I won too.”
“So did you like your prize?” I asked dryly.
He laughed a little.
“I did,” he said.
Suddenly my eyes filled with tears. I didn’t want to do it again. I didn’t want to hear another one of his quasi-confessions involving another woman with whom I would silently compete and to whom I would inevitably lose. But I couldn’t help myself either because I wanted him. I wanted Luke’s voice waking me up like this in the middle of the night, and his stupid clever repartee over meals in expensive restaurants that he could easily afford. I wanted a place, any place in his life.
“Are you there?” Luke asked.
Yes. Where I would always be. Right where he had left me. And he would leave me.
“I’m here,” I answered, grateful for the cover of darkness and the separation of phone lines.
“Thought maybe we got cut-off or something,” he said.
God—I despised his coolness. He knew it wasn’t in my power to cut him off. He had done that, and married Christina, so that I had had to wear that stupid pink dress, and ludicrous happy smile like it was one of the best days of my life.
“No,” I said to him now.
“So we’re going to change the rules about Sundays?” he asked. “About calling each other I mean? I wouldn’t dare interfere with your family time.”
“You get together with your folks too,” I reminded him.
“I do,” he concurred. “But with us it’s more hit and miss. And a lot of miss.”
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, I guess,” I replied smugly.
“Emerson,” said Luke.
“That’s right. You remembered.”
“I had a good tutor.”
I breathed deeply.
“Are we okay?” asked Luke.
“Why wouldn’t we be?” I asked back.
“No reason here,” he said.
Because he had everything he wanted. The this had always been enough for him. I was the one who idiotically kept wanting more, the that and the other. I was the one who got my feelings hurt over and over again. No wonder I had become so good at hiding them.
“I had a good time last night too,” I informed him, abruptly changing the subject.
“So tell me about it,” said Luke.
What was I thinking? I couldn’t tell him about dancing. I wasn’t cruel.
“We always have a good time,” I tried to steer the conversation in yet another direction. “My coworkers and me I mean. It was a girls’ night out.”
“So where’d you go?”
“Sensations,” I said as if I were confessing.
“That’s a great place.”
“You know it?” I asked.
Again Luke chuckled softly.
“Yes, Rachel,” he said. “It’s been a while since I’ve been there, but I’m guessing it’s about the same.”
I wished that I had never brought it up. I had reminded him of his loss.
“I’m sorry, Luke,” I said. “I didn’t mean to…I mean…”
“How long did it take for your ears to stop ringing?” he asked. “You always were a pretty good dancer.”
“No I wasn’t.”
At least not in front of him, and certainly never with him. I had been too embarrassed, too intimidated. In my fantasies though, in my head, sometimes I had danced with him all night, and perfectly, as free in the music as he could be.
“Yes you were,” replied Luke. “Just a little stiff at first until the rhythm got you.”
“The Miami-Sound Machine,” I said.
Now Luke laughed heartily.
“You remember that?” he asked.
“I had a good tutor,” I told him.
“I did have the moves, didn’t I?” he remembered.
My eyes refilled, and the yes caught in my throat when I tried to say it.
“I still have them, Rachel,” he said quietly. “They’re just different.”
I nodded my head as I tried to swallow the lump in my throat.
“I’ll show you one day,” he told me.
My heart was beating rapidly again, and I trembled in the dark, picturing myself sitting in his lap, our arms around each other.
ELEVEN
Meandering up and down the wine aisles at Siegel’s Wine Shoppe, I vacillated between buying a red or a white, merlot or pinot noir, chardonnay or Chablis. Luke had been vague about the menu he was preparing and adamant that I didn’t need to bring anything. Of course I couldn’t just show up at his house for the first time empty-handed, and it wasn’t customary to bring a man flowers, unless he was in the hospital. What else could I do but bring a bottle of wine? Although Luke would undoubtedly be providing the wine himself, and it would be the perfect complement to whatever it was he was cooking for us.
Luke was cooking dinner for us. He hadn’t done that since his senior year at UT, when we had been studying for finals, and the meal had been thick burgers on his tiny Hibachi grill. I remembered him squatting down on the tiny apartment deck, fanning the smoke as he carefully turned the beef patties, and me inside the apartment standing at the kitchen stove, my face shining, as I tended to the French fries frying in a skillet. Had he been a good cook back then? I honestly couldn’t say, having been too blinded by the happiness of being with him. It was a long time ago. I hadn’t fried a potato in a skillet in a thousand years.
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