John Lutz - Dancing with the Dead

She sat straight up as if yanked by a string. “Jake, goddamn you!”

He wheeled, startled. “Whew!” His shoulders drooped as his hulking form relaxed. She couldn’t see his face in the shadows. He made a half-joking grab at his heart, fingers splayed across his bare chest. “You scared holy shit outa me, Mary.”

“What’re you doing here, Jake?”

“Doing? Well, I forgot some stuff yesterday, and I figured I’d come get it, but the lights were all out and I knew you’d already gone to bed. Then I said to myself, what the hell, Jake, whyn’t you just let yourself in with your key and look around. But I couldn’t find what I left, so I thought, well, hell, no point waking Mary up, I’ll just sack out here and ask her in the morning if she knows where my stuff’s at.”

“A pair of socks?” Mary said with disbelief. “You came back for a dirty pair of socks?”

He laughed. “Them? Hell, no. It’s my wallet I can’t find. It’s gotta be here, though. Probably in this room. You wouldn’t want me to turn on the light so’s I can search for it, would you?”

“I’ll look for it in the morning, Jake. I’ll call you if it’s here, which I doubt. I wanna go back to sleep. Now go home.”

“Mary!..”

“Go home, Jake! Please!”

He walked over to the bed, wearing only his socks and jockey shorts. “Mary, lemme be totally honest. I miss you like crazy and I don’t wanna be alone tonight. You don’t wanna be all alone either. I know it.”

She tried to will him away, but he kept coming and sat on the edge of the bed. The springs groaned and the mattress gave, tilting her toward him. She didn’t want to slide in his direction, so she dug her fingertips into the softness of the bed.

Gently, he touched her hair, stroked it. “Ah, Christ, I’m lonely. I miss you so damned much. You miss me at all? The truth, now, Mary, okay?”

He sounded like a schoolboy playing a guessing game.

When she wouldn’t answer, he said, “Mary? Babe?” Then he stopped stroking and sat very still. He bowed his head as if in church.

Something shifted in her, some rigid structure beginning to crack. He’d know it somehow; he’d be able to sense the weakness in her. She resisted. “Jake, dammit. Go! Please! You got no right to do this! No damned right!”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t claim any kinda rights where you’re concerned. Wouldn’t force you into nothing you were dead-set against.” But he didn’t budge.

“Oh God, Jake, what is it you want?”

“Not sex.”

“I know that.” And somehow she did.

“I wanna lay down next to you is all. So I feel home. So the need and emptiness goes away and I can live through till morning. Don’t you ever feel that way? Like you’re all hollow inside except for something pulling you in on yourself, like one of those black holes in space that’ll suck anything into nothingness.”

In the faint light filtering through the curtains, she was astounded to see tears gleaming on his cheeks. The agony written on his face wrenched her insides.

“Lemme just lay down near you till morning, then I’ll leave first thing. Will you do that for me, Mary? I won’t even touch you, I promise. Not sex, only sleep. I haven’t slept more’n half the night since we fought. I’m asking for your help.”

“I know you are.” She lay very still, listening to the night sounds beyond the walls, and the steady breathing of the man she’d so often lain beside. In the kitchen, the refrigerator clicked on and hummed.

“Mary?”

She was tired, so tired of arguing. She arched her back slightly, dug in her heels, and slid over to the cool side of the sheet.

The mattress tilted, then leveled as he stretched out alongside her and his weight was evenly distributed. She could feel his nearness and the heat emanating from his body. A tremor ran through the bed. She turned her head and saw that he was quietly sobbing, afraid of something but not knowing quite what, ashamed of his vulnerability.

“Not sex,” he said again. “Only sleep…”

She cradled his head against her breasts while he cried. A warm breeze pushed in through the window and explored the room. Faraway sounds took on a lazy, reassuring rhythm, the city dreaming and softly stirring in its sleep.

Eventually, Jake dozed off before she did.

When the alarm woke her in the morning, she was startled to find herself alone.

“So what’s it gonna be, Mary?” Mel asked. Grinning, he absently did a complete and perfect spin, casually as another man might unconsciously tug at his earlobe, while waiting for her answer. The blur of action made his sparkling grin seem to linger in the air. Like the Cheshire cat’s, Mary thought.

She didn’t need much time to decide what dance to concentrate on for the Ohio competition. “Tango,” she said.

“It’s a good choice,” Mel said thoughtfully. “You’re strong in tango. We can do that in the Bronze category. And I think you oughta enter Novice class and do some of the other dances. Swing, rumba, fox-trot. Really, you’re strong enough in those dances.”

They’d stopped dancing beneath one of the many clusters of red and white balloons strung from the ceiling from the last studio party. The one wall that wasn’t mirrored was decorated with a series of colorful cut-out dancers, life-size and in perfect dramatic or joyous postures. The festive atmosphere never entirely left Romance Studio. The momentum of each day’s dancing seemed to carry to the next.

Ray Huggins, who owned and managed the Romance Studio franchise, ambled out of his office and saw that Mel and Mary had stopped dancing in the middle of the floor and were talking instead. He smiled at Mary and walked toward them. Huggins deftly sidestepped Willie and his instructor Marlene as they wheeled into fifth-position rumba breaks.

Huggins was forty-six and at least twenty pounds overweight. He wore youthful clothes and a tight perm to disguise those facts, and he still moved with the ease and grace of a much lighter and younger man. Ten years ago he was winning trophies in international competition with his rhythm dances, and he could still compete in the smooth dances if he had time to train. But the studio, and the students, demanded most of his time.

“You two cooking up a conspiracy?” he asked with a bright grin. He had perfect teeth.

“Talking about the Ohio Star Ball,” Mel said.

Huggins’s grin generated even more candle power. “Hey, you’re gonna enter. That’s great, Mary! You’ll knock ’em dead.”

“Maybe I’m going to enter,” Mary said, feeling herself blush.

Huggins gave a loose backhand wave. “What dances you gonna compete in?”

“We thought the tango,” Mel said. “I been telling her she’s super-strong in tango.”

Huggins pressed the tip of his forefinger to his chin, as if trying to form a dimple there, thinking. “Yep, I’ve noticed Mary’s tango. Good choice.” He clapped his hands, touched Mary’s arm, and said, “Well, I better leave you two alone to practice.”

But after he took a few strides he turned around, making it look like a dance maneuver. “Listen, Mary, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but the cost of the trip to Ohio for the competition is gonna go up ten percent next month. If you could pay now, it’d save you some money.”

Mary had just sent in for new dance shoes, anticipating going to Ohio, telling herself she needed the expensive shoes anyway, even though it wasn’t true. “Let me think about it, okay?”

Huggins touched his chin again, rotating his finger this time; there was a lot going on beneath those curls. “Listen, just for you, if you can put a few dollars down, make a commitment, I think I can hold the price for you.”