Marcia Talley - Dead Man Dancing

I watched while Laurie stripped to her underwear – pink, lace-waist hipsters and a matching push-up bra. Under my sweater and jeans I wore Lollipop cotton briefs and a sports bra from Sears. I was glad I didn’t have to change in front of Laurie. Fashion-wise, it’d be embarrassing.

Laurie unzipped the bag and withdrew a ball gown, a frothy long-sleeved, high-necked peaches and cream confection slathered with Swarovski crystal beads. She stepped into it and raised an arm, ‘Zip please.’ After I obliged, she smoothed out the fabric, swaying from side to side while checking her reflection in the mirror.

‘That’s gorgeous,’ I said, admiring her reflection in the mirror, too, twinkling like ten thousand tiny stars. ‘Absolutely stunning.’

She turned around. ‘And check out the back.’

‘What back?’ I asked, laughing. Except for four narrow bands that formed a tentative connection between the neckband and each side of the dress, there was no back. The gown plunged nearly to her, um, tan line.

‘May I?’ I reached out to touch the fabric. First I lifted a sleeve, then a bit of the voluminous skirt. ‘How do you dance in this?’ I asked, goggle-eyed. ‘It weighs a ton!’

‘You get used to it,’ she said. ‘You should have seen the gown I wore last year for the Yuletide Ball Championships in Washington, DC Fire-engine red, but it weighed ten pounds. I felt like I was dragging a small child around the dance floor with me.’ She beamed. ‘Tom and I got firsts in tango and rumba, though, so who’s complaining?’

I watched while Laurie carefully stepped out of the gown, returned it to its protective covering and lovingly zipped the bag shut. When she finished, she waggled her fingers at me. ‘I’m trying out a new color. What do you think? She fanned her fingers and held them a little closer to my face. ‘This is called My Chihuahua Bites!’

‘Get out!’

‘No, seriously. OPI has the craziest names for their nail colors. I thought about Los Cabos Coral, but that was too match-y, if you know what I mean.’

I was familiar with OPI colors. I’d been painting my toes with Twenty Candles on My Cake for a couple of years, although the last time I got a pedicure, I considered a red called I’m Not Really a Waitress simply because the name intrigued me. ‘Well, whatever it’s called, I think it’s perfect with the gown.’

‘Thanks.’ Laurie’s cheeks turned the same peachy shade as her gown. ‘Tom thinks so, too.’

Laurie pulled a tube of lipstick out of her handbag. ‘Revlon Moondrops, Peach Silk,’ she announced, then leaned close to the mirror and began repairing her lips. She mashed her lips together, checked the results, and said, ‘The dress I had specially made. Cost the earth! This -’ she waved the tube and grinned – ‘I buy at the grocery store!’

Christmas had passed, so I wondered if the Yuletide Ball had, too. ‘Yuletide Ball, you said? Did you and Tom compete again this year?’

‘Yuletide’s not until December 28th, but we’re not doing it this year. Decided to wait until the Sweetheart International Ballroom Competition in February when we’ll really be prepared. We’re competing international standard advanced.’ When I looked puzzled, she went on to explain, ‘That’s the gold syllabus.’

I knew from hanging around J & K for more than a month that ballroom dancing competitions had a series of experience levels – bronze, silver, and gold – each with its own syllabus. When a couple got to the pre-championship level, there was no syllabus; presumably they just danced to their own razzle-dazzle choreography until their feet dropped off. If they did well at the Sweetheart Ball, taking away firsts in gold, Tom and Laurie would be advancing to the pre-championship level the next time they competed.

‘Which dances?’ I asked, knowing that there would be a separate charge to compete in each heat, so some couples decided to pick and choose.

‘All of them – waltz, foxtrot, tango, quickstep and Viennese. Tom and I are going for broke.’ Laurie chortled in a very unladylike way. ‘Shit, Hannah, by the time it’s all said and done, I’ll bet we’ll have dropped five grand.’

‘Five thousand dollars for a single dance competition?’ I couldn’t believe it. Paul and I’d spent less than that on a ten-day cruise to the western Caribbean. In a stateroom. With a balcony.

Laurie ticked them off on her fingers. ‘Costumes, shoes…’ She stuck out a foot on which she wore a bright red, vampy T-strap. ‘These babies cost $175! Jewelry, photographs, video taping. It never ends. And you have to pay for it all upfront.’

‘Golly.’

Laurie raised both hands, palm out. ‘Oh, let me show you something!’ She scrabbled around in her purse, and after a few seconds came up with a small plastic box. Inside the box, each nestled in its own semicircular slot, were false eyelashes. But not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill false eyelashes. Where these lush, fringy lashes attached to your eyelids there marched a single row of peach-colored rhinestones.

‘Just what I need for the office,’ I said, examining the lashes up closely.

‘Exactly!’ Laurie hooted. She tucked the box back into her purse. ‘Eight dollars, and they’re yours, in a color to coordinate with every outfit.’

‘Cheap at twice the price,’ I laughed.

Suddenly, Laurie cocked her head to one side. ‘Do you hear that?’

‘What?’ I stood quietly for a moment, but all I heard was the sound of the furnace kicking in. ‘I don’t hear anything.’

‘Exactly. That means ballet class is over and we’re soon to be overrun by munchkins in leotards. Eek! Gotta change.’

More quickly than I thought possible, Laurie slipped into her usual black and white practice outfit. She tucked her handbag into a locker, twirled the dial on the combination lock, stroked the plastic bag containing her gown and said, ‘I’m outa’ here.’

I followed Laurie into the studio where we found Alicia issuing final instructions to her students, lined up in a row before her like good little Radio City Music Hall Rockettes. ‘Next time we work on your ronds de jambe á terre !’ She clapped her hands together quickly three times. ‘Class dismissed!’

Chloe and her classmates broke formation as quickly as if a grenade had been thrown in their midst, streaming past me, giggling and screaming, on their way to the dressing room.

At the same instant, Jay emerged from the men’s dressing room and padded across the floor to his office in stocking feet, leaving a trail of white footprints behind. I was puzzling over this – talcum powder? – when I heard an exasperated sigh from behind me.

‘He always does that,’ Alicia moaned. ‘The man sweats like a stevedore.’

‘Other than sweaty feet, Jay strikes me as pretty fastidious,’ I said when Alicia returned with a janitor’s broom and began erasing the telltale powder marks from the floor.

‘Oh, he is,’ she said, furiously scrubbing. She stopped work for a moment and leaned on the broom handle. ‘Those eyebrows, for instance.’

I remembered the dark, lush, perfectly shaped brows he’d artfully arched and charmed me with.

‘He’s got a personal uni-brow prevention program,’ Alicia continued. ‘A Vietnamese gal down on Riva twirls a bit of string around her fingers – whish, whish, whish – goodbye hair. It’s called threading.’

‘Expensive?’ I wondered.

Alicia shrugged and continued sweeping. ‘Don’t know. Never tried it. Tweezers have always been good enough for me.’

Eventually Alicia disappeared with the broom, and while I waited for Chloe, I watched Tom and Laurie practice a Viennese waltz. As ‘ Que Sera Sera ’ played softly in the background, the pair whirled gaily around the floor, rising a little on the first beat, holding the second beat a little longer than the first so that they appeared to be floating, and then taking a quick step three, almost as if they were falling. And again, and again, and again, a whirl in black and white, with Laurie’s trademark red scarf floating behind her like a banner. I was entranced.