Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

Ridiculous. She had been ridiculous. Talking nonsense and still undone by the lower half of his face. The wine the bartender handed her a few moments later was a little too sweet, but she sipped it steadily, not daring until it was mostly gone to turn around and look at the party. Jamie had walked clear across the lawn, where he was bending down to give the bride a kiss on the cheek.

“Kiddo!”

Amina turned to find Monica coming at her, arms pinwheeling, hair spooling out of a French braid. She spilled a little white wine down Amina’s back as they hugged.

“Shit! I got you?”

“A little.”

“Forgive me, hon. It’s been quite a week.” Her intonation begged for elaboration, but Amina let it pass. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Amina said. The band kicked it into high gear, banjos ringing, and out on the dance floor a circle formed, thick with clapping hands.

Monica leaned in close, dropping her voice. “Any news?”

“Not yet, but I’ve got a plan. I’m talking to Anyan George about it.”

“Dr. George?” She looked worried.

“I know, but listen, we need help. And better him than anyone else.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Smart. Man, I’m glad you’re home.” Monica threw an arm over her shoulder, covering her in the smell of flowery deodorant and white wine.

She whooped suddenly in delight. “Oh my God! Will you look at him! How long has it been since you’ve seen him look like that?”

Lunging from haunch to haunch, Thomas had moved into the center of the circle, arms crossed in front of him like a Russian folk dancer. Three kicks drew three glorious cries from the crowd, and he rose up with the last, his palms opened to the air, chin tilting toward the sky, curls bouncing. Amina found him through her viewfinder. A smile broke across her father’s face, charming it.

“He’ll be okay, you’ll see,” Monica said, taking a swig of wine, and Amina let the shutter fall over and over and over, willing her to be right.

How had she forgotten how the flat light of a desert afternoon could suck the dimension out of anything? The first of the Bukowsky wedding photos were complete tossers. Garbage. The newlyweds looked like line drawings, gashes for mouths and empty sockets for eyes. Amina flipped through them quickly, leaving the worst in a pile on Akhil’s desk. At least by the time the evening light rolled in she had found her rhythm. She lingered over the shot of Jamie Anderson, glad to be able to stare at him without having to make conversation. His features, once soft and strange, had hardened into deep crags and furrows. He had turned just as she was taking the picture, his eyes cast down, his mouth beginning to purse in a way that made her feel a little sex-starved and desperate. True, the actual conversation with Jamie hadn’t gone so well, but conversations with men almost never did, for her.

The phone was ringing.

“Ami, get that!” Her mother called from below.

She reached for it on the desk, but the cradle was empty.

Amina stood and looked around the room. The phone rang again.

“Ami!”

“Hold on!” She turned to the bed, lifting up one pillow and Thomas’s blazer before her arms understood what her brain could not, throwing open the closet door. Inside, the phone trilled at her maniacally, as though delighted to be found. Amina picked it up, brushing a film of dirt from the mouthpiece.

“Hello?”

“I think I’m choking.” Dimple did not sound like she was choking. She sounded like she was lighting a cigarette. Pioneer Square’s morning hustled around her, the drunks and the bike messengers and the ferries floating through the phone line. “I don’t think I can get this show up.”

“Of course you can.”

“No I can’t ,” she said, sounding irritated. “And I don’t need a fucking cheerleader right now, Amina, I need a realist.”

Amina walked back to the desk, phone in hand. “What happened?”

“I still haven’t found someone to pair with Charles White. I swear, I’ve looked everywhere. Nothing fucking works.”

Amina flipped through a few more wedding shots. Red chili enchiladas did not photograph well. Guests hunched over white paper plates, looking like they were devouring piles of bloody flesh. “Isn’t it getting late?”

“That’s not helpful.”

“You asked for a realist.”

“Yeah, not an asshole.”

“Jesus, Dimple.”

“I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. Or, well, it is, but not really.”

“What did I do?”

“I want to show your work.”

Amina swallowed. “Oh.”

Dimple snorted. “ Oh , she says.”

“What do you want me to say? I don’t have anything.”

There was a short, unsettling silence, the kind that precedes fights between family like a growing electric field precedes lightning.

Dimple cleared her throat. “Okay, listen, I found the pictures in your closet.”

“You what?”

“I found—”

“You went into my closet?”

“Yes, I did. Listen, I was at your house for the plants and then I needed a jacket, so I—”

“Bullshit.”

Dimple was quiet for a second. “Okay, fine, I was looking through your stuff. I don’t actually know why. I know that sounds weird. But I found them and I fucking love them. And listen, I know this isn’t a great time to ask, and I hope you know I wouldn’t unless I felt really, you know, desperate. Well, no, desperate and compelled . Because your work is compelling.” She took a breath, changing her tenor to one Amina had heard her use with others too many times to feel flattered by. The honeyed tone, the easy pump of ego. “You know, the thing is, I can’t stop thinking of how great it would be, actually. It’s a good pairing, a really spot-on counterpoint to Charles’s selection. I think we could actually go small with this — make it concentrated. Eight or ten—”

“No.”

“Wait, stop, just listen for a second, okay? You know we’re exploring the idea of domestic accidents, and it’s, like, perfect. So if we go with the fainting grandmother, the peeing ring bearer, and those two bridesmaids fighting over the bouquet—”

“Are you listening? No.”

“—lead with the picture of Bobby McCloud jumping—”

“No!”

“The puking bridesmaid. We’ve got to show that, obviously.”

“Dimple, it’s not happening! Period. And if Jane ever finds out anything about those pictures, I’ll be fired instantly. There’s a reason they were hidden.”

“Wait, these are hidden from Jane ?”

“Yes! But also the clients. They don’t know about them, either. And this isn’t the way they’re going to find out.”

“I’m not sure why Jane’s opinion really matters,” Dimple said.

This was not a good path to go down. “Look, you asked. I am saying no. Clear?”

Exhale. Silence.

“Dimple, do you hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I know what you’re saying. And I know we’ve had this discussion before, but somehow, Amina, I’m just never quite convinced that you don’t want me to keep bothering you about it. I mean, right? You do, a little, don’t you?” Dimple took another sharp drag. “I mean, you don’t, like, lose ambition because you switch tracks for a little while.”

“Switch tracks? I’m a wedding photographer!”

“So what? What if showing your stuff was, like, what you needed to get past it? You know, like on fucking Oprah . Scared-of-her-shadow housewife remembers her inner fire, starts a multimillion-dollar business, takes care of orphans on the side. Full circle!”

“I’ve gotta go.”

“Wait! No! Okay, look, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to do that. I just hate having to beg you for something you should be thrilled to give me. I mean, this is business. It’s an opportunity. You took these pictures, the best fucking pictures I’ve ever seen you take, by the way, and what? You think if you show them, you’re somehow worse off?”