Marcia Talley - Dead Man Dancing

‘But isn’t this Jeremy guy -’ I patted the printout with my hand – ‘I mean, doesn’t he live here?’

‘He does. That’s why I went to see Hutch. I can’t hide out in the mountains forever, so if Jeremy Dunstan finds out I’m back in Annapolis, decides to come mooning after me like a lovesick schoolboy, and can’t be made to see reason, I figure I’ll need a restraining order.’

‘Maybe it won’t come to that.’ I had a wicked thought. ‘Maybe Jeremy was so despondent that he walked out of the Sawtooth Hotel, wandered into the snow-covered hills, only to be set upon and devoured by wolves.’

Eva forced a smile. ‘Or, maybe he’s sitting in a car outside Regina’s and, even as we speak, watching us through binoculars.’

‘I prefer my scenario.’

Eva and I ate in silence for a while. After I had polished off the last of my crab melt, I said, ‘Hutch mentioned that you’re staying with the assistant pastor of St Anne’s.’

Eva nodded. ‘Temporarily, until I can move back into the parsonage.’

‘Eva, if you need a place, you can always stay with us. It’s just Paul and me now, rattling around in that big old house on Prince George Street.’

Eva reached across the table and squeezed my hand. ‘Thanks, Hannah. I’ll bear that in mind.’

‘You can’t beat the rent,’ I added. ‘Free.’

‘Hannah, I love you, but, no.’

When Eva left Annapolis four months ago, it’d been in humiliation. ‘I’ve failed myself, my husband, and my church,’ she’d told me as I helped pack up her things, ‘But most painfully of all, I’ve failed my God.’

As I squeezed her hand back, I thought, sometimes, even with God’s help, it takes a long time to heal.

Unlike Eva, I’d never had a stalker. But Sister Ruth was starting to qualify. Before dance lessons entered our lives, we’d gotten together maybe once a week. Since getting bitten by the ballroom bug, however, Ruth stopped by almost every day, begging me to sign up for extra lessons; I hadn’t seen so much of her since my chemotherapy days when she moved in for a month, whipping up tempting dishes, urging me to eat, when all I wanted was to curl up in a ball and die. When I wasn’t quietly barfing, that is.

So I felt bad about saying no.

One sunny afternoon, she showed up on my doorstep with a DVD: J & K’s Ballroom Basics ($50, tax included). ‘Hutch is tied up in court,’ she explained, as she slotted the DVD into the player. Apparently our forty-two inch plasma screen was better suited to the task than the sixty-inch behemoth in the home entertainment center in the house Hutch shared with my sister on Southgate Avenue, but far be it from me to say so. Ruth looked so determined, that I didn’t even complain when she bent down and rolled up my oriental rug.

I drew the line at actually dancing with my sister. ‘I will not dance lead,’ I told her firmly. ‘I have a hard enough time learning my own part.’

Ruth frowned, then scurried off to the kitchen, returning with a mop in one hand and a broom in the other. ‘Lay the handle across your shoulders,’ she instructed, handing me the broom, ‘and drape your arms over it.’ She did the same with the mop, and we practiced side-by-side for a while like demented scarecrows. ‘It strengthens your core,’ Ruth explained, although it seemed more like a medieval form of torture to me, an exercise (like balancing a stack of books on one’s head) designed to force wicked children to stand up straight. Dancing a rumba with a broomstick across my shoulders – one, two, three, four and one, two, three, four and spot turn left and right – well, I felt insane. I had a couple of curious neighbors, and I hoped none of them happened to choose that moment to glance in through the window, proving the point.

‘Core or no core, I feel like a damn fool,’ I complained.

‘Persistent practice of postural principles promises perfection,’ Ruth chanted.

‘Who says?

‘Hutch says.’

Easy for him to say.

I turned toward Ruth so she could see me when I stuck out my tongue. In the process, the end of the broomstick swept a high school photograph of Emily off a bookshelf and on to the floor, smashing the glass and scattering shards every which way over my hardwood floor.

‘About those extra lessons,’ I said, as I set the picture back on the shelf, lowered the broomstick, and applied its business end to the shards of glass. ‘Maybe we can manage one. How much?’

Ruth paused mid-spot turn right and said, ‘One hundred dollars.’

‘That’s $1.66 a minute,’ I said, calculating quickly. ‘But cheaper than repairing the damage to my house.’

‘Oh, thank you, Hannah!’

Damn Ruth. Once again, she’d gotten her way.

I’d learned how to waltz, foxtrot and tango before I first clapped eyes on Jay. He’d been out of town on business, according to Chance, the dishy dance instructor, who also passed on the information that Jay was looking into opening up J & K franchises nationwide. ‘He wants to play with the big boys,’ Chance told us when Paul, Ruth and I showed up for our supplementary lesson. ‘You know, Arthur Murray and Fred Astaire.’

‘Aren’t they dead?’ wondered Paul aloud.

Chance nodded, grinning. ‘Ages ago, but their franchises live on. Ballroom is mega big right now. Jay hired a bunch of consultants who tell him to strike while the iron is hot, so he’s figuring on tap dancing all over those old fogies, pumping some new blood and new ideas into the industry.’

Riding high on that stream of clichés, Chance excused himself to cue up the music. Once it began, Ruth tangoed off with Chance, and Paul and I were practicing our progressive side step – quick, quick, slow – when a man slipped through the sliding glass doors leading from the office on to the dance floor – Jay. I recognized him from the photo on the cover of the DVD. As he headed in our direction I stumbled, and tromped all over Paul’s toes.

I don’t know what I expected the man to look like. Taller than Kay, certainly – he was at least 6' 2'' to her 5' 8'' – and supernaturally slender, of course.

But, Jay was all that, and more. Where Kay had the fair, pink skin of a porcelain doll, Jay looked like he’d just spent a month investigating franchise opportunities on a beach in Cozumel. The man was beautiful, evenly bronzed, his dark hair slicked back into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck. The quintessential Latin lover, from the dark brows, arching quizzically over eyes of liquid chocolate, all the way down to the tips of his black, highly polished dancing shoes.

Until he opened his mouth. ‘Ahm pleased to meet chew,’ he drawled after we introduced ourselves.

Hispanic heritage, I decided, but raised in one of the border states. Texas, maybe, although I couldn’t imagine how he’d ended up with an Italian name like Giannotti.

I extended my hand, and Jay shook it firmly. His full lips parted in a smile, revealing straight, impossibly white teeth. After a moment, he turned that smile full-throttle on my sister. ‘And you must be Ruth. Kay’s been telling me about you.’ As Jay squeezed Ruth’s hand, he glanced around the studio. ‘I don’t suppose your fiancé is here? There’s something I’d like to discuss with the two of you.’

Ruth reclaimed her hand. ‘Oh? Can you tell me?’

‘It concerns both of you. Is he coming tonight, then?’

‘Now you are arousing my curiosity,’ Ruth purred. She stared at Jay, a sly smile on her lips, as she took in (who could help it?) his open-neck poet’s shirt and slim, belt-less black pants.

Arousing. Exactly the right word, sister.

Jay turned to us. ‘Are you enjoying the lessons, then?’