John Lutz - Dancing with the Dead

“So why not talk to his boss?”

“Ha! His boss is even more fucked up than he is. I mean, that guy is royally fucked up.”

“What about the union? You talk to the shop steward? Maybe you could file a grievance or something.”

He stopped smiling and grunted in disdain, all the while with his gaze nailed to her. She knew suddenly what kind of black mood he was in; apprehension knotted her stomach. “You oughta know the goddamn union’s in bed with the company,” he told her. “That’s how it works these days. They’re all of a sudden saying at the warehouse that seniority goes by department instead of for the whole crew. What a crock of shit!”

“Well, they’re not laying off, are they?”

With an elaborate, lazy shrug, Jake pushed away from the doorjamb and stepped into the room. He was wearing faded Levi’s and a gray T-shirt with SCREW THE WHALES lettered on it. “It ain’t like I’m about to get laid off,” he snarled. “But this way they can throw my ass into a boxcar and make me unload produce instead of keeping me checking outgoing shipments, where I fucking deserve to be. They got a guy been there five years less than me playing with his pencil on the loading dock. He don’t know his ass from a hole in the ground about checking outgoing.”

She walked over to him and lightly touched his arm, trying to defuse him with a display of sympathy. The arm was tense, cool yet sticky with sweat. “Listen, Jake, things’ll come around. Anyway, it’s time-out for a while. There’s no need to bring the job home with you. Just forget about it till you go in tomorrow, okay? Let’s go in the kitchen and I’ll-”

He pushed her hand away and glared at her. She saw the hostility in him, the hungry violence circling like a great bird looking for a deserving victim. She didn’t want to be the object of that violence. She backed away.

“Like you don’t bring your half-ass obsession home?” he asked. “Like you forget about ballroom dancing when you’re not swishing around with your fag instructor at the studio?”

“Jake, for God’s sake, Mel’s straight as you are.”

She knew immediately she shouldn’t have said it. In his present mood, Jake might interpret her words as an attack on his manhood. His hooded dark eyes fixed on her and didn’t blink. A familiar, dangerous calm settled over him. The cruel thing that lived inside him was taking control.

No, no, no, not again! “Anyway,” she said, “you know what I mean. Don’t you?”

He moved very close; she could smell onion on his warm, fetid breath. Not liquor, thank God. “No,” he said, “how could I know; you got a mind like a goddamn circus. Why don’t you tell me what you mean?”

“I mean… I guess I mean there’s nothing effeminate about Mel Holt.”

“Ha! You don’t call showing desperate women where to put their feet when they ain’t waving ’em in the air a fag occupation?”

“No, I don’t. Really, you wouldn’t, either, if you understood.” Why did she keep saying the wrong thing?

He glided slowly toward her until her back was pressed against the wall. His breath hissed regularly, like great pressure escaping, but not fast enough to prevent more from building. She was beginning to experience the paralysis of fear. Her arms and legs seemed detached, independent creatures with sluggish wills of their own.

“Jake, don’t start this! Please!”

“I want you to tell me that Mel asshole’s probably a faggot,” he said in a gentle voice that didn’t fool her. “Go ahead, tell me.”

“I can’t do that, Jake. Honestly, he’s not.”

“Oh? How would you know? You sleep with him?”

“Of course not! You know I didn’t!”

“How the hell could I know that? I don’t just know stuff, like you do. Not without any goddamn proof.”

She tried to slide between his bulk and the wall, but he blocked her with his arm and she hadn’t any strength to resist.

Suddenly she was ten years old, trapped in Duke’s grip as he ignored her feeble struggles and unbuckled and removed his belt to administer one of the beatings Angie still maintained Mary deserved. What had she done? Messed up at school? Broken something valuable? Spilled something at the table? What had she done this time?

Nothing, damn it! Nothing! It wasn’t fair!

“Jake!” She placed her hands on his chest and shoved, whipping her head from side to side and trying to pull free. She was aware of him drawing back his hand, as if to deliver a hammer blow. No way to avoid it. No way to prevent the pain.

She stopped struggling, clenching her eyes shut.

Resigned.

Waiting.

And suddenly he was no longer against her. The warmth of his bulk, the oppressive smells of onion and perspiration, were gone.

She opened her eyes barely in time to see him hurrying out the door, his shoulders bunched as if he were hunkered down and angling into a fierce wind.

“Jake!”

She heard the door to the hall open and close.

Silence then. A cessation of time. Her aloneness seeped into her and lay like a cold slab in her stomach.

For a while she stood hugging herself, cupping her bony elbows in her hands and gently swaying.

Then she walked over to the tape deck, pushed Rewind, and began to dance.

Around midnight she took two Benadryl capsules, hoping they would help her sleep, then went to bed and lay staring into the darkness. It had cooled down outside, so she had the air-conditioner off and the window open. A breeze was playing with the curtains; writhing shadows brought grotesque life to the wall next to the bed. Trying not to think, listening to the night sounds of the city, she fell asleep.

When the bed lurched she awoke. The luminous blue digital numbers on the clock said it was ten minutes past three. The Benadryl capsules hadn’t worked to keep her asleep, or maybe she’d developed a resistance to them.

She let her gaze slide sideways through the darkness. Jake was settling down beside her on the mattress. He sighed and she smelled bourbon. He mumbled something that sounded like “Motherfuckers,” then he was motionless and quiet. Within a few minutes he began to snore.

Mary lay without moving, barely breathing. It was impossible to know how deeply Jake was sleeping. Or what he might do if he awoke.

She was still and fearful until daylight, dozing only in brief and intermittent stretches, and wakened suddenly by thrills of panic.

Five minutes before the alarm was due to rip the silence, she turned it off. Then she climbed out of bed gingerly, wincing as the springs squealed. Stepping where she knew from experience that the floor wouldn’t squeak, she gathered her clothes and carried them into the bathroom to dress. She could go without breakfast, or she might drive through McDonald’s and pick up coffee and a Danish to eat at work.

Careful not to disturb Jake, she crept from the apartment and made her way down the creaking wooden stairs to the vestibule. She pushed out into the bright warm morning, hating the fear that walked with her.

Jake had come within a heartbeat of starting in on her last night. When that happened, it usually wasn’t long before whatever it was that sometimes stopped up short of violence failed, and he’d be rough on her. Jake the time bomb. When he was this way she could almost bring herself to leave him and to mean it.

Almost.

She was like a ship captive to an undertow. Drifting toward the rocks and unable to do anything about it, because that was what happened sometimes if you were a ship.

The ocean she sailed on terrified her, but the inevitability of its tides was something she had faith in and understood.

Two days later he called. Mary was in the kitchen, about to insert a frozen lasagna dinner into the microwave, when the phone rang. She quickly wiped her hands on a paper towel, then lifted the receiver from the extension phone mounted on the wall near the refrigerator. Said hello.