Marcia Talley - Dead Man Dancing

We sat down together on the foot of the bed, in the dark, the light from the hallway just illuminating her face. ‘What am I going to do, Hannah?’

‘Do you want me to go out there and talk to him?’ Then thinking better of it, I added, ‘Or Paul? The Midshipmen say Paul can be pretty intimidating.’

If I hadn’t known Eva so well, I might even have questioned the existence of this shadowy man; yet there he was, just as Eva had described him. I couldn’t tell about his height, of course, but the body shape was right, and as he turned his head toward my father’s front door, light glanced off his glasses.

‘You need to call the police,’ I said.

‘That’s what the bishop told me when I sent him copies of Jeremy’s emails.’

‘Well?’

‘I said I had to think about it.’

‘Eva!’

‘The man thinks he’s in love with me, Hannah. I’m afraid of what he might do if they slap him with a restraining order.’

I was going to say that the man wasn’t likely to make a scene during a church service, what with all the congregation there as witnesses, and then I remembered that nut job who went postal at two churches out in Colorado. I took a deep breath. ‘You can’t be responsible for every troubled soul in the world, Eva!’

‘You sound like the bish. He reminded me that Jeremy Dunstan’s spiritual health doesn’t depend on me, and that I can’t help everybody.’

‘The bish is right.’

We sat in silence for a moment, until my father’s high, clear tenor sang down the hallway, ‘Suppertime, suppertime, suppertime, suppertime!’

I took Eva’s hand and pulled her to her feet. ‘C’mon. If Jeremy’s still out there when the party breaks up, we’ll call the cops. In the meantime, I believe your services will be required at the table, Rev Haberman.’

Although a lush Cabernet Sauvignon would have been nice with the penne rustica, Daddy had opened two bottles of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, and was walking around the table, filling wine glasses before taking his place at the head of the table opposite Neelie.

Before he could say anything, Alicia raised her glass. ‘Here’s to Melanie and Hutch, Shall We Dance? finalists!’ She turned to her left, where Tom sat next to Laurie. ‘And to Tom and Laurie! Three firsts! Deserving champions all.’

As we clinked glasses all around, I thought I heard Melanie mutter, ‘Some more deserving than others.’

I nudged Melanie gently with my elbow to get her attention. ‘I beg your pardon?’ I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly.

Melanie sipped her wine and smiled. ‘Oh, nothing. I was just talking to Chance.’

Daddy scowled at me and cleared his throat. ‘Eva. Will you say grace?’

It was our custom to hold hands around the table for grace. Daddy gathered up mine, I took Melanie’s. At the far end of the table, Paul winked at me, and I smiled as Eva blessed our food.

Give us grateful hearts, our Father, for all your mercies, and make us ever mindful of the needs of others. We ask you to bless those whom we love, now absent from us, and we especially remember your servant, Jay. Be present with him that his weakness may be banished and his strength restored, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

‘Amen to that,’ said my father, hardly pausing to take a second breath before spearing a shrimp with his fork.

All the time I was crunching my tomato bruschetta, I wondered about Melanie’s remark. Was she implying there was something wrong with Tom and Laurie’s win, some rule that they’d unwittingly broken that might disqualify them from competition? As I ate, I kept one eye on Melanie; with everyone talking at once, her eyes were getting a workout. I don’t know how she kept it sorted.

After the last morsel of tiramisu disappeared, I helped clear the table. I was rinsing the dishes and stacking them in the dishwasher when Chance came in to thank us for dinner, and say his goodbyes. Sensing an opportunity to ask him about Melanie’s remark, I followed him to the bedroom where we’d put the coats. ‘Say, Chance. What do you think Melanie meant at dinner when she said that some are more deserving than others?’

Chance slipped his arms into his jacket, and zipped up the front. He shrugged. ‘I think you’d better ask her.’

By the time we got out to the living room, though, I couldn’t find Melanie anywhere.

As I waved Chance out the front door, I noticed that Jeremy Dunstan’s Prius had disappeared from the street – thank goodness – but so had Melanie’s KIA. Sometime while I was doing the dishes, Melanie Fosher had slipped quietly away.

With help from Ruth, I managed to track Melanie down on her cell phone. Without saying why I wanted to chat, I arranged to meet her for lunch at Galway Bay, the Irish pub and restaurant around the corner from our house on Prince George street that had long-ago become the regular Ives family hang-out.

When Melanie arrived, the hostess, Peggy, seated us in an alcove just inside and to the left of the vestibule, handed us green, leather-bound menus, and took our order for iced tea with extra lemon.

‘Everything’s good here,’ I told Melanie as I opened my menu to check out the insert that described the daily specials. ‘I’m particularly fond of the salad Kinsale and the seafood pie, but don’t let that influence you.’

Melanie studied me over the top of her menu. ‘Thanks for inviting me. After all the excitement running up to Shall We Dance? it’s been a little too quiet around our apartment.’ She laid down her menu with a sigh. ‘Don isn’t due back from Iraq for another ten months. Sometimes I’m so lonely I want to scream.’

As the tables around us began to fill up – with dark-suited legislators from the Maryland State government, rumpled professors from St John’s College, and smartly uniformed naval officers from the Academy – she reminisced about the previous summer spent with her husband and his family on Martha’s Vineyard. Melanie, as it turns out, was an only child from Lawrence, Kansas, and she’d bonded at once with Don’s boisterous, fun-loving brothers and sisters, two of each.

The waitress made a timely arrival with our tea just then, and we both ordered the seafood pie with a side order of soda bread. ‘Paul’s never been away from home for more than two weeks,’ I said, slipping the paper wrapper off my straw. ‘I can’t imagine being separated for more than a year.’

‘I’ll have plenty to occupy my time once Hutch and I start preparing for the competition in New York, of course.’ Melanie paused to sip her tea before continuing. ‘I just hate to think of Don having to watch the program on television rather than in person, but what can you do?’

‘He must be busting the buttons clean off his uniform.’

She grinned. ‘I texted Don right away, and you should have seen all the smiley- and kissy-faces he sent back.’

Melanie was tapping the contents of a pink Sweet’n Low packet into her glass when a cell phone began to play ‘Anchors Aweigh’ at the adjoining table. A naval officer – from the stripes on his sleeves I knew he was a lieutenant commander – silenced the ring, apologized to his table-mates with a hasty ‘duty calls’, and rushed past us out of the restaurant.

‘Can’t even let the poor boy eat,’ I muttered, noticing the plate of half-eaten corned beef and cabbage the officer had left behind.

‘When duty calls, Hannah, we are obliged to go.’

I felt my face flush. If I’d hoped to distract Melanie from thoughts about her husband’s situation in Iraq I was failing miserably. Talking about Jay certainly wouldn’t lighten the mood, so I decided to steer the conversation back to the previous weekend’s triumphs. ‘I would have liked to see Tom and Laurie compete in DC,’ I said. ‘Laurie showed me one of her costumes, and it was simply gorgeous.’