Ed stopped with one speaker hoisted in midair and raised an eyebrow.
To his credit, Laurie only lifted his chin a little and pressed the card forward. “Seven p.m. next Tuesday at the address on this card. Except, actually, why don't you come at six forty-five so we can go over what I need in more detail. Wear comfortable clothing and dress shoes with a heel, if you have them. If you do this for me, it really will be a favor, and I don't mind hauling out the equipment and pausing my class to do it. But if you don't show up"—his chin came back down and his eyes acquired some very pointed daggers—"I'll collect the pound of flesh myself.”
“Fair enough.” Ed put the speaker down, took the card, and stuck out his hand. “Thanks, buddy.”
Laurie put his hand in Ed's, letting his slim fingers be swallowed up in Ed's beefy paw. “You're welcome.”
Ed shook his hand once before letting go. “See you at quarter to seven on Tuesday,” he called out, breaking into a jog and vaulting off the edge of the stage.
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Chapter Two
fantasia: flamboyant style of tango used for performance
Two days after giving his card to Ed at aerobics class, Laurie sat in traffic, trying to convince himself he shouldn't call Vicky to get Ed's number and call his “favor” off.
On a good day it was a thirty-minute drive from Laurie's studio in Eden Prairie to his family's house in Medina, but when it was rush hour, Laurie knew he could plan on adding at least another fifteen minutes as he joined the commuters coming home at the end of a long day. Usually he was working during rush hour, so it annoyed him to have to limp along behind SUVs and midlife-crisis convertibles instead of enjoying a less populated highway.
Today all the tops were up on the convertibles, however, because an arctic air mass had forced Indian summer to give way to October cold. It was such an abrupt switch that it made Laurie ache, compelling him to turn the heater on full blast, which meant the fan was so loud he could barely hear Robert Siegel's comforting delivery of more bad news about the economy over the airwaves of Minnesota Public Radio. The cold, traffic, and regret over his arrangement with Ed made an already unpleasant errand so unpalatable he had nearly turned off three times at different exits and gone home. If he thought he could come up with an excuse his mother would buy, he might have carried the urge through and bailed. But he knew even if he managed one, this dinner party would happen on a different day, and between now and then he would need to deal with increasingly aggressive maneuvers by his mother to get him to “see reason.” Best, he decided, to get it over with.
He allowed himself a compromise, however, in being even later than he already was, which he achieved by getting off at Shoreline Drive and indulging in a driving tour of Lake Minnetonka. The lake was beautiful at sunset, and Laurie slowed down as much as he dared so he could drink it in. He used to take this drive all the time in high school, on his bike when he was too young to drive and in his car as soon as he was sixteen. He'd come here when he was upset, which was admittedly often. While other kids were out getting drunk and getting laid, Laurie had parked—alone—along the shore, staring out across the water, dreaming of the day he would get out of Minnesota.
And now here he was, back again.
He smiled up at the mansions lining the north side of the road, thinking of how he'd vowed to own one someday. In his mind, he would come back to Minnesota a famous dancer, and he'd live in one of the grand houses by the lake, entertaining his famous out-of-town guests with lavish weekend parties. Oh, he'd had it all worked out. And “famous” had been one of his favorite adjectives and his highest goal.
Now...
He pulled off the road and parked the car where he could look out over the water, leaving the vehicle running, though he did turn down the heater fan so he could hear himself think. In afterthought, he turned off the radio as well. The past was starting to make him feel morose, so he thought about the present instead: about his mother's party and about Ed Maurer.
The two made strange bedfellows, and for a moment Laurie smiled, imagining what his mother and Ed would look like in the same room together. Polished, china-beautiful Caroline Parker and big, brutish Ed Maurer. He imagined showing up at the party with him, of Ed in his workout clothes damp with sweat as he broadcast his crude humor, and he imagined his mother in her cream and beige pantsuit and pearls, slender hands folded together in front of her as she tried not to show how horrified she was. For a minute, Laurie wished he'd have asked Ed to be his date tonight instead of asking him to help with the ballroom dance class.
Which was a flatly ridiculous thought, and it illustrated just how very much Laurie had lost his mind. Why would he bring Ed to his parents’ house? Why? To be insulted by Ed in front of people he knew for a change? And why had he asked Ed to be his assistant in that ballroom class? Except that answer he knew. And as usual, it was Ed's fault.
“What do you need?” he'd asked. And it had all sort of rolled together in Laurie's head and become the dance class. The class he'd taken because Maggie, his co-owner of the studio, had accidentally overbooked herself. He couldn't take her Irish class because that was quite likely the only dance style he didn't know. He would never have taught ballroom dancing voluntarily. He still wasn't sure why he'd let Maggie talk him into it at all.
Very well, he knew that too: because she'd assured him it was “nothing.” She'd told him it was a bunch of old couples from her church wanting to be able to dance for a cruise and had regarded him as if he were very strange for thinking this would be anything but a walk in the park. And Laurie had truly thought after all this time it really wouldn't bother him, that teaching ballroom would be no big deal. But he'd been wrong. It had bothered him a lot, so much so that he'd started dreading Tuesday nights on Friday afternoon. He was a lousy ballroom teacher, and he went home and huddled under his comforter in the dark afterward. He was ramping himself into such a state that sparring with Ed was preferable to going to class.
That, he knew, was how he'd descended into the madness which had led him to think having Ed as his partner would diffuse the situation. He'd thought, he supposed, that being angry at Ed would keep the ghosts at bay.
Except it was a stupid idea on so many levels. Did he really want Ed Maurer there making snide remarks when he was already feeling vulnerable? This was to say nothing of what the Baptist blue-hair brigade would think of his dancing with a man, and Ed would probably join in their mockery with them. What the devil had possessed him? How had that ever, even in complete dementia, seemed like a good plan? This would be nothing but disaster. As Laurie stared out at the lake, he saw the future unrolling before him with horrible clarity.
He reached for his phone and scrolled through his address book. Vicky answered on the third ring.
“Hey, Laurie. What's up?”
Laurie leaned back in his seat. “I'm at Lake Minnetonka on my way to one of my mother's parties.”
She sighed wistfully. “Wish I were there with you and not buried in paperwork. Though I can't say I'd want to go visit your mother. You're going? Voluntarily?”
“Command performance,” Laurie admitted. “She has ‘something to show me.'”
“Uh-oh,” Vicky said. “Well, at least it won't be a blind date.”
“I think I'd rather it was that.” Laurie rubbed his thumb against the steering wheel, watching the leather dimple under the pressure. “Say, Vicky, would you happen to have a phone number for Ed Maurer you could give me?”
“Shit. What the hell did he do to you now?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Laurie said quickly. “We just—” He sighed. “It's complicated. He was going to do something for me, but I changed my mind, and I need to let him know.”
“Sure,” she said, still sounding surprised. “I don't have it handy, though. Can I text it to you?”
“That'd be fine.” He glanced at the dashboard clock and grimaced. “I need to get going, unfortunately.
It's later than I thought. But I'd really appreciate the phone number.”
“You got it.” She paused. “You sure everything's okay? He didn't do something the other night to your class?”
Everything wasn't fine, but he didn't want to get into that now. “It's okay, Vicky, really.”
“Well, if you need me to kick his cocky ass for you, just let me know.”
Laurie smiled. “I'll bear that in mind. Thanks.”
“Anytime, hon.”
Hanging up the phone, Laurie lingered a few more minutes with his wrist resting on the wheel as he stared out over the water. A beep on his phone drew him out of his reverie, and he looked down to see the display announce he had a new text. He clicked it, saw Ed's number, and replaced the phone in its space in the console.
Pulling out of the beach parking, Laurie turned the radio back on and aimed himself back on course to “home.”
Even when Laurie had been in school, everyone in the area had called his family's house and grounds “the Parker estate,” which he'd thought was cool until he was fourteen and his mother had taken him to a mansion in upstate New York to meet a dancing master. Once he came home from seeing a life of real opulence, his family's wealth, while not inconsiderable, suddenly seemed mundane. And after all the traveling he had done over the years he'd spent touring, Medina had become shabbier and shabbier, nothing more than a copycat playing at the success of the rest of the world.
But to his parents’ friends, the Parker home, estate or otherwise, was a crown jewel of the neighborhood, and everyone was always eager to receive an invitation there. Frequently these “little parties” turned into champagne-drenched fetes of fifty people or more. It was only a moderate crowd tonight, judging by the number of expensive cars in the driveway, which temporarily relieved Laurie, but once he'd parked his own vehicle and headed for the front door, he got a glimpse of the guests inside and knew his apprehension hadn't been misplaced.
It wasn't the number of guests that was so worrying this time; it was the content. There were a few locals, and Oliver and his partner, of course, but almost everyone else was someone Laurie didn't recognize. Worst of all, several of them he would swear were dancers. No one he knew, thank God, but they had The Look about them. And if his mother had invited dancers to her party, this was a gathering Laurie knew he did not want to be a part of. At all.
“Darling!” Caroline Parker appeared from a crowd in the living room and came forward to embrace him lightly with a cheek pressed to his instead of a kiss. “You're late,” she teased, which made the guests nearby laugh, but the tighter-than-necessary grip on his arm made clear she was not amused by his attempt at delay and suspected it had been deliberate.
The Parkers did not have servants beyond a housekeeper who came in three times a week, but for events of any importance Laurie's mother always hired staff, and one of those employees hired for this evening came forward to politely ask Laurie if he could take his coat before Caroline took Laurie's arm and led him around.
The party had been a move well played in his mother's eternal campaign, Laurie decided. Yes, almost everyone present was connected to the dancing world in some way, and those who weren't were witnesses to Laurie's performance peak. The few who knew that time doubled as his salad days could be counted on to spin his youthful indiscretions appropriately enough to suit their hostess. And as Laurie had suspected, not one of the dancers knew him personally. In fact, they were all so young that they could only have heard of him as some kind of legend, some of the tales good, some bad, but all dulled with distance and time. And all that was important, Laurie knew, because this entire evening was one great orchestration in Caroline Parker's ongoing attempt to return her once nearly famous son to the stage and the honor and renown she believed he deserved.
“Just mingle,” she murmured in his ear as she led him toward another cluster of people in the dining room. “Mingle and smile. I'll take care of the rest.”
Laurie smiled, but it was fixed and tight. There was no point in telling his mother he didn't want anything taken care of. She wouldn't argue with him, not in front of everyone, and there was no way she'd step into the study and indulge him either. She also had him neatly trapped, because he'd been fool enough to come through the door and be seen. He couldn't leave now without causing a scandal, and this guest list, however accepting they might be, had to be at least partly expecting such a scene from him.
He could see it in their eyes as he clutched at his champagne glass and made mindless small talk with the parade of guests who came up to poke at him and see what happened. None of their attempts worked, of course. If they were too pointed, his mother deflected them, and if they didn't take the hint, his father was drawn in to shift the subject to business or sports. But neither did Caroline let her son look like a puppet. She would direct the conversation—"Tell them about your studio, darling. It's so charming. Such a clever plan"—and she'd toss out hints that he might open up chains across the cities, which he had no intention of doing, but that hardly mattered to his mother. There was no point in arguing with her. If he did, she'd just dismiss his protests as him being cagey.
So Laurie told them about his Eden Prairie studio, downplaying his mother's descriptions because she had inflated them, but that was her game. She embellished, and he downplayed, and between the two stories, his accomplishments looked greater than they were, and he looked humble. It was the same routine she'd used since he was ten, but it still worked. By the time dinner was served, several of the guests had sneaked business cards in his pocket, either because they wanted to invest in his franchise or because they had a niece they wanted to put on the new waiting lists.
He supposed he should thank his mother, but all he could think of right now was how much he wanted to take her out to her precious stables and string her up by one of the beams.
She seated him beside Oliver.
Oliver Thompson was a longtime family friend, Laurie's godfather, and an influential member of the Hennepin Theatre Trust. And though Caroline never much cared for Laurie's “flaunting” of the few male companions he'd brought to her parties, Oliver was here with his longtime partner, Christopher, and Laurie's mother treated both of them as if they were royalty deigning to pay her a favor of their attendance. This wasn't because they'd known each other since high school or that they'd dated before Oliver had decided he wasn't interested in pretending he was straight. This wasn't even because Caroline was probably closer to Oliver than she was to her own husband. This was because, in addition to being heinously rich, Oliver was even more influential and manipulative than Caroline.
Tonight, Laurie knew his mother intended Oliver to target him.
“I keep asking your mother when you're going to let us book your comeback show,” he teased Laurie as the first course was cleared away. He scrubbed his graying mustache discreetly with his napkin before returning it to his lap. “She tells me tonight I might have a decent chance at succeeding.”
Laurie crushed his own napkin tightly in his hands before answering. “I'm afraid my answer is the same as it always is. I don't have any wish to return to the stage. I'm quite happy as a teacher.” He reached for his wine and took a deeper drink than was polite to drown the lie. No, he wasn't happy. But he knew very well he wasn't going to be any happier returning to the stage.
As he scanned the table, trying to get away from Oliver's inquisition, he caught sight of his father. Albert Parker was leaning in to listen to something someone was saying next to him, a man whose name Laurie couldn't remember but whom he thought was a senior executive at some Minneapolis-based corporation. Albert's gray-blue eyes sparkled with interest, and a ghost of a smile played around his lips. There was real joy there, real interest, and it was such a stark contrast from the removal Laurie usually knew in his father that for a moment he lost himself, watching.
Oliver leaned a little closer to Laurie and nudged his arm. “You're the only one still thinking the incident still matters.”
Oliver sighed. “Very well—you're the one making it still an issue. If you came forward and behaved as if it weren't, it wouldn't be.”
Laurie put his wine back down and sat back in his chair. He knew Oliver was right, but he didn't know how to explain that he didn't want to come forward. “I just want a quiet life.”
“Quiet is overrated.” Oliver leaned in slightly and lowered his voice. “At the very least, you should come to one of my parties again. And this time not leave before the entertainment begins.”
On Oliver's other side, Christopher stifled a laugh with his napkin. Laurie blushed ferociously. “Thank you, but hot-tub orgies aren't quite my style.”
Oliver grunted in dismissal. “My parties are nothing of the kind. Just a few friends having a good time.”
Memory of two tipsy young men naked and clutching each other in the water while Oliver watched made Laurie shiver. It upset him that he couldn't decide if he was disgusted or aroused. “Your kind of parties are why people are prejudiced against us, Oliver.”
“Better to dance with the devil and enjoy yourself than hover under the glower of nuns.” He stabbed at a thin slice of veal. “Enjoy your life, Laurie. Don't squander it. Start by letting me hire you for The Nutcracker performance this year.”
“What?” Laurie hadn't expected this turn of the conversation.
Oliver continued to slice his meat. “You make a lovely prince, and you can do the part in your sleep. And it would keep your mother happy for a few months at least.”
Laurie snorted. “No. It would only encourage her.” Then he frowned. “Wait. You don't have Prince Koklyush hired yet? The performance is in less than two months!”
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