Chageet's Electric Dance

by Ashir, Rebecca

  8

  Her tutu was lavender, made of mesh and lace. Her leg was plastic and straight, standing on one pointed toe, glued to a metal pedestal. The other toe was pointed and glued to the upper calf, just below the knee. Her arms were holding her dreams in a circle above her plastic head. Spin, spin, spinning—breasts perk, chin held out, shoulders pressed down—spin, spin, spinning. She could never look up—her eyes were painted in place, forever looking to oblivion. She was a music box doll, spinning in a box—ting, ting, tingling, music whirling her around in one place.

  So, there Barbey was, dancing all by herself. El Figurado was dancing with the auras of moving bodies, but the bodies were gone, the auras movin’ and groovin’ to the music by themselves. Their lights were flickering—red, white, and blue, the colors of the American flag, blowing ominously in the night. Inside this lit room, realms were colliding and breeding, composing new realms at high pitch. Gravity was light and one could slice across the air freely, moving from light to light.

  One woman pointed her toe like a ballerina, pulled her leg up into arabesque and twirled and twirled in euphoric bliss. She was a part of the American dream.

  Her habitual self-consciousness had dissolved in the collision. It was odd. For the first time in her life, she was completely unconcerned with others’ perceptions of her.

  Silver glitter showered down from the dance floor ceiling like rain. Barbey’s arms ached, raised above her head, swaying to the music. They burned in purification, rinsing her from past life mistakes. The glitter filled her head, like a galaxy of shooting stars.

  A rejuvenation was in progress, a return to a once-lived point on the circle of reincarnation. An opening in the gap of reality was now allowing young Barbey to jump through and make corrections that would bring her closer to infinity. Her past life was remembered for an instant, causing an emission of sparks to collide between the spiritual realms; the memory was quickly forgotten, but the feeling was nonetheless present. She rolled her head from side to side, her long blonde hair sprayed out and up, slapping against her body, like a horse tail swatting flies, while her raised arms and undulating hips followed in the dance.

  After a few Mexican policemen infiltrated El Figurado, taking the usual bribes from Billy and his friends to keep him out of jail for knocking the mysterious guy to the floor, the manager of the bar asked Billy to leave for the night. He gave him permission to return the following week, considering he was a regular at the bar, usually had an attractive girl at his side, and a large following of friends.

  Sage also paid off the police on the mysterious guy’s behalf. That really surprised Barbey—she doesn’t even know him—but when she discovered Sage had paid forty dollars in the interest of a stranger, she knew Sage loved him just as much as she did. By this time, the mysterious guy had gotten up off of the floor, appearing a bit disheveled and off balance. Barbey observed that he and the bar manager seemed to have an established relationship. They spoke to each other in Spanish, so she couldn’t understand what they were saying. She wondered why he was allowed to stay at the bar, while Billy was not. This curiosity struck Barbey momentarily and then quickly dissipated like a match that was lit and dropped to burn out in a matter of seconds.

  Mostly she was focused on his charismatic nature and raw animalistic mannerisms that made him appear fearless, maybe even reckless. In a sense, she perceived him as a sort of wounded beast—he like has this broken hearted, kinda dangerous quality to him—kinda like James Dean, she thought. The stranger seemed to have the whole world hidden deep down inside himself, but with his foot caught in a trap like a scared coyote. A coyote will chew off his foot to set himself free and the mysterious guy portrayed that essence. He had all the good looks too, of course—black thick straight hair that was in a need of a haircut, thick overgrown bangs that hung down low over his eyebrows as if he was hiding behind a shadowy thicket of the night, and sad, empty dark eyes that reminded Barbey of an incomprehensible black hole in outer space. She yearned to slide down his eyes and explore his essence. He was of average height, with a thin build that looked attractive in his worn Levis and faded blue t-shirt. His appeal came from an aloofness and confident sensuality that misted out of his pores, as unobtainable as the humidity in the air.

  Barbey felt lucky that he was too drunk and confused to see her dancing out on the floor all by herself like a lunatic because she sensed he may have judged her unfavorably. He wants innocence and purity in a girl—those kinds of boys are like that. There is a spiritual structure in the universe, given the concept of freewill, which encourages darkness to yearn to feed off the light. The thing about Barbey, she thought, though mistakenly, was that she was of this dark force, but she imagined herself to have always been wearing a mask of innocence or light. In her movie-cluttered Bonnie and Clyde mind, she imagined their sameness the second he smashed into their table.

  By the time the other young people began returning to the dance floor, Barbey had stopped dancing and was just standing there with her arms at her sides, shoulders slightly slouched, in her lavender skirt under the lights and falling glitter, looking at the stranger and Sage. Her best friend had a big smile on her face and was laughing, while the stranger had his hand on her shoulder, looking at her affectionately. Barbey’s heart sank. Sage really looked good that night, she thought. She looked innocent, sweet, and fragile like a little China doll that belonged on a shelf—not in a dirty old bar in Mexico, like she had said earlier that night. Barbey knew then that she never should have brought her to Mexico with her, not because she was jealous—she was—but that was beside the point, but because, it suddenly occurred to her, she was too good for this underground hell. Barbey loved Sage and felt like she was a soul mate of sorts.

  Once, when they were children, Sage and Barbey were camping with Sage’s parents in the Cuyamaca Mountains and they decided to hike barefoot to another campground on the other side of the mountain. They dressed like Indians with feathers in their hair that they had collected from under some trees in their campground and while her parents were on a horseback ride, they cut up a pair of her father’s old leather chaps that had been stuffed in the back of the tack shelf in the horse trailer. They figured he never wore them and wouldn’t notice, so they sewed the pieces together and made over-the-shoulder Tarzan-like mini-dresses that they imagined Indian women wore while traveling. Even back then, Barbey had her own Barbie makeup kit that she took everywhere with her, so she painted their faces with red, black, and blue to look like warriors.

  They filled their canteens with Kool-Aid and set out barefoot with the intention of finding some younger children at the other camp to scare. It was a hot day in July and by the time they had hiked the dirt trail, halfway up the mountain, through the numerous Manzanita trees, and past the big boulder that had pothole-like indentations in it from early Native Americans using it as a corn grinder, they were both dragging their feet in exhaustion.

  That’s when they saw a doe through a thicket of trees just off the trail. It looked beautiful and innocent like Barbey thought Sage looked at El Figurado when she smiled bright-eyed and full of hope looking into the stranger’s eyes. Then, suddenly, a shot rang out through the woods and pierced right through its neck. It then reared up and another bullet went through its chest. Those two shots were the loudest most terrifying sounds they had ever heard. They screamed and Sage ran through the trees over to it, while Barbey followed behind. The doe was lying on the ground completely still except for its chest which was rising and falling in quick, full breaths. There was a pool of blood on the ground next to it. Sage started screaming and wouldn’t quit. Barbey had never seen her like that—she was hysterical. Barbey was shocked. She had never witnessed death. She experienced a cold hate rising up from within, like a sharp, thick icicle that was slowly piercing through her insides from the bottom upwards. The doe’s eyes were wide open—shocked and terrified and its nostrils were flared, but it simply laid there on the ground. That’s when the hidde
n warrior part of Barbey Bardot surfaced to her consciousness; she wanted to kill whoever had done this. She made up her mind that she was going to murder whoever had taken Sage’s life because in her mind this doe was a symbol of Sage—innocent and pure. She was astonished at the intensity of this newly discovered rage that enveloped her. It certainly was not acceptable Barbie Doll behavior.

  Nobody came to retrieve the doe. It was against the law to hunt in the Cuyamacas, so whoever shot it must have simply been seeking a thrill, some sort of self-serving good time. Sage was still hysterical, shuddering and wailing, so Barbey felt she had to do something to get her to calm down. She grabbed onto her fragile shoulders and told her to get out her Swiss Army knife; she always had handy tools with her even on Indian hikes. She looked at Barbey, stunned. She supposed Sage was wondering what she was going to do because she asked her if she was going to try to scrape out the bullets from the doe’s wounds. Barbey said, “No. Just give me the knife.” She handed it over to her. Although Sage was still trembling, her wailing had ceased. Barbey made a thin cut in her finger with the blade and then told Sage to let her cut her finger so that they could become joined as blood sisters with the doe. She agreed, so Barbey sliced a hairline cut in her finger, causing it to bleed a little. They then put their cut fingers against the chest wound of the dying doe and rubbed their fingers together. Barbey remembered they said that now the doe would live on forever through them and that they were all three joined as one. The rest of that week, they hunted for the killer, but never found anyone who admitted to it.

  Barbey loved Sage and they were bonded together in sisterhood. So, she was quite conflicted as she stood there on the dance floor watching her blood sister falling in love with her soul mate.

  At first, she didn’t know what to do. That was why she was just standing there, but then Sage pointed at her. Barbey guessed the stranger must have asked her who she had come to the club with. He turned to look at who she was pointing out and that’s when they made eye contact for the second time since the dance contest.

  9

  The dance club was the Disneyland ride of hell. The girls were passengers on the ride The Pirates of the Caribbean in an amusement park boat that slid along a hidden track through black waters. Metal fireflies zapped on and off in the dark smoky air with The Blue Lagoon, an open-air fine dining restaurant, to the right. Filled with tourists, the girls’ boat powered forward slowly and ominously through the darkness. The mystery approached slowly in the darkness. Then suddenly, without warning, the boat free-fell down a dangerous waterfall and everyone aboard screamed in glee. Someone yelled out, “Danger is bliss” and nobody heard what he said because the rush was so loud and they were too concerned about their next ride and whether or not it would be as intense as this one. The stranger and Billy Travis were dueling pirates from the Caribbean. They were electric-powered sculptures fighting out the same never-ending duel on a platform with plastic fire surrounding them. With a forceful plug to the stomach, the stranger was knocked from the realm of the illusory hand-carved pirate stage, and into Barbey and Sage’s passenger boat. What happens when there is a glitch in the stage show from hell?

  After the busboys picked the round table off the floor and wiped off the top, the stranger and Sage sat down. One busboy was sweeping up the shattered glasses and spilled liquid from Barbey’s Tom Collins and Sage’s Long Island iced tea when Barbey walked over to the table. Sage turned to her with a big smile on her face as she yelled over the music, “Barbey, this is…” her eyes were brighter and wider than usual, “Rave Robinson. And Rave, this is my best friend, Barbey Bardot.”

  Rave reached across the table, held out his hand and Barbey shook it. She couldn’t let go of his hand—their eyes were locked and she couldn’t speak. His dark eyes pierced through her body as he gazed first into her violet eyes and then glanced sharply across her neck. It felt as if her throat had been sliced and she was waiting to die. In a matter of seconds her head would fall to the floor and it would all be over.

  “Isn’t anyone around here…” Sage interrupted, “…going to order drinks?”

  Rave laughed a long, low guttural laugh as he released Barbey’s hand, mischievously looking her in the eyes again, and leaned back in his chair putting his hands behind his head. He shook his head side to side as if he was enjoying his conflicting thoughts and then he responded to Sage, “I’ll get us some beers.” As he left the table, Barbey pulled up another chair for herself and sat down.

  “What do you think of him, Barbey?” Sage asked, not really wanting a response. “I think he’s the most beautiful boy I have ever seen. It’s weird, but he actually reminds me of my cousin, Tom.” When Sage was thirteen, her cousin, who she was very close with, died in a drunken driving accident. After the accident, he became a kind of icon in their city. He became more noble and heroic than a king. It was as if it didn’t matter to anyone that he made the choice to drive severely intoxicated and could have killed an innocent driver on the road or even a pedestrian crossing a street. Instead, his car flew off the cliff as he sped, likely at his usual ninety miles an hour, around the bend of Dead Man’s Peak. He became a legend for his bravery in the local middle school and high school. All the teenagers now call the cliff, Tom Cat Bluff, after Sage’s cousin.

  “Well, I guess there’s something wild about him that was a bit like Tom.” Barbey leaned over closer to Sage’s ear so she could be heard over the music. “But, you know, I read in Sweet Sixteen magazine that women are, like, often attracted to people who remind them of family members. And in that case, it’s not really love but, just some sort of family issue that needs to be worked out through another person. If that’s the case, the writer said an R&R day at the spa or something is a better solution.”

  “I know what you are talking about,” Sage responded in irritation. “In tenth grade English class, we read Oedipus Rex and Oedipus married his mother.”

  “Yeah, haven’t you ever wondered why he poked his eyes out?”

  “It’s a weird story. I never understood why he did that. Actually, I just didn’t care. That’s why I like math—everything just makes sense.” Sage sighed and looked slightly sullen, “Barbey, have you ever thought about what the purpose of life is?”

  Barbey looked at Sage blankly. “What the heck are you talking about?”

  “What I’m talking about is—why do you think we exist in this world?”

  Now Barbey felt irritated, “I never really thought about it.”

  For Barbey, although she had never thought of it in a philosophical sense, the purpose of life was to feel the ultimate highs as often as possible. Because she had felt an alienation from her family, her childhood had become a desperate yearning for recognition. With each recognition, she felt a touch of ecstasy that temporarily filled an empty void.

  Throughout her childhood, she had twirled and leaped through her numerous dance contests, exploding from one euphoric success to the next. She lived for the feeling of being worshipped and winning contests gave her the temporary high that she desired. Every time she spun across those stages and the judges announced her as the winner, she felt an energy surge through her body, much like a sudden flash of lightning. That bolt was her driving force in life—those quick bursts of elation. But, now as a teen, she wanted something more—she wanted to experience true love. She hoped that true love would endure like a strong electrical current that never dies; she imagined that a man would be her wire hook up to an indestructible power plant. Once she plugged into the right man, she would be forever filled with that energy source.

  When Rave returned to the table, carrying the three beers, a sudden fear swept over Barbey. Her entire body went weak and she felt her plastic body cracking. Because she lacked an awareness of her inner thoughts, in her mind, the fear was unexplainable with no basis whatsoever. Something inside of herself warned her that she should run as far away from Rave as possible, but she ignored it and buried the thought in her subconscious mind. She
only felt a breathless fear strangling her insides and she mistook the fear as something beautiful and divinely ordained.

  Her mind was now reeling into the past, flashing with random images from music videos from her childhood. The flashes were quick visual zaps, like subliminal messages between television commercials. She saw Madonna dressed in a pink Marilyn Monroe gown with men all around her as she sang “Material Girl.” Then she saw ZZ Top watching a woman get out of a car at a gas station, as they sang “She’s Got Legs.” She saw a chorus of women that looked identical to each other, wearing the same tight black mini-skirts with their hair slicked back exactly alike, as Robert Palmer sang “Addicted to Love.” In a dark gloomy bar, she saw Pat Benetar portrayed as a prostitute dressed in rags while singing “Love is a Battle Field.” Barbey’s mind kept flashing with images and the fear continued to well up inside of her.