John Case - Ghost Dancer aka Dance of Death

“I have something for you,” he said. “Something to put in the purse.”

Her eyes widened. “What?”

He handed her an airline ticket folder, which contained a first-class round-trip ticket from Odessa to Las Vegas, via Moscow and New York. He’d already spoken to Madame P. about the date and he’d been reassured that the K-1 visa would be ready in time. The paperwork was complete. All that was necessary was for Madame P. to submit evidence that Wilson had visited Irina in person. And this was as good as done. She’d taken his picture with Irina, and copied the visa stamp in his passport that very morning. Irina would fly into Vegas on June 16. This would give them time to marry, and still be at the ranch for the summer solstice.

The date was important. In a way, it was everything.

Irina gasped when she saw the ticket. “First class!” she oohed, bringing him back to the moment. Then she saw the hundred-dollar bills that he’d put in the folder behind the ticket. “Oh Jack!” she cried, surreptitiously counting the money. She kissed him again. Tears glittered in her eyes.

“You can buy a dress – or give it to your parents. An engagement gift. Like this.” He produced a ring from the pocket of his jacket, and slid it onto her finger.

Irina was dazzled. “Oh, Jack. It’s so beautiful.”

In the morning, Madame P. bundled them aboard a “luxury coach,” which deposited them at the Nerubayske tunnels, home of the Museum of Partisan Glory. Madame P. doled out the tickets and issued a stern warning: “Stay with tour. Do not be tempted to explore on your own. Each year, persons disappear into catacombs and never return.”

It reminded Wilson of his high school field trips. Indeed, the entire “romantic tour” echoed those days, the awkward boys and giggling girls replaced by these self-conscious men and softly laughing women. Each couple was given a flashlight. Everyone held hands. Irina’s hand was small and cool in his own.

Madame P. herself acted as the tour guide, explaining that the catacombs were created by mining for limestone – which had been used to build the city of Odessa. Over the years, the network of tunnels became a smugglers’ maze.

Irina squeezed his hand.

“But here in Nerubayske,” Madame P. continued, “lived small army of brave partisans during World War number two.” Various dioramas showed what life had been like underground for the fighters who lived in the tunnels in between attacks on the railroads and other efforts to thwart the Nazi advance.

At one turn, Wilson kissed Irina. She pressed her body into his. He turned off the flashlight. He was certain every other couple was engaged in a similar activity. He guessed that Madame P. had selected this excursion, rather than a visit to a well-lit museum, precisely to enable such moments. From the sounds of things, one couple off to the right was doing more than kissing.

Irina moaned and kissed him again. Her kiss was passionate if a little practiced – not that he had any illusions about virginity or a lack of sexual activity. The women had been tested for AIDS and for other STDs, and while a fertility test was not feasible, prospective grooms were reassured by medical exams and histories that showed no obvious impediments to motherhood.

Eventually they all followed Madame’s waggling light to the exit. Irina blinked and rubbed her eyes as they emerged into the brightness of day. It reminded Wilson of stepping out of an afternoon movie. Matinee blindness.

“I am lucky one,” Irina said. “Other men not so…” She shook her head. And glowed.

Senior prom. That’s what the dinner dance resembled, more than anything else – although there were only twelve couples in attendance. A small dance floor, tables for six with stingy bouquets, a flower-bedecked arch (for pictures). The men wore dark suits with carnations in the lapel; the women, fancy dresses. A three-piece band – the vocalist sporting a bright red mullet – cranked out an eclectic mix of music.

This might have been a faux prom, but Irina was real and palpable in his arms. “You’re a good dancer,” she told him, as he guided her around the little parquet dance floor. They had suffered through the chicken dinner, the cloying dessert, the clumsy toasts offered by Madame P. Now, the slow dances outnumbered the fast ones. The lights were dimmed. Madame P. and her diminutive husband had taken a turn on the floor, to a scattering of polite applause, and then retired to a corner.

Irina looked up at Wilson, a slight sheen of perspiration on her face. The guy with the mullet began to sing the Percy Sledge classic “When a Man Loves a Woman.” Irina pressed herself into his arms. They did not so much dance, now, as sway together. “I love this song,” she said, melting into him.

“Mmmmmm.” They swayed some more.

“I want to make love with you,” she whispered.

He pulled her closer, rocking from side to side. Slowly, his eyes began to close, then suddenly blinked open when he saw the herringbone mote glimmering in his peripheral vision, and realized that he would soon be blind. If only for a little while.

“Is good idea, yes?”

Wilson nodded distractedly.

“We make sure?”

“Yeah,” Wilson said. “We should make sure.”

She sensed that something had changed, and worried that she had offended him. She drew back. “What is wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.”

She led him back to their table. Her dress was shredding into ribbons of color and he perceived her through a glaze of light – but he could still see the sweet little furrow in her brow.

“Is talking about love?” she asked. “You don’t like?”

He made a sound that tried to be a laugh but came out as something else. “I get these headaches, sometimes – only they don’t hurt. They just… make it hard for me to see. But it goes away,” he added, a little too hurriedly.

“This is vision migraine,” she announced, pronouncing the word “meegraine.”

Wilson was astonished. “That’s right, but… how do you know that?”

“You forget, I’m in school of medicine before I must quit to work. I will see if Madame Puletskaya is permitting us to depart.”

Madame P. appeared, hovering above. To Wilson, she resembled the screaming figure in Edvard Munch’s famous painting: a white face, surrounded by radiating auras of different colors. Next to her, Madame’s husband was a sinister black figure, pulsating in the darkness. And then, it was almost as if he couldn’t see at all.

Irina clutched Wilson’s hand, speaking rapidly in Russian to their chaperone. Wilson couldn’t understand a word, but the sense of the conversation was clear from Irina’s tone, which segued from conviction to pleading, even as Madame’s morphed from rejection to surrender.

Finally, Irina led him out the door. The cool night air felt like silk against his skin. She stroked his hair as they waited for the taxi. “Is stress,” she said, in a low, firm voice. “And sometimes, there is environmental factor.”

In the hotel, she demanded the key from the desk clerk. Once in the room, she did not turn on the lights, but sat with him on the bed. She removed his jacket and tie, took off his shoes, made him lie down. He heard her go into the bathroom. For a moment, he worried that she’d turn the light on, but she didn’t. He heard the faucet run, and then she padded back to him across the floor.

“Is better, yes? The dark?”

“Yes.” He felt queasy, as he always did when one of the migraines came on, but Irina was a revelation – an angel of mercy, tender and caring.

She placed a damp washcloth over his eyes.

The room was stuffy, so she turned on the ceiling fan. But she didn’t open the windows. How did she know that the noise from the street would bother him?