“They’ve changed the fais-do-do scene.”
“Fais-do-do?” Sally asks.
“It’s a Cajun dance party,” Ramon explains. “It’s the scene where Raven Blackwell catches up with the two demon shapeshifters who are after the sorcerer’s infant twins. She chases and attacks them in the middle of a dance hall.”
Moira rolls her eyes. “Well, now the studio wants Raven Blackwell to get swept up in a major dance number in the middle of her fight scene.”
My stomach hits the dirt.
“Nooo.” I draw out the word in hushed disbelief.
“That’s not—that wasn’t in the contract,” Ramon says, doing his level best to stay calm so I’ll stay calm.
“No-no-no-no.” I shake my head in time with each no.
Moira shakes her head at my shaking head. “Iris, you’re just going to have to do it. It’s—”
“Not in the contract,” I fire back. “There’s no mention at all of dancing in the contract.”
She shrugs. “There’s no mention of prohibition against dancing in the contract either, so I think they’ve—”
“You didn’t say yes, did you?”
“Well, of course, I did—”
“Moira, oh my God!” I’m going to choke to death on my own outrage. Right here. In this trailer. In Nowhere, Louisiana.
I can act. I can sing. I can play the guitar. I can hike in the woods for two weeks without a flushing toilet.
I cannot dance.
“Iris, it’s the first day. We can’t lead with your deficiencies on the first day.”
My deficiencies.
I ignore the tiny stab because why attend to this wound when there are so many others.
“Raven Blackwell cursed monsters and serpents for three years on network television, never once breaking into a tap routine,” I argue. “Why, why now would the studio want to add in a dance number? In the middle of a fight scene?”
Moira looks both smug and defensive, so I can’t really tell if she’s on my side or theirs. “They want to tip their hat at the Buffy musical episode.”
Critics and fans have drawn comparisons for years between Hexed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Honestly, that show was iconic. People are still falling in love with Buffy, Angel, and Spike on Netflix and Hulu twenty-something years later.
Yeah, I’m proud of my work on Hexed, but nobody’s going to be watching it twenty years from now.
Especially if I dance in this movie. Rotten Tomatoes will crucify me.
I shake my head. “That episode was in Buffy’s sixth season, when the show itself was slaying it. Every character had a number. It was bigger than big. They can’t think—”
Moira holds up a hand. “Stop saying they. Jonathan Reynolds, your director, wants this, so we need to make it happen.” Moira rolls her eyes. “Apparently, he’s a huge Joss Whedon fan, and he’s been dreaming of this new scene since the studio hired him. We have to give the man what he wants.”
“But Moi—”
“You do want the sequel, don’t you?”
Of course I want the sequel.
“If I dance, there won’t be a sequel. You know this.” After I say this, Sally closes the distance between us, standing by my side. It’s nice to have her here, even if she can’t do more than this. Just stand beside me as I’m bulldozed.
Moira inspects her manicure before waving her long nails at me. “I talked to the choreographer. The first one’s not so terrible. Even you can learn it. The ensemble has the most challenging parts.”
“The first one?” Panic rises. I grab Sally’s hand. She squeezes back. “There’s more than one?”
“Just two. The first one is a Cajun two-foot or two-feet thing, and the second one is a Cajun—” Moira wrinkles her nose and shakes her head. “Jug?”
“Jig?” Ramon offers, arching a haughty brow.
Moira gasps. “You know how to do it?”
My PA looks at her like she’s crazy. “No, but I’ve at least heard of it.”
Moira’s eyes become slits. “Well, that’s helpful,” she sneers. “Good thing I’ve hired a local dance instructor to work with her off-set.”
“It won’t help,” I mutter, sliding back into memories of Saturday mornings spent in barre class humiliation. “Maybe we could convince the studio to hire a double and splice in a few staged shots of me.”
“No.” Her expression and her tone are set in iron. “You’re getting private lessons four nights a week. Just you and this old Cajun man who sounds like he’s from that show Swamp People. I think he said his last name was Bear.” She ends smiling, looking so pleased with herself.
I groan. Ramon looks frightened. GIFs from Swamp People made up a significant portion of the alligator jokes prior to our arrival. I picture the sweaty, balding, pot-bellied men in their sleeveless camo shirts and shudder.
I do not want to dance with a swamp person.
I don’t want to dance with anyone. Because I’m terrible. Terrible. Music plays, and I seem to bend at every joint. Knees and elbows going every which way. And I’m supposed to start off from my right, but I start on the left, realize it’s supposed to be the right and then move right when I’m supposed to move left.
Every. Time.
I trip myself, and I trip other people.
For a moment, I contemplate pulling out of the cast. Sure, my career would be over, but I can survive on the AT. With Ramon’s help overseeing my finances, I could make my savings last for years if I just lived off trail mix and dried soup packets. I’d probably need to replace my hiking boots a couple times a year and get a new tent every now and then, but if I just kept hiking from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Katahdin in Maine and back again, I could live cheap.
I’d bring my dog Mica with me for company and protection. Sure, that would mean I’d have to carry dog food too, but maybe he’d get good at squirrel and rabbit hunting.
I’d watch the birds migrate. I’d track the leaf change. I’d own nothing but what could fit in my pack. No rent. No car note. No waxing appointments. I’d just let everything grow. Everywhere. I’d wind up looking—
Oh God. I’d wind up looking like a Swamp People woman.
I turn to Sally and say with urgency, “I don’t want to look like a Swamp People woman.” My voice is high and piano-wire tight.
Sally’s eyes go wide. “No, honey. Of course not. Want me to come with you?”
At first I think she means on the AT. I’d take the company and the better odds against bears and sex offenders, but, let’s face it, we wouldn’t be waxing each other’s legs, pits, and bits in the woods, so we’d both end up looking like Swamp People women before too long.
But then Ramon grabs each of our free hands, closing our little circle. “We’ll both come with you.” He gives my hand a squeeze. “You’ll dance with Mr. Bear, and we’ll dance with each other, and we’ll make sure he doesn’t claim you for his swamp bride.” He finishes by locking eyes with Sally, and they smile at each other like they’re the only ones in this stinking trailer.
Chapter Four
BEAU
“What are you up to?” Nonc’s voice rasps over the phone.
“The usual,” I say, pushing myself away from my dining table/office space and standing to stretch. I reach my free hand toward the ceiling of my tiny house, grateful that the only place I can actually touch it is from the sleeping loft. “Grading.”
My uncle chuckles. “Finals?”
“Yeah, two classes down. Two more tomorrow, and the last two Wednesday.”
“Then summer break?”
“Then summer break—after I input all my grades, clean out my classroom, and turn in my textbooks.”
“You got time this week to help me out a little?”
Now it’s my turn to chuckle. “You mean more than I already do?”
Aside from the two classes I teach at the studio, I’m around a lot when classes aren’t in session, fixing a sticking door, smoothing out a rough board on
the floor, or re-hanging a barre. Mom and Nonc bought the downtown property more than twenty years ago, and even then the gutted Arts and Crafts house was already a century old. Its bones are solid, but any structure that old needs steady repairs.
He huffs. “You got something better to do with your time?” he teases. “Got a girl I don’t know about?”
I dodge the last question in favor of the first. “I’ve got Festival International planning meetings, French Club summer volunteer coordinating, and drafting the itinerary for next year’s French exchange trip.”
“So much for summer break,” he grumbles.
He’s made my point for me, so I give in. “What’d’ya need, Nonc?”
My uncle snorts. “I got a new private lesson client. Kind of a special case.”
“Yeah?” I sit back down to my grading, knowing this won’t take long. People take private dance lessons all the time. For weddings. Reunions. Mardi Gras balls.
“I can’t really talk about it, but could you cover my Latin class tomorrow night?”
I sit back, my brows drawing together. “What do you mean, you can’t talk about it?”
His low laughter rumbles over the line. “I figured that’d get your attention,” he mutters, sounding amused. “It’s an actress. She’s making a movie here in town, and she needs to learn some Cajun dances.”
I roll my eyes. “Another Lifetime movie?” Since Louisiana did away with state taxes for filmmakers, we’ve become a sort of satellite Hollywood. For the last few years, Lifetime Network has filmed a handful of Christmas romance specials in Lafayette and New Iberia. Whenever they air, everyone in Acadiana tunes in to catch a glimpse of local landmarks and friends who snagged parts as extras.
Including some of my students. It was all they wanted to talk about last December.
Nonc hums with uncertainty. “I can’t tell you who’s makin’ the movie. Or who hired me.”
“Wait. What?”
“I signed a non-disclosure agreement.”
My eyes bug. “You signed an NDA? Are you serious? It must be somebody big.”
He chuckles again. “Tell you the truth, I never heard of her.”
I scoff. “As if you’d know. When was the last time you went to the movies?”
“That’s easy,” he says. “Took your mother to see Mamma Mia 2… what? Summer before last? She loved it.”
“Then I can assume your mystery client wasn’t in Mamma Mia 2.”
This cracks him up. “Pretty sure she wasn’t. I wouldn’t say musicals are her thing.”
“So you’ve met her already?”
He grunts. “Worked with her last week. And yesterday. She’s… uh… got a lot to learn.”
I frown. “You worked with her yesterday? But you’re closed on Mondays.”
“Usually,” he says, and that’s all he says. My wheels start turning.
“How much is she—or whoever—paying you?”
Nonc clears his throat. “Let’s just say it’s enough to entice me to go in on my day off.”
“So what do you need me for?”
He sighs. “Like I said, she’s a beginner… and then some,” he mutters under his breath. “I wasn’t planning on meeting with her tomorrow, but her manager wants her to come, and the only time she’s got is during Latin class. Can you cover that for me while I work with her?”
I’ll have fifty-two finals to grade tomorrow night, but Latin class is only an hour. Hell, maybe I could even live it up a little and grade papers at Reve Coffee Roasters beforehand.
“I need to get a life.” I don’t mean to say it out loud, but I must because Nonc responds.
“Yeah, son, you do.” Concern edges his voice. “When was the last time you did anything that wasn’t for me or your mother or work—and I’m counting all of your francophone volunteer endeavors as work.”
“You can’t count those as work, Nonc.”
“Why not?”
I think about my monthly meetings with the Festival International board and the Cajun Table events I try to attend each week.
“Well, first of all, I don’t get paid for them.” I think about the Cajun Table dinners where I sit and share meals—and drinks—with people who aim to keep Cajun French alive by speaking it together. “In fact, they eat up a lot of what little spending money I have—”
He laughs at this.
“And if you take those away, then my social life looks pretty pathetic.”
Nonc clears his throat. “Beauchamp Alexander Landry, you are a twenty-seven-year-old who spends his days like a seventy-seven year old. You live alone in a tiny house on two hundred acres of Cajun prairie like some kind of hermit. Your free time is spent with your ailing mother and your divorced uncle. And your quote-unquote social life consists of you booking music and dance acts for an annual festival that you can’t even properly enjoy because you are busting your tail to make everything go smoothly for those five days.”
I hear him take a breath, but I don’t bother interrupting him because he’s on a roll, and butting in won’t do me any good. It’ll just make the lecture take longer.
“Unless you’re keeping secrets, you haven’t been on a date since Rebecca decided to go play Beauty & The Beast on a Disney cruise ship, and that was almost a year ago, so I don’t mind telling you I’m beginning to worry.”
I scoff. “About what?”
He scoffs back. “About nothing ever changing for you, and before you know it, you will be seventy-seven, drinking your coffee alone on that tiny front porch, staring at that borrowed view of yours.”
I turn my eyes to the strip of window that spans one side of my tiny house. He’s right. The view is borrowed. Sort of. The land belongs to my boss Paula’s family. Her father was a crawfish farmer. When he passed a couple of years ago, Paula and her sister weren’t ready to sell the land, so they’ve leased the ponds to a neighbor. I see the neighbor and his sons out on the water nearly every day during the spring. After I finished building my tiny house two years ago, Paula and her sister let me homestead on the property in exchange for mowing, fence-mending, and general upkeep.
Outside my window, dusk is falling in a golden light on clover and dandelions, barbed wire fencing and cypress posts, an empty barn and work shed. The sight is beautiful. Peaceful.
Like I said, I don’t have much, but I don’t need much.
“There are worse views, Nonc,” I tell him honestly. “Borrowed or not.”
“Hell, I don’t care that it’s borrowed,” he gusts over the phone. “It’s the thought of you sittin’ in front of it alone for the next fifty years that worries me.”
Other than Mom, and his ex-wife Lorraine, Nonc doesn’t have too many people to worry about, and since pointing that out just seems mean, I let the comment go.
“I’ll help you out with the class.”
“Good. Thank you.” I can hear him smile over the phone. “And even though I can’t tell you who my client is, there’s nothing stopping you from takin’ a peek in the parlor.”
I chuckle. “I’m good, Nonc.”
“Well, you haven’t seen her,” he says with authority. “Prettiest thing to grace that parlor in a long while.”
In the old house that is La Fête, Nonc and Mom established two dance classrooms. The parlor was once just that. The room just off the foyer is where the original owners used to receive their guests. It works for small classes and private lessons. Behind the parlor, in what used to be the home’s formal dining room, Mom set up a changing room for her ballerinas. It still has lockers and hooks that students can use if they need, but since Mom got sick and Rebecca left, we don’t offer ballet classes anymore.
Tomorrow night, I’ll be teaching in what we call the ballroom. It used to make up the master suite and another bedroom. Our largest classes meet there, and it’s right across the hall from the parlor.
“If your client is worried about her privacy, you’d better lock the parlor doors,” I tell him. “Your Latin class isn’t
small, and a few of those ladies are only there to dance with you, you know.”
This is no lie. My uncle, despite his downy white head and goatee, is a good-looking, single, older man who can dance. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that women of a certain age make up a healthy portion of La Fête's clientele.
His deep laugh rolls through the phone. “I don’t think they’ll go looking for me if you’re there, kid,” he teases, “but if you’re worried about the starlet, don’t. The doors to the parlor stay closed, and they park in the back and come through the kitchen.”
I can’t help myself. “They?”
“Oh, she’s got quite the entourage,” he says dryly. “For the first lesson, four people showed up. The actress, her manager—who’s a real piece of work—this guy who looks like a model—at first I thought he was her co-star, but I think he’s her bodyguard or something—and this little gal who just seemed to be hangin’ around.”
“Oh God,” I groan. Over the years, I’ve worked with enough musical acts for Festival International to know that some celebrities are impossible to deal with. “She needed three people to come with her for a dance lesson?”
“For what they are paying, she could’ve brought a dozen.” He sighs. “And honestly, I’m glad the bodyguard and the other young one came. They picked up on the lessons right away, and it made it a little easier to show Ir—I—I mean the actress, how the steps were supposed to look.”
I laugh at his near slip up. “You better watch out, old man. She’ll be able to sue you for all your worth if you’re not careful.”
“Good thing I’m not worth much, huh?” He quips but then quickly sobers. “But you’re right. I don’t want to jeopardize your inheritance.”
Damn. I didn’t mean to go here.
The dance studio property is prime. Downtown has seen a major revitalization in the last few years, and I know my uncle has had offers to sell. But the studio is his to do with as he wants. Before Mom transferred over her POA to me and Val, she signed over her part of the studio’s deed to him, trusting him alone to keep their life’s dream going. And understanding the state of her finances, I think she didn’t want him to feel pressured to sell and divide the proceeds before he was ready to retire.
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