Dancing After Hours

by Andre Dubus

  Emily could see it, hear it, and her arms and breast wanted to hug him because he had done this; her hand touched his, rested on his fingers; then she took his cigarette and drew on it and put it between his fingers and blew smoke over his head.

  Kay said: “I think I’d like the parachute. But I couldn’t jump out of the plane.”

  Drew smiled. “Neither could I.”

  “I don’t like underwater,” Rita said. “And I don’t like in the air.”

  “Tell them what happened,” Alvin said.

  “He didn’t think I should do it.”

  “I thought you should do it on a different day, after what he told you. I thought you could wait.”

  “You knew I couldn’t wait.”

  “Yes.” Alvin looked at Emily. “It’s true. He couldn’t.”

  “I broke both my legs.”

  “No,” Emily said.

  Jeff said: “Did you feel them?”

  Rita was shaking her head; Kay was watching Drew.

  “No,” Drew said. “They made a video of it. You can hear my legs break. The wind dragged us, and I couldn’t do anything with my legs.”

  “He was laughing the whole time,” Alvin said. “While the chute was pulling them on the ground. He’s on top of the guy, and he’s laughing and shouting: ‘This is great, this is great.’ And on the video you can hear his bones snapping.”

  “When did you know?” Jeff said.

  “On the third day. When my feet were swollen, and Alvin couldn’t get my shoes on.”

  “You never felt pain?” Rita said.

  “Not like you do. It was like a pinball machine, this little ball moving around. So in the hospital they sent me a shrink. To see if I had a death wish. If a normal sky dives and breaks some bones, they don’t ask him if he wanted to die. They ask quads. I told him if I wanted to die, I wouldn’t have paid a guy with a parachute. I told him it was better than sex. I told him he should try it.”

  “What did he say?” Jeff said.

  “He said he didn’t think I had a death wish.”

  Rita said: “How did you get hurt?”

  “Diving into a wave.”

  “Oh my God,” Emily said. “I love diving into waves.”

  “Don’t stop.” He smiled. “You could slip in the shower. I know a guy like me, who fell off his bed. He wasn’t drunk; he was asleep. He doesn’t know how he fell. He woke up on the floor, a quad.”

  She was sipping her third drink and smoking one of Rita’s cigarettes, and looking over Jeff’s head at the wall and ceiling, listening to Paul Desmond playing saxophone with Brubeck. Rita’s face was turned to Kay, and Emily could only hear their voices; Jeff and Alvin and Drew were planning to fish. She looked at them and said: “Paul Desmond—the guy playing sax—once lost a woman he loved to an older and wealthy man. One night he was sitting in a restaurant, and they came in, the young woman and the man. Desmond watched them going to their table and said: ‘So this is how the world ends, not with a whim but a banker.’ ”

  Rita and Kay were looking at her.

  “I like that,” Drew said.

  “He was playing with a T. S. Eliot line. The poet. Who said ‘April is the cruelest month.’ That’s why they called him T. S.”

  They were smiling at her. Jeff’s eyes were bright.

  “I used to talk this way Five days a week.”

  “What were you?” Drew said.

  “A teacher.”

  She was looking at Drew and seeing him younger, with strong arms and legs, in a bathing suit, running barefoot across hot sand to the water, his feet for the last time holding his weight on the earth, his legs moving as if they always would, his arms swinging at his sides; then he was in the surf, running still, but very slowly in the water; the cold water thrilled him, cleared his mind; he moved toward the high waves; he was grinning. Waves broke in front of him and rushed against his waist, his thighs, his penis. A rising wave crested and he dived into it as it broke, and it slapped his legs and back and turned him, turned him just so, and pushed him against the bottom.

  Alvin asked Rita to dance, and Kay asked Jeff. They pushed tables and chairs and made a space on the floor, and held each other, moving to Desmond’s slow song. Emily said: “When this happened to you, who pulled you out of the water?”

  “Two buddies. They rode in on the wave that got me. They looked around and saw me. I was like a big rag doll in the water. I’d go under, I’d come up. Mostly under.”

  “Did you know how bad it was?”

  “I was drowning. That’s what I was afraid of till they came and got me. Then I was scared because I couldn’t move. They put me on the beach, and then I felt the pain; and I couldn’t move my legs and arms. I was twenty-one years old, and I knew.”

  Last night Emily had not worked and yesterday afternoon she had gone to the beach with a book of stories by Edna O’Brien. She rubbed sunscreen on her body and lay on a towel and read five stories. When she finished a story, she ran in the surf, and dived into a wave, opened her eyes to the salt water, stood and shook her hair and faced the beach, looking over her shoulder at the next wave coming in, then dived with it as it broke, and it pushed and pulled her to the beach, until her outstretched hands and then her face and breasts were on sand, and the surf washed over her.

  John Coltrane was playing a ballad, and Jeff looked at her and said: “Would you like to dance?”

  She nodded and stood, walked around tables, and in the open space turned to face him. Rita and Alvin came and started to dance. Emily took Jeff’s hand and held him behind his waist, and they danced to the saxophone, her breasts touching his chest; he smelled of scotch and smoke; his mustache was soft on her brow. She looked to her left at Drew: he had turned the chair around, and was watching. Now Kay rose from her chair and stood in front of him; she bent forward, held his hands, and began to dance. She swayed to the saxophone’s melody, and her feet moved in rhythm, forward, back, to her sides. Emily could not see Drew’s face. She said: “I don’t know if Kay should be doing that.”

  “He jumped from an airplane.”

  “But he could feel it. The thrill anyway. The air on his face.”

  “He can feel Kay, too. She’s there. She’s dancing with him.” He led Emily in graceful turns toward the front wall, so she could see Drew’s face. “Look. He’s happy.”

  Drew was smiling; his head was dancing: down, up to his right, down, up to his left. Emily looked at Jeff’s eyes and said: “You told me your friend always looked happy and you knew he was never happy.”

  “It’s complicated. I knew he couldn’t enjoy being a quad. I knew he missed his body: fishing, hunting, swimming, dancing, girls, just walking. He probably even missed being a soldier, when he was scared and tired, and wet and hot and thirsty and bug-bit; but he was whole and strong. So I say he was never happy; he only looked happy. But he had friends, and he had fun. It took a lot of will for him to have fun. He had to do it in spite of everything. Not because of everything.”

  He turned her and dipped—she was leaning backward and only his arms kept her balanced; he pulled her up and held her close.

  “On a fishing boat I lose myself. I don’t worry about things. I just look at the ocean and feel the sun. It’s the ocean. The ocean takes me there. Mike had to do it himself. He couldn’t just step onto a boat and let the ocean take him. First he had to be carried on. Anybody who’s helpless is afraid; you could see it in his eyes, while he joked with us. I’m sure he was sad, too, while we carried him. He was a soldier, Emily. That’s not something he could forget. Then out on the ocean, he couldn’t really hold the rod and fish. And his body was always pulling on him. He had spasms on the boat, and fatigue.”

  Coltrane softly blew a low note and held it, the drummer tapping cymbals, and the cassette ended. Emily withdrew her hand from Jeff’s back, but he still held hers, and her right hand. He said: “He told me once: ‘I wake up tired.’ His body was his enemy, and when he fought it, he lost. What he had to do
was ignore it. That was the will. That was how he was happy.”

  “Ignore it?”

  “Move beyond it.”

  He released her back and lowered her hand, and shifted his grip on it and held it as they walked toward the table; then Jeff stopped her. He said: “He had something else. He was grateful.”

  “For what?”

  “That he wasn’t blown to pieces. And that he still had his brain.”

  They walked and at the table he let go of her hand and she stood in front of Drew, and said: “You looked good.”

  Kay sat beside Rita; Jeff and Alvin stood talking.

  “My wife and I danced like that.”

  “Your wife? You said—” Then she stopped; a woman had loved him, had married him after the wave crippled him. She glanced past him; no one had heard.

  “Right,” he said. “I met her when I was like this.”

  “Shit.”

  He nodded. She said: “Would you like a beer?”

  “Yes.”

  She walked past the table, then stopped and looked back. Drew was turning his chair around, looking at her now, and he said: “Do you have Old Blue Eyes?”

  “Not him,” Rita said.

  “He’s good to dance to,” Kay said.

  “I’ve got him,” Emily said. “Anybody want drinks?”

  She went behind the bar and made herself a vodka and tonic. Kay and Rita came to the bar, stood with their shoulders and arms touching, and Emily gave them a Tecate and a club soda, and they took them to Drew and Alvin. They came back and Emily put in the Sinatra cassette and poured vermouth for Rita and made a salty dog with tequila for Kay While she was pouring the grapefruit juice, Kay said to Rita: “Can you jitterbug?”

  “Girl, if you lead, I can follow.”

  Kay put her right hand on Rita’s waist, held Rita’s right hand with her left, then lifted their hands and turned Rita in a circle, letting Rita’s hand turn in hers; then, facing each other, they danced. Kay sang with Sinatra:

  Till the tune ends

  We’re dancing in the dark

  And it soon ends

  Emily sang:

  We’re waltzing in the wonder

  Of why we’re here

  Time hurries by, we’re here

  And gone—

  Emily watched her pretty friends dancing, and looked beyond them at Jeff and Alvin, tapping the table with their fingers, watching, grinning; Drew was singing. She smiled and sang and played drums on the bar till the song ended. Then she poured Jeff a scotch on ice and went to the table with it, and he stood and pulled out the chair beside him, and she sat in it.

  She looked at Drew. She could not see pallor in the bar light, but she knew from his eyes that he was very tired. Or maybe it was not his eyes; maybe she saw his fatigue because she could see Jeff’s friend, tired on the fishing boat, talking and laughing with Jeff, a fishing rod held in his arms. Rita and Kay sat across from her, beside Alvin. Emily leaned in front of Jeff and said to Drew: “How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  Her right knee was touching Jeff’s thigh, her right arm resting on his, and her elbow touched his chest. For a moment she did not notice this; then she did; she was touching him as easily as she had while dancing, and holding his hand coming back to the table. She said to Drew: “You can sleep late tomorrow.”

  “I will. Then we’ll go to Maine.”

  “You’re jumping again?”

  “Not this time. We’re going to look at the coast. Then we’ll come back here and fish with Jeff.”

  She looked at Jeff, so close that her hair had touched his face as she turned. She drew back, looking at his eyes, seeing him again carrying a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound wheelchair with a man in it up the steps to the wharf, and up the steps to the boat: Jeff and Alvin and someone else, as many men as the width of the steps would allow; then on the boat at sea, Jeff standing beside Drew, helping him fish. She said: “Really? When?”

  “Monday,” Jeff said.

  She sat erectly again and drank and glanced at Kay and Rita in profile, talking softly, smiling, their hands on the table, holding cigarettes and drinks.

  ———

  Sinatra was singing “Angel Eyes,” and Kay and Rita were dancing slowly, and Jeff and Alvin were in the kitchen making ham and cheese sandwiches. Kay was leading, holding Rita’s hand between their shoulders, her right hand low on Rita’s back; they turned and Emily looked at Rita’s face: her eyes were closed. Her hand was lightly moving up and down Kay’s back, and Emily knew what Rita was feeling: a softening thrill in her heart, a softening peace in her muscles; and Kay, too. She looked at Drew.

  “You danced with your wife, you—” She stopped.

  “Are you asking how we made love?”

  “No. Yes.”

  “I can have an erection. I don’t feel it. But you know what people can do in bed, if they want to.”

  Looking at his eyes, she saw herself with the vibrator.

  “I was really asking you what happened. I just didn’t have the guts.”

  “I met her at a party. We got married; we had a house. For three years. One guy in a hundred with my kind of injury can get his wife pregnant. Then, wow, she was. Then on New Year’s Eve my wife and my ex-best friend came to the bedroom, and stood there looking down at me. I’d thought they spent a lot of time in the living room, watching videos. But I never suspected till they came to the bed that night. Then I knew; just a few seconds before she told me the baby was his, I knew. You know what would have been different? If I could have packed my things and walked out of the house. It would have hurt; it would have broken my heart; but it would have been different. On the day of my divorce it was summer, and it was raining. I couldn’t get into the courthouse; I couldn’t go up the steps. A guy was working a jackhammer on the sidewalk, about thirty yards away. The judge came down the steps in his robe, and we’re all on the sidewalk, my wife, the lawyers. My lawyer’s holding an umbrella over me. The jackhammer’s going and I can’t hear and I’m saying: ‘What? What did he say?’ Then I was divorced. I looked up at my wife, and asked her if she’d like Chinese lunch and a movie.”

  “Why?”

  “I couldn’t let go.”

  She reached and held his hand.

  “Oh, Drew.”

  She did not know what time it was, and she did not look at the clock over the bar. There was no music. She sat beside Jeff. Drew had his sandwich in both hands; he bit it, then lowered it to the plate. Alvin was chewing; he looked at Drew; then as simply as if Drew’s face were his own, he reached with a paper napkin and wiped mustard from Drew’s chin. Drew glanced at him, and nodded. That’s how he says thank you, Emily thought. One of a hundred ways he would have learned. She picked up her sandwich, looked across the table at Kay and Rita chewing small bites, looked to her right at Jeff’s cheek bulging as he chewed. She ate, and drank. Kay said: “Let’s go to my house, and dance all night.”

  “What about your neighbors?” Rita said.

  “I don’t have neighbors. I have a house.”

  “A whole house?”

  “Roof. Walls. Lawn and trees.”

  “I haven’t lived in a house since I grew up,” Rita said.

  “I’ve got to sleep,” Drew said.

  Alvin nodded.

  “Me, too,” Jeff said.

  Rita said: “Not me. I’m off tomorrow.”

  “I won’t play Sinatra,” Kay said.

  “He is good to dance to. You can play whatever you want.”

  Jeff and Alvin stood and cleared the table and took the plates and glasses to the kitchen. Drew moved his chair back from the table and went toward the door, and Emily stood and walked past him and opened the door. She stepped onto the landing, and smelled the ocean in the cool air; she looked up at stars. Then she watched Drew rolling out and turning down the ramp. Kay and Rita came, and Jeff and Alvin. Emily turned out the lights and locked the door and went with Jeff down the ramp. At the van, Emily turned to face the b
reeze, and looked up at the stars. She heard the sound of the lift and turned to see it coming out of the van. Kay leaned down and kissed Drew’s cheek, and Rita did; they kissed Alvin’s cheek, and Jeff shook his hand, then held Drew’s hand and said: “Monday.”

  “We’ll be here.”

  Emily took Alvin’s hand and kissed his cheek. Jeff pointed east and told him how to drive to the motel. Emily held Drew’s hands and leaned down and pressed her cheek against his; his face needed shaving. She straightened and watched Drew move backward onto the lift, then up into the van, where he turned and went to the passenger window. Alvin, calling good night, got into the van and started it and leaned over Drew and opened his window. Drew said: “Good night, sweet people.”

  Standing together, they all said good night and waved, held their hands up till Alvin turned the van and drove onto the road. Then Kay looked at Emily and Jeff.

  “Come for just one drink.”

  Emily said: “I think it’s even my bedtime. But ask me another night.”

  “And me,” Jeff said.

  “I will.”

  “I’ll follow you,” Rita said.

  “It’s not far.”

  They went to their cars, and Rita drove behind Kay, out of the parking lot, then west. Emily watched the red lights moving away, and felt tender, hopeful; she felt their hearts beating as they drove.

  “Quite a night,” she said.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  She looked at him; he was looking at the stars. She looked west again; the red lights rose over a hill and were gone. She looked at the sky.

  “It is,” she said. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know. Do you think if Drew was up there hanging from a parachute, he could hear us?”