Mary Clark - Loves Music, Loves To Dance

“Seven and a half narrow.”

“Perfect. Believe it or not, I have a pair of evening slippers that should fit you. My sister asked me to pickup a pair she had ordered in that size. Like the good big brother I did as I was told. Then she phoned and told me to take them back. She’d found a pair she liked better.”

Erin had laughed with him. “Just like a kid sister.”

“I’m not going to be bothered running around returning them.” The camera stayed on her, catching her smiling, content expression as she looked around the room. He’d gone up to the bedroom, opened the closet where boxes of new evening shoes were lined up on the shelf. He’d bought the ones he’d chosen for her in a variety of sizes. Pink and silver. Open toes and backs. Heels as narrow as stilettos. A gossamer ankle strap. He reached for the pair that were seven and a half narrow and carried them down, still wrapped in tissue.

“Try these on, Erin.”

Even then, she wasn’t suspicious. “They’re lovely.”

He’d knelt and slipped off her ankle-top leatherboots, his hands impersonal. She’d said, “Oh, really, I don’t think…” Ignoring her protest, he’d fastened The slippers on her feet.

“Will you promise to wear these next Saturday when we go to the Rainbow Room?” She had lifted her right foot a few inches off the carpet and smiled at the sheer beauty of the shoes. “I can’t accept these as a gift…” “Please.” He had smiled up at her.

“Well, let me buy them from you. The funny thing is, they’d go perfectly with a new dress I’ve only worn once.”

It had been on the tip of his tongue to say, “I saw you in that dress.” Instead, he’d murmured, “We’ll talk about payment later.” Then he’d put his hand on her ankle, letting it linger just enough to begin to alert her. He’d stood up, gone over to the stereo. The cassette he had specially prepared was already in place. “Till There Was You” was the first song. The Tommy Dorsey orchestra began to play and the unforgettable voice of the young Frank Sinatra filled the room. He walked back to the couch and reached for Erin ’s hands. “Let’s practice.” The look he’d been waiting for came into Erin ’s eyes. That tiny first flicker of awareness that something wasn’t quite right. She recognized the subtle change in his tone and manner.

Erin was like the others. They all reacted the same way. Speaking too quickly, nervously. “I think I really had better start back. I have an early appointment tomorrow morning.”

“Just one dance.”

“All right.” Her tone had been reluctant.

When they began to dance, she seemed to relax. All the girls had been good dancers, but Erin was perfection. He’d felt disloyal thinking she might even be better than Nan. She was weightless in his arms. She was grace. But when the last notes of “Till There Was You” faded away, she stepped back. “Time to go.” Then when he said, “You’re not going anywhere, “ Erin began to run. Like the others, she slipped and slid on the floor he had polished so lovingly. The dancing slippers became her enemy as she scurried to escape him, raced toward the door to find it bolted, pushed the panic button on the alarm system to learn it was a farce. It emitted a hollow maniacal laugh when touched, a little extra bit of irony that set most of them sobbing as he reached for their throats. Erin had been particularly satisfying. At the end she seemed to know it was useless to plead and in an animal burst of strength she fought him, clawing at the hands that gripped her slender neck. It was only when he twisted that heavy gold necklace around her throat and she began to lose consciousness that she had whispered, “Oh God, please help me, oh Daddy…” When she was dead, he danced with her again. No resistance now in that lovely body. She was his Ginger, his Rita, his Leslie, his Nan, and all the others. When the music stopped, he took off her left slipper and replaced it with her boot.

The video ended as he carried her body down to the basement, where he laid her in the freezer and placed the other slipper and boot in the waiting shoe box. Charley got up from the sofa and sighed. He rewound the videotape, removed it, and turned off the VCR. The cassette tape he had prepared for Erin was still in the stereo. He pressed “Play.”

As the music filled the room, Charley hurried downstairs and opened the freezer. Lovely, lovely, he sighed as he saw the still face, the bluish veins that showed in the ice-blue skin. Tenderly, he reached for her.

It was the first time he’d danced with one of the girls whose body he had frozen. It was a different but thrilling experience. Erin ’s limbs weren’t pliant now. Her back would not bend in a dip. Her cheek pressed against his neck, his chin rested on the auburn hair. That hair once so soft, now beaded with frost. Minutes passed. Finally, as the third song was ending, he twirled her around one last time, then, satisfied, glided to a halt and bowed. It had all begun with Nan fifteen years ago on March thirteenth, he thought. He kissed Erin’s lips just the way he had kissed Nan ’s. March thirteenth was three weeks away. By then he would have brought Darcy here and it would be over. He realized that Erin ’s blouse was beginning to feel damp. He must get her to the city. Holding her in one arm, he half-dragged her to the stereo. As he turned off the dials, Charley did not notice that an onyx ring with a Gold E slipped from Erin ’s frozen finger. Neither did he hear the faint ping as it landed on the floor and lay almost hidden in the fringe on the rug.

Darcy stared unseeingly at the blueprint of the apartment she was decorating. The owner was spending a year in Europe and was specific about her needs. “I want to rent the place furnished, but I’m putting my own things in storage. I don’t want some klutz burning a hole in my carpets or upholstery. Fix the place up tastefully but cheaply. I hear you’re a genius at that.” Yesterday after she’d left the police station, Darcy had forced herself to follow up a “Moving/Everything Must Go” sale in Old Tappan, New Jersey. She’d hit a bonanza of good furniture that was practically a giveaway. Some of it would exactly suit this apartment; the rest she’d store for future jobs. She picked up her pen and sketching pad. The sectional should be on the long wall, arcing to face the windows. The… She laid down the pen and put her face in her hands. I have got to get this job finished. I’ve got to concentrate, she thought desperately.

A memory came unbidden. The week of finals of their sophomore year. She and Erin holing up in their room, cracking the books. The music of Bruce Springsteen coming from the stereo in the next room, echoing through the walls, tempting them to join the celebrants whose exams were over. Erin lamenting, “Darce, when Bruce is playing, I can’t concentrate.”

“You’ve got to. Maybe I can buy us earplugs.”

Erin, a mischievous look on her face: “I’ve got a better idea.” After dinner they’d gone to the library. When it was closing, they hid in stalls in the bathroom until the security guards left. They’d settled themselves on the seventh floor at the desks by the elevator, where fluorescent lights burned all night, and studied in perfect peace, letting themselves out through a window at dawn.

Darcy bit her lip, realizing she was on the verge of tears again. Impatiently, she dabbed at her eyes, reached for the phone, and called Nona. “I tried you last night, but you were out.” She told her about going to Erin ’s apartment, about Jay Stratton, about finding the Bertolini necklace, about the missing diamonds.

“Stratton’s going to wait a few days to see if Erin shows up before he makes a report to the insurance company. The police can’t accept a missing-person report because it interferes with Erin ’s right to freedom of movement.” “That’s nonsense,” Nona said flatly.