Dance With Me

by Heidi Cullinan

  “They can't all be like that,” Laurie insisted.

  “No, they're not. But I can't know which will be like that and which won't. No one gives away anything for free, Laurie. Everyone always has an agenda. I don't want any agendas here that aren't set by the board.”

  “Let me ask my mother,” Laurie said. “She knows a lot of people. And they really do give their money away. Sometimes just for the tax write-off. Sometimes because they just care about kids. You might have to put a plaque over a door at best.”

  Vicky shook her head. “I can't do that.”

  “But why not? You asked me when I came in the door if I had fifty thousand dollars. I actually might be able to get it to you! And more!”

  “It's not just me. The whole Halcyon board feels this way. They'd rather take city funding and grants they handpick. And until now, that's worked fine. Normally we'd solve this with a fundraiser. But the last few have been bad. And this time we need three times as much money—fast—and that's just the beginning.”

  “So...you mean it's just over? Like that?” Laurie gestured at the walls. “But it's always so busy in here! There are never any spare rooms! If it's not a Lamaze class, it's an AA meeting or a Moms Off Meth or Parents as Teachers.” He pointed to the hallway. “And now your kids are telling me they want dance classes. There's a need for this place! You have to fight, Vic.”

  Now she glared at him. “I'm going to fight, damn it. But it's going to be a lousy Christmas.” Her look softened, turning sad. “I'm going to have to let people go. A lot of people.” She leaned back in her chair, and they sat in silence for a few minutes, cloaked in doom. Eventually she looked up at him, forcing cheerfulness. “Anyway. You just caught me at the onset of bad news. I'm sure I'll figure it out. What did you need, hon?”

  Laurie, still letting his mind race for solutions for the center which he couldn't find, took another moment to respond. “Ed...isn't well. I'm taking care of him. I might be okay for Thursday, but he won't be. Maybe for a while. I don't know.”

  “Is he sick?” Vicky asked, concerned.

  “His neck is really bothering him,” Laurie replied. “It...I don't really know why. His mom said it was something about cleaning his apartment.”

  Vicky's eyes went wide. “Ed cleaned his apartment?” She whistled low. “He really did fall for you, didn't he?”

  Laurie tried to take heart in that comment, but he remembered the Ed he had left and couldn't quite manage it. “He's in some sort of depressive funk.”

  “He's been in a depressive funk ever since they told him he couldn't play football. He just hid it underneath a smile and his sudden zeal to work here. That and in the three feet of garbage in his apartment.” She gave Laurie a careful look. “He cleaned his whole apartment?”

  “It looks very nice,” Laurie said defensively.

  “If you want it to stay that way, I suggest you hire him a cleaning service. Or move in and do it yourself.” Then she sighed. “I've been hoping I could hire him to work here full-time. He's so good with the kids. But that dream's gone now.” She shoved her hands into her hair and closed her eyes again. “I'm going to try. I'm going to do whatever I can think of to save the center, but I'm probably just being a fool. Nobody's going to help a bunch of ‘loser kids’ from the east side. Not ‘in this economy.'” Her fists left her hair, and one of them came down like an anvil on the top of her desk. “I am so fucking sick of hearing that. Nobody was in here waving checks at me or letting us in on tax increases—of which there have hardly been any, not for programs like this, just cuts right along with any other government program—when times were ‘good,’ They were still bitching, making excuses for why they didn't have to care about these kids. Now they take away what little they have. Goddamn it, but I wish I were one of those fucking millionaires in the fucking ‘burbs sitting on a pile of cash. I wouldn't even blink. I'd just throw it right into this place, every goddamn penny, and I'd live in my fucking office.”

  Laurie, the son of one of those “fucking millionaires in the fucking ‘burbs,” said nothing for several minutes. Finally, he spoke.

  “What if I came in and did classes more often?” he said. “Not just aerobics. Dance too. Kids, older people, everything. That would bring in some more money, right?”

  “But you told me you had a full schedule at your own academy. You said Thursday was the only night that worked for you.”

  “I can give some of that to another instructor. And my Tuesday night class is over. That's one night free already.”

  Vicky shook her head. “It's nice of you to offer, but it won't generate enough money. That aerobics class works because it's something people think they need. Dance classes are a luxury people in this neighborhood can't afford.”

  “Then we'll bring in people from outside the area,” Laurie said. When Vicky raised an eyebrow at him, he raised both of his at her. “You don't think I can bring them in? I'll show you the wait list for my classes. They'll drive across the Cities to come to me.”

  “And they won't mind coming into a ‘bad neighborhood’ to take them?”

  “Oh, they'll mind. But they'll still come.”

  Vicky looked very dubious. “Let me get this straight. You're volunteering to give up classes that make you money in your established institution and do them here, probably with less than ideal surroundings, and give me the money?”

  Put like that, it sounded suddenly stupid even to Laurie's ears. But he thought of Duon in the hallway, looking at him with hungry eyes as he asked why Laurie didn't teach them how to dance. He cleared his throat.

  “I'll give the center the money, yes. And I want local kids to be able to come for free. Or, if you think they'll find that insulting, have it be a graduated fee. Or tell them they're working it off by cleaning the bathrooms or something, since you'll probably have to let go of the janitors.”

  Vicky looked intrigued, but she was still wary. “Why are you doing this, Laurie?”

  Laurie shrugged and looked down at his hands. “I told you before. I like it here. And because I want to help.” He glanced back up at her. “Please, let me dig around a bit and see if I can find you some local funding that might be palatable. Can I at least try? Please?”

  Vicky looked very dubious. “I appreciate it—I really, really appreciate it—but it's not going to work.”

  “Can I at least do the dance class?” Laurie asked.

  Vicky shrugged. “I suppose. You said Tuesday nights? What time?”

  “Eight,” Laurie suggested.

  She scribbled a note on a pad beside her desk. “I'll do what I can about a room and get in touch with you.”

  “We can work anywhere,” Laurie assured her. “And if you need another night, let me know and I'll work it out.”

  “I'll call you,” Vicky said and looked down at her paperwork. Laurie was being dismissed.

  Laurie ducked out of her office, his heart beating very fast inside his chest. He felt excited and anxious and even a little fearful—fearful that Vicky wouldn't let it happen. The thought made him stop walking and stare at the wall.

  Why, he wondered, did he want to do this so badly? Vicky was right: it was like holding a hurricane off with an umbrella. And yet, all he could think about was running out to the beach to get wet.

  He thought he saw Duon's shadow down the hall, but Vicky came out after him, thanking him again as she headed for the women's restroom, and the shadow was quickly gone.

  The worst part for Ed when his neck flared up wasn't the pain. It was that sitting still all the goddamned time so he could heal gave him too much opportunity to think about what the pain might mean.

  It was like all the fear got buried in some weird subbasement inside him when things were good, because until the pain hit, he honestly thought he was okay. People would say, “How are you doing?” in that worried, head-tilt way, and he'd smile and say, “Great,” and he would mean it. But when the pain came back, he knew he hadn't ever been okay. He'd built his
whole sense of well-being on the top of that basement door, and for some reason, the pain always broke the lock. Then it just swamped him, and he had all the misery, all at once. And it didn't just make him depressed; it turned all the “good times” to ash too, because now he knew he'd just been faking it, faking so hard he'd faked himself into believing his own bullshit. Because when the pain came back, he knew, he just knew that everything was going to fuck up, that everything he loved was going to go away because of this, and the unfairness and the despair of it tore at him until he felt like all his arteries had opened inside and were bleeding him out behind his skin, sucking him drop by drop into that black hole the pain made.

  He'd told his mom that once, and she'd said he was being dramatic, so he'd never said it again. But that was what it felt like. The pain was so sharp sometimes it made him crazy. As it radiated up his neck and into his head, sometimes he had to tell himself repeatedly that banging his head against the wall wouldn't help, because the urge was so strong. That or his fist. Something, anything, some different pain. A pain that didn't suck at his teeth or run like icy fire through the veins at the back of his head or down his shoulder. It felt like hell.

  He knew too that part of the problem was that except for the glazed look in his eye, he looked fine. If you did an MRI of his neck, he'd look like fucking Frankenstein, but on the outside, it all looked okay. And mostly he was. It was just that he was...fragile. So fucking fragile that cleaning out his apartment and making love to his boyfriend and sitting at a fucking desk did him in. And it was getting worse. It hadn't happened for two months now, but this was as bad as the night it had happened, for pain. All from moving boxes and making love.

  Was this what his life was going to be like? Was he going to have to stand there and let somebody else do everything for him from now on? As he stood there, six foot three, built for muscle but unable to lift a box?

  Of course, if the doctor had his way, he wouldn't lift weights either.

  Fuck that.

  But it was hard to keep up his rage and determination as he lay there all day, staring at the television without really seeing it, leaning back on the ice pack he now had permanently propped against the back of his neck. Was it the weights? He was always so careful. That was the point of weight lifting: you had to be exact. You had to think about your form, and you couldn't be sloppy. And Ed was. Always! And he'd done it because he thought that was the way to keep himself in shape.

  “It's not that simple,” Tim, his physical therapist, had told him on Thursday morning. “It's not that you shouldn't do weights or shouldn't do anything. It's that it's easier for you to injure yourself now. We've gone over this, Ed. This isn't something you're going to shake. This is who you are now. This injury is yours. It's you.”

  “I don't want it,” Ed had snapped as he yanked hard on the exercise band. Then he swore as pain ratcheted down his spine.

  Tim put his hand on the band and looked Ed in the eye. “You could be dead, Ed. The way those guys landed on you could have killed you.”

  “I know!” Ed shot back, practically growling, but the therapist was relentless.

  “No, you don't seem to get it. You are lucky to be alive. You are lucky you can walk at all. You're lucky that all you have is a neck that gets angry at you when you treat it badly. We could be sitting at a table trying to teach you how to grab a pencil again, not making sure you remember how to do rows exactly right.”

  “But what for?” Ed threw the band on the ground. “What the hell am I doing this for, if I can't lift weights, can't work my desk job, can't clean my fucking place—what the fuck am I supposed to do, once I learn how to pull your fucking rubber band?”

  The little old ladies on the Nu-Step machines gasped and gave Ed scolding looks. He didn't care.

  Tim didn't either. He just looked at Ed with the patience of Job and a will of iron. “I'm sensing it's time to review your pain goals.” He paused, then feigned surprise. “Oh. That's right. You haven't made any pain goals. Not ever. I've been waiting over a year for your pain goals, in fact.”

  Ed glared at Tim until he couldn't take it anymore. Then he stared at the wooden board full of pegs, one of which his green exercise band was tied to. “Give me my damn band so I can finish my set.”

  And that was the way it went. He'd ride this out like he'd ridden the other times the pain had flared up, trying not to think about how it happened faster every time, about how recovery took longer, dodging therapists and doctors and family and wondering if this was going to be the time they fired him from work. At least now Tracy had her doctor's note. That was something, he supposed.

  He'd never had a boyfriend during a pain cycle before, though. Hell, he'd never had a boyfriend like Laurie ever, period. Ed hadn't ever really had a boyfriend proper, in fact. He'd dated guys a couple of times, but they'd never felt like Laurie felt. Before the pain at least. Right now it just seemed like too much work to be with him. The doctor had said no sex, which was a relief. Ed was scared to do it now. Scared to try. What if it happened again? What if it was the sex? What if, when he did anything beyond a quick hello-and-good-bye fuck every few weeks, this was what would happen?

  Ed had felt like shit before he'd gone to his PT appointment, but he felt like complete hell now. He let his mother drive him back to his apartment to watch more TV until Laurie came by to hover awkwardly again.

  He tried really hard not to think about what the odds were a boyfriend like Laurie, official for one week, would be the boyfriend of a cranky, moody head case for very long.

  Two weeks before Christmas, Laurie met Oliver for lunch.

  The idea had popped into his head during a planning meeting with Maggie, and he'd excused himself from his noon classes and headed to downtown Minneapolis, hoping he would catch Oliver in his office. He did.

  “Laurence! What a lovely surprise,” Oliver said in greeting. “You're just catching me between meetings. What can I do for you?”

  “I wanted to know if I could take you to lunch,” he said, trying to look less awkward than he felt. “I need to ask your advice on something.”

  “Certainly!” Oliver sounded pleased. “I'm free at twelve thirty. Can you wait that long?”

  It would mean he would have to bail on the two o'clock class he taught with a junior teacher. “Sure.”

  “Excellent. Have a seat out in reception and tell Bobby to get you anything you need.” He winked at Laurie. “Feel free to ask him for a tour of the storeroom too.”

  Turning quickly to hide his blush, Laurie ducked out of the office and went to reception, where, after calling to arrange for someone to cover his class, he allowed the flirtatious and modelesque Bobby the assistant to get him nothing more than a cup of coffee. He checked his phone a few times for messages from Ed, debated calling him to say hello, then decided it would just be better to stop by tonight like always. But thinking of Ed made him worry, and by the time Oliver came out, he was feeling more than a little gloomy.

  “What is it you wanted to talk about?” Oliver asked him as they rode down the elevator. “You look upset. Did something happen with your football boyfriend?”

  “He had an injury flare-up,” Laurie said, and before he knew it Ed's entire story was tumbling out, and then he told Oliver how he'd gotten the call from Annette, how bad Ed looked, and then he told Oliver his worries about how distant Ed was getting.

  “He's due to go back to work next week, so I suppose that's a good thing. But he's gone so quiet. I can't tell if I should stay or go most of the time. I feel like an idiot.” He stopped at the bumper of Oliver's sleek Mercedes and grimaced. “I feel like an idiot now. I didn't meet you to talk about all this.”

  He expected Oliver to chide him and tease him about having a boyfriend or something, but Oliver didn't even smile, just stopped beside Laurie, looking grave.

  “Is he talking to anyone? His mother? One of his doctors? A therapist?”

  “I don't know,” Laurie confessed. “Not his mother,
I know that.” He considered a minute. “I doubt he says much to anyone. I think he's angry. Not at me, I'm almost sure of it. He apologizes a lot that I have to deal with him. I never know what to say to that.”

  Oliver's grim expression didn't change. “Have the two of you gone out at all, or is it just you stopping by?”

  “Well...no. I mean, I bring dinner, usually, or I cook something. I clean up a little, but he gets upset if I do too much. Usually we sit and watch television.”

  “Sex?”

  Oh, he should have seen this coming. “Ah. Well, the doctor said he had to hold off at first.” Laurie averted his eyes. “I never heard that he got permission back. He said two weeks, but it's been longer. I don't know if that got extended or what.”

  He waited for a lecture, but Oliver just sighed. “Get in. I'm hungry.”

  They drove in relative silence, Oliver doing nothing more than making random commentary about handsome men he spied on the street.

  “We brought home this delightful young man the other day for a third,” he said as they drove. “Very vigorous. Made me think of you and your football player.”

  “I don't think Ed is up for duo, let alone a trio,” Laurie replied. But the comment made him wonder if Ed was into that sort of thing. He'd always found it distasteful before, and he wasn't sure about it now. But maybe he should reconsider?

  God, he was losing his mind.

  “No, likely not,” Oliver agreed. “But what I meant is that it's amazing what sex can do for you. I was all upset that night about something at the office, and the next thing I knew, Christopher was showing me Grindr profiles. I thought he was joking, but he wasn't. It ended up being delightful. We had fantastic sex, the three of us, and the next morning I was late to a meeting reminding Christopher how very, very much I adore his body. And I didn't care at all about that idiot in charge of the account.” He winked at Laurie's blush. “Sex can heal a lot of things, Laurie. That's all I'm saying.”