Enjoy the Dance

by Heidi Cullinan

  “Isn’t helping strangers’ kids what he does all day long? I’m just glad he was willing to step up. We would have taken Duon for the night, honestly. For the week, or forever, if there was truly nowhere else. We’d find a way to make the space work. But he didn’t come to us. This feels significant to me. The only choice for any of us is to ride this out. And we will—together.”

  The social worker arrived, and Tomás heard his parents come home with the kids soon after. He texted his mother frantically, told her to keep the kids quiet. DHS next door. She didn’t reply, but the children became immediately silent.

  When the social worker insisted Duon be seen by medical professionals, Laurie and Ed hugged Duon, thanked Spenser again, and left. Spenser planned to go with Vicky and the social worker to the ER, and it was clear he was about to invite Tomás along, but the terror on Tomás’s face inspired him to focus instead on coaxing Duon off the couch.

  Here Tomás wanted to step in, to explain to Duon why he couldn’t come along, couldn’t let him stay at his place, but Duon seemed to be in some kind of shock. So Tomás simply stood by, useless, until they left and there was nothing for him to do but go across the hall to his own apartment.

  His father waited for him, pale-faced and sweating, peering over Tomás’s shoulder as if he expected one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse to be following. Tomás held up his hands. “It’s only me. They’re gone.”

  The relief rolling off José Jimenez was almost visible weight falling to the floor. “Thank God.” He crossed himself as he glanced at the door to the bedroom where Renata and the kids were hiding. “What happened? Why are there social workers here? Where were you?”

  Tomás began to tell him, but when José saw how upset his son was, he called for his wife, and the two of them plunked him on the couch and made him start over. Tomás told them everything about Duon. About how he wanted to help. How it hurt him to know he couldn’t. How he was angry at Spenser for bringing in DHS.

  His mother, however, would hear none of that. “But, mi vida, he helped the boy. God bless him for his kindness.” She wiped tears from her eyes. “I will take them tortillas tomorrow. And beans. And empanadas.”

  The idea of his mother interacting with Spenser turned Tomás’s stomach. Would he report her too? “You can’t tell him, Mom. You can’t tell Spenser you and Dad are undocumented.”

  She touched his cheek, her expression sad and a little weary. “I know, cariño. I know.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  At the hospital, Duon was closed off, slightly defensive, and clearly scared. Spenser longed more than anything to reassure him, but he couldn’t do much, especially since he wasn’t allowed into the exam room. The only thing he could do was take Duon’s hand on his way by and look him in his uninjured eye as he spoke. “I will be here when you’re finished. Everything will be all right.”

  Duon’s response to this had been an imperceptible jerk of the head, and then the nurse wheeled him through the double doors.

  Once Duon was gone, Vicky helped Spenser deal with the forms the social worker had left for him to sign. The first one was the background check, which he’d filled out before. The rest of the paperwork was ridiculously simple, considering the outcome would be collecting a child. The most onerous part was providing references, which meant digging through his email to find phone numbers.

  Vicky held her hand out for the last piece of paper with a weary smile. “Thanks. I’ll put in a call to Avenues tomorrow also, in case they have an opening.” She leveled her gaze at him, studying him carefully. “You know they won’t, though. And you know, don’t you, that DHS is going to ask you to take him on permanently, if you show so much as the least bit of willingness?”

  “I do.” Spenser met her gaze easily. “We’ll see what happens once Duon and I have a chance to get to know each other better.”

  She didn’t back down. “There’s nowhere else. I know Ed and Laurie would have him, but their lives aren’t remotely structured for the support Duon’s going to need. They don’t understand how much extra work a child in Duon’s situation requires. And I can’t. It sets a terrible precedent, and once I open those floodgates, I’ll feel like I have to house every child I can’t home into my apartment. But he’s a good kid. A handful sometimes, yes, but he’s got a heart of gold. He has so much love he wants to give.” She ran a hair through her hair, staring grimly at the empty space before her. “The shelters, even if they weren’t full, would have structure, but they’re not a great place for LGBT kids. I don’t blame him for not wanting to go there. I don’t want him to go there. Avenues is a good idea, but there’s no way it isn’t full. And it doesn’t matter, because what he needs is a home.” She blushed. “Sorry, I get carried away.”

  Spenser smiled, unable to help himself. “It’s okay. It’s good to see you passionate about him.”

  “I love all my kids, but there are some that get under your skin. The ones you lie up at night thinking about, wanting to help. He’s one of them for me.”

  Spenser liked her. A lot. “If Avenues doesn’t have an opening, I can apply to be a host home and create a space in the program. They would support him financially and help get him transitioned into adult life when the time came.” He hesitated while he chose his words carefully. “I’ve…worked with them before. I know what to expect.”

  “Sounds good to me.” She stood, holding up the clutch of paper he’d signed. “I’ll get this filed. And I’ll check up on you tomorrow, okay? You have my card, if you need anything before then.”

  Vicky left, and Spenser sat in silence, playing with his phone for a few minutes before simply leaning back and soaking in the stillness while he still had it.

  When Duon reemerged, the social worker confirmed Spenser had been accepted as an emergency placement and promised to check in the next day with more information. She waved goodbye, answering another phone call as she headed for her car.

  The hospital wasn’t far from the apartment, but Spenser drove slowly, deliberately taking a leisurely route home. At first Duon stayed silent, keeping his gaze out the window. Spenser let the silence expand until Duon was ready to fill it.

  “You said you were in the system.”

  “Yep. Foster care from when I was eight until I aged out.”

  “House, or shelter?”

  The old flicker of sorrow, hate, and emptiness swelled. “Both. Lots of houses, several shelters.”

  Duon examined him critically. “Why you a teacher?”

  “I always liked kids. Seemed a good job to have, teaching elementary.” He was scraping against shadows, and they were far too live for his liking tonight, the demons woken up by Duon’s experience. “I have three little sisters. I used to care for them. I was good at it. But people don’t want four foster kids. Not often.”

  “What’d they take you away for?”

  This time it was Spenser hiding pain in the bravado of a stiff shrug. “Drugs. Child endangerment.”

  Duon held out a fist in Spenser’s direction. “Same, brother.”

  Spenser met the bump smoothly and turned a corner, which would let them talk for a few more blocks. “I didn’t do well when I aged out of the system. I was carrying too much inside me. Was on track to end up the same as my mom and my oldest sister. But I heard about this shelter for homeless LGBT youth, and they hooked me up with a lesbian couple who adopted me—not legally, but in every other respect. Gave me a home. Helped me get to therapy, to college.”

  “This why you took in me? Black Widow got red in her ledger and needs to wipe it out?”

  Spenser laughed. “Something like that, yeah.”

  Duon huffed. “I ain’t going to no therapy.”

  Spenser didn’t say anything, only smiled.

  The apartment building was quiet as they arrived. Spenser let Duon in and got a spare set of sheets from the linen cupboard. “You okay with the couch for tonight? If you decide you want to stay, I’ll find you a real bed and put it in my sp
are room.”

  Duon accepted the sheets absently. He looked scared and overwrought. They’d given him painkillers at the hospital, but they only dulled the outside. Spenser knew though Duon was exhausted, he wouldn’t sleep tonight. Not anything outside of a few fitful hours. Not until dawn.

  Spenser put the remote to the TV on the coffee table. “Keep the volume low. Turn on any lights you need, and eat anything you want from the fridge or cupboards.”

  Once he had Duon situated on the couch, Spenser locked the doors and went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face. He closed the door to his bedroom, got into his pajamas, and tucked himself into his sheets. Read a book for a few minutes, then shut off his light, pulled up the covers, and tried to sleep.

  But he lay awake long into the night, listening to the traffic on the street. To the sound of the television murmuring on low, in concert to the shifts and creaks of the young man watching it on the couch, the young man who wasn’t sleeping either.

  What Tomás wanted to do the morning after the scene with Duon was go over to Spenser’s apartment and make sure Duon was okay. What he had to do, unfortunately, was go to work. At five in the morning.

  Tomás didn’t mind working at Starbucks. He was an assistant manager, and he was good at both being in charge and making fancy cups of coffee. Sure, he was tired sometimes, but that’s what coffee was for, and lucky him, he worked with the stuff all day long. He swore he absorbed some of the caffeine through his skin. He was every employee’s favorite assistant manager and every customer’s favorite barista. He didn’t let the customers or the other baristas know when they drove him crazy. He didn’t like his weekend job doing custodial work at a nursing home, but it brought in the crucial extra money that let him go to his third job, the only one he actually wanted: teaching at Laurie’s studio.

  It was a dance in itself to make sure he got out of Starbucks in time to get to Dayton’s Bluff to teach his classes, and another skill entirely to not be so tired he fell asleep in the car on the way over. But he got it all done. It was tight, and each aspect of it had to move the right way, but his life worked. Sort of.

  His mom and dad helped. His dad made sure his beater car got him from point A to point B, did deals with his friends if he needed parts or help with labor. His mom kept his uniforms spotless and ironed. “They’ll know you take your job seriously when they see your clothes,” she always said. She didn’t understand his love of dancing, but she made sure his leotard was clean and his tights had no holes. His parents’ care and support helped him get through it, and he did all of his jobs without complaint.

  His sister didn’t help him at all, and when he ran into her when she flitted in and out of their lives, they nearly always butted heads. But the good part of his working so much was that the number of times they crossed paths was epically low. In fact, though she’d been to the apartment regularly lately, he hadn’t seen her in over a month.

  Though usually Tomás did his jobs with a happy heart, the day after the incident with Duon, he dragged. He hated that Duon had come to him for help and he’d had to say no. He worried about this Spenser guy too. With a few hours of sleep and his mother’s breakfast in his belly, he could admit he’d overreacted and judged the guy too harshly.

  On his lunch break he’d done some research and now had a better understanding of why he’d narced. Still didn’t care for it, but he’d downgraded Spenser from asshole to Dudley Do-Right. One of his best friends in high school had been a white kid who lived for sneaking out to get high, and when Tomás refused to go, afraid of getting caught and getting his parents in trouble, Sean called him that name. Tomás had finally asked him what the hell it was about, and Sean had explained it was some old cartoon, and Dudley Do-Right was this Canadian Mountie who was dumb as rocks and moral almost to a fault. Tomás had taken umbrage to the name after knowing its origins, but he didn’t mind giving it to Spenser now. The guy probably slept with a rule book.

  He likely still looked sexy-cute while he did it, damn him.

  Tomás also did some digging on whether or not mandatory reporters were required to report on undocumented immigrants. They were not, to his great relief. Tomás wasn’t going to go out of his way to tell the guy, but it was good to know if he found out accidentally, it didn’t mean the apocalypse had arrived.

  He should’ve gotten Spenser’s number, or given his. As it was, the only hope he had in checking up on Duon before he went home that night was the unlikely chance he came to the studio, which he did not. So Tomás was distracted through his three classes too.

  Laurie was there for his last one, since they taught it together. Ideally they would have several classrooms in their space, but for now they only had the one, until the building Laurie and Ed had bought next door was renovated and brought up to code. Laurie’s office had been built a month ago, along with the staff break area, and this was all the renovating they could afford right now. Laurie came from a wealthy background, and he had a lot saved, but he also had a husband who had a hard time working and a marriage only sort of accepted by the government.

  Tomás knew Laurie was squirreling money away “in case.” In case the amendment passed. In case Ed’s pain got worse. In case opening a grant-run dance studio in a rougher neighborhood of St. Paul turned out to be a terrible business strategy and bled him dry. They hadn’t moved out of their apartment near the studio because it was inexpensive. But at the same time, he hired too many instructors, paid them good wages, and he gave out too many scholarships. His big heart cost him a great deal of money.

  It was part of why Tomás was so devoted to him and loved him so much.

  Laurie approached him after class, as Tomás hurried into his street clothes. “Have you had any word on Duon? Is he still with Spenser?”

  “I’m going to go see them now. Give them both my phone number and all that. Apologize for getting upset last night.”

  “Would you mind giving them my number too? I should have given it to Duon before. I knew he had Ed’s, and I guess I thought that was enough.”

  “I hadn’t given it to him either. Didn’t know if it was appropriate to give it to a student.”

  “In general, probably not. But I think perhaps this is an exceptional case.” Laurie mustered up a smile. “Keep me posted, will you?”

  Tomás agreed he would, then hurried home. He saw his parents’ car in the parking lot, and his sister’s. Oh, but this was the worst day in the world for the two of them to have a confrontation. He gripped the steering wheel, focusing quiet anger at Alisa’s three-year-old, gleaming green Ford Focus. Then he pulled out his phone and texted his mother.

  I’m going to see Duon before I come home.

  She answered fairly quickly. Okay. I’ll keep your dinner warm. Alisa is here.

  I saw. Is she sober?

  I don’t know. She wants to take the babies, but your father is trying to get her to leave them here another night.

  Tomás let out a breath, but his frustration with Alisa and the family’s situation remained at its usual constant boiling point. Eventually he put his hand over the rosary dangling from his rearview mirror, closed his eyes, and took several deep breaths until he thought he had a chance of leaving his car without first putting his hand through the windshield.

  Then he got out, locked it, and went to see Duon.

  His belly turned over as he closed in on the door with the number three hanging straight and shiny above the keyhole. Across the hall he could hear his sister arguing with his father, a heated mixture of Spanish and English punctuated with the anguished cries from Sabrina, Jasmin, and Ashton, Tomás’s nieces and nephew. Alisa was drunk, for sure, and maybe high too. Two years ago, Tomás would have stormed in to join the battle, determined to talk Alisa into decency and common sense. But he knew better now, knew the best prayer for keeping the kids safe was if he stayed out of it. His role in the family was to make money.

  He didn’t know what his role was with Duon. He wasn’t
sure how to have either of the conversations he was about to have, but he knew he needed to have them.

  His knock wasn’t loud, but it echoed in the hallway. He heard movement on the other side of the door, the sounds of shuffling feet and Spenser’s voice. It was a good voice. Soothing. It smoothed some of Tomás’s ruffled edges, waking up the part of him that missed flirting with a man. When Spenser opened the door to smile at Tomás, neat and pressed and polite, the flutter of awareness became a low hum. The guy was cute. And he rescued kids. There were definitely worse qualities in a man.

  Tomás wished he had a hat so he could take it off and hold it in his hands. “Hi. I’m sorry if I’m interrupting anything, but I wanted to check in on Duon. And apologize to you.”

  Spenser blinked in surprise before standing aside. “Come on in. Duon’s in the shower. But you don’t have anything to apologize for.” He closed the door behind Tomás. “Can I get you something to drink? Water? Coffee? Tea?”

  His first instinct was to say no thanks, but he thought better of it, deciding it would be a good way to distract the guy while he got his confession out. “Sure. Tea is fine. Something decaffeinated, please.”

  Spenser returned to the cupboard full of tea boxes and tins and studied it a moment. “I have all kinds of tea. An herbal peach, chai rooibos, decaffeinated Lady Grey—”

  “Lady Grey?”

  Spenser waved a blue box with an orange banner at him. “It’s Earl Grey but with a little citrus zest.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll try it.”

  The ritual of making tea was good cover as Tomás got himself together. “I’m sorry for last night, for being upset about you having to report Duon to DHS. I’m glad you’re helping Duon. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to take him in myself. I’d like to help in other ways, if I can.”

  Spenser glanced up at him, pausing with one red and one yellow mug in his hands. “It’s all right. If it helps, I was nervous about having to make the call. You helped so much, bringing in Vicky. I don’t think I would have been allowed to keep him without her.”