Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“But we’re in the women’s lounge.”

“Of course! Let me …” Eunice’s fast walk out the door was a blur in the corner of Amina’s increasingly worried eye. Low, pink light. She needed to fix low, pink light before everyone came out looking like fried chicken under a heat lamp.

“Amina, can you put your things down the hall at the coat check? They’re cluttering up the room.”

“Yup, one sec.”

“More to the left, Rosa.”

Amina walked to the wall and flipped the few remaining switches up until the place blazed like a flaming tutu. Good God, the mirrors. She might as well be shooting in a funhouse.

“Mom?” The whoosh of the dressing room door revealed the bride-to-be, cutely diminutive in an oversized man’s shirt and capri pants.

“Jessica!” Lesley smiled carnivorously. “You’re early!”

“Yeah. The other bride was half an hour late, so they took our party first. I felt bad for her, but I mean, whatev, right?”

“Whatev,” Lesley echoed with a goofy grin. “So let’s see.”

Jessica twirled around and Amina ran for her camera just as the door opened again and in came the rest of the girls — tan-limbed, smooth-haired, piled high with bags upon bags, plastic-wrapped dresses, several shoe boxes, a portable CD player. Accessories spread out over countertops. Jackie, the maid of honor, announced that she’d burned a special “love”-themed compilation for the occasion. Amina stepped frantically onto a chair to get a bird’s-eye view of the commotion as Madonna filled the air.

“Did anyone bring an extra razor?”

“I did.” Jackie held it up like a trophy, which would have been a great shot, but taking the picture sent a blaze of flash through all the mirrors, and Amina’s pulse went rabbity.

“Amina, your bag?”

There was a loud knock at the door, accompanied by a deep “Is everybody decent?” Brock Beale shoved through it half a second later, steel-haired and pug-nosed, his buttery gaze falling over the girls. “And how are my favorite ladies today?”

Lesley and Jessica, busy with the clasp of a pearl bracelet, barely looked up, but Jackie turned around with a sweet smile. “Wow, Brock. You look great in a tux.”

“You think?” He looked at his profile in the mirror, patting a toned midsection. “I can never quite get comfortable.”

This was a lie, a charming one, as there was absolutely no doubt in Amina’s mind that Brock Beale was just as comfortable in his tux as he was in pajamas, but it served the purpose of making Jackie all the more adamant in her reassurances, which in turn made him look all the more comfortable. The flash, when it went off this time, made both of them wince.

“Amina, the coat check,” Lesley repeated.

“I just need to get a few more shots.”

Lesley stepped in front of her camera. “Now would be great.”

Amina swallowed a flash of irritation, intently panning across the room, but all the girls had grown too aware of her suddenly, their limbs stiff with the nothing noise of smoothing on deodorants and hairspray.

“Go,” Lesley said. “You could use a break.”

Cooler air hit Amina’s face as she walked out of the women’s lounge and back down the hallway. She shivered a little as she turned the corner and headed toward the ballroom, cluttering bags in tow. Lesley’s trees stood sentry on either side of her, mummified in plastic. A few men measured the space between them.

“Coatrack?” Amina asked them, not stopping.

“Keep going back,” one of them said, and Amina walked faster, past the ballroom, past the kitchen, to the back of the greeting hall. She found the coat check — a few open racks just to the side of a back door — and snatched the first hanger she could.

“Can I help you, miss?” A teenage boy with a blond buzz cut and a face like a ferret seemed to materialize out of nowhere, tugging on the shirt cuffs that peeked out from a short burgundy jacket.

“I’m just hanging my suit.”

“I’ll do it.”

“I already did it.”

“Get your number?”

Amina stared at him, not comprehending until the kid reached for the ticket hanging from the neck of the hanger, tearing it off and giving it to her.

“Thanks.”

The kid smiled a funny smile at her, like they were on the inside of someone else’s joke. “I’m Evan.”

“Amina.”

He looked past her to the reception hall. “This one is going to be a pain in the ass, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much.”

“Good luck.”

“You too.”

Lesley had been right. It both chafed and relieved Amina to admit this to herself, but somehow, the walk to the coat check had reset her. When she returned to the women’s lounge, she had found the right perspective, which ended up being right next to any of the mirrors, cheating slightly away from the center of the room.

Now, four hours later, she swayed in the middle of the dance floor. Couples shuffled around her in huddled pairs, smiling at her through the lens. The room was thick with the smell of celebration — lilies, men’s cologne, wine, and warm skin.

With the ceremony over and dinner under way, the bride had relaxed into the groom’s body, her small frame folded in his tuxedoed arms like a dove between palms. Jessica looked younger and softer than she had during the ceremony, and when she turned her face up to her new husband’s for a kiss, Amina knew she had gotten the picture they wanted more than any other.

The shots from the day would be to Lesley’s liking, showcasing the Beale style, taste, extravagance. Lesley really had thought of every last detail, from the fruit and champagne and truffle bar to the silkribboned seating cards to special games for the kids and the tiny silver Space Needle favors. And while Brock had thrown a stiff arm around his wife for the family photos, holding her as though she were a minifridge, the rest of the bridal party was carelessly, casually pretty, the guys tall and just beginning to put on the weight that would make them spread into their fathers, the girls toned and groomed and glossy.

On the dance floor, Amina turned to find Lesley and an older man waltzing slowly beside her, and she moved in step beside them to get a better angle. They bent their heads together.

“We’ll be cutting the cake in about fifteen minutes,” Lesley said through her teeth. “If you want to take a break or eat something, do it now, okay?”

She was not hungry for anything but air and space. Out in the hallway, caterers walked by with trays full of stacked plates and empty glasses. It was brighter and cooler in the hall, golden light bouncing from cream walls down to burgundy carpet. Amina passed the kitchen with its muted clatterings, its smell of gravy and dishwater.

Lesley had also been right about bringing in the trees. Unwrapped, they proved to be very tall shrubs, pruned to perfect cones as if they’d been uprooted from a gnome’s forest. The effect was strangely magical. Amina ran her palm against the bristles of one, then stepped behind it and peeked out to take a picture of the whole row, slant after slant after slant after slant.

The band in the ballroom announced the cover of a special request, and after a pause, the woman’s voice sang out the breathy first line of Etta James’s “At Last.” Chairs barked as guests rose to greet the champion of all wedding songs, the one that always brought indifferent or fighting or estranged couples to the dance floor for momentary reconciliation. If she hadn’t already taken too many dance shots, Amina would have headed back, but instead she kept walking, My lonely days are over following her down the hall like a forlorn ghost.

The coatracks were filled now, Amina saw as she walked toward them. The arm of her jacket stuck out from the mostly black coats like a drowning victim, and she looked at it longingly. How nice it would be to walk the twenty feet across the carpet, to pull it out and put it on and leave. She nearly screamed when it moved.