Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

Thomas laid his head down on the counter, his pate shining through a corona of curls. He breathed slowly and deeply, and Amina reached out, pressing her fingers to the stubbly spot where the hair from his biopsy was growing back in. How far were they from the tumor? She’d always had a healthy skepticism about shamans and the like, but lately, the conviction that she might somehow will the cancer away with the right amount of desire and supplication was hard to shake.

“They’re going, anyway,” her father said, his voice soft, begrudging.

“What?”

“The visions. With the chemo. I see them less.”

“Really?”

He nodded, his head bobbing under her hand, and Amina said nothing, afraid of her own hope, of leaning too hard on any hint that he might be getting better. Instead she laid her head next to his on the counter, sliding forward until they were skull to skull.

That night Jamie and Amina sipped wine at a new place in the Northeast Heights. Dark and cavernous, it boasted stools that looked like slabs of ice, an impressively large wine list, and an inversely diminutive bartender (“Let me know if I can help,” she’d offered, with a face that said she couldn’t possibly). On either side of them, Albuquerque’s moneyed set watched one another’s jewelry catch the light. The bar menus, rich cream card stock embossed with a font so modern it looked like a digital sneeze, suggested things like “rice paper crab” and “foam of duck.”

“What are we doing here again?” Amina asked, trying and failing to sit comfortably.

“Risking everything to save innocent lives.” Jamie handed her an errant flyer — a lone misstep of cheap pink Kinko’s paper. Come see us for happy hour! it read. Watch the sun set in a symphony of color! “I don’t know, I thought maybe we should mix it up with people our age.”

“These people are our age?”

“Does that make you feel old?”

“It makes me feel poor.”

The bartender came by again, a smile taped to her face. “Any questions?”

“What’s a symphony of color?” Jamie asked. He held up the flyer.

She didn’t even look at it. “We have a really nice sunset.”

“Ah, thanks. Do you also have Budweiser?”

“We only have Sierra Nevada on tap.”

“We’ll take two,” Amina said.

An hour and two beers apiece later, they were grinning. They were also talking too loudly. Amina knew this from the way the bartender was pointedly avoiding them. But who cared? She was on a date with Jamie Anderson. He smelled like something she wanted to eat.

“So I went to Mesa Prep today,” Amina said.

“Oh yeah? What for?”

“I don’t know. I wanted to take pictures of it. Anyway, I couldn’t get in.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they literally wouldn’t let me in. The guard outside.”

“Guard? Wait, that little booth at the gate is actually manned by someone?”

“Yeah!”

“No way!” Jamie said. “I’ve passed it a couple of times. I just thought it was for, I don’t know, show or something. They have real guards?”

“Ninjas.” Amina spat out the word.

Jamie laughed and took a long tug of beer.

“No, really. That’s what they’re called. Ninja Security. That’s what the guy’s pocket said. There are, like, twenty-five of them on campus. Apparently they will stop anyone who doesn’t have an appointment or a press pass.”

Jamie choked a little. “Wait, he asked if you had a press pass ?”

“Yes. Because I had my camera.”

“But you were a student!”

“That’s what I said!”

“That’s bullshit! It’s not like you’re some … some”—Jamie’s hand gestured furiously in the air— “delinquent!”

“Sha!”

“I mean, you paid to go to school there for, like, years ! And they treat you like a criminal ?”

“Insulting.” Amina nodded. “Criminal.”

“So did you complain to someone?”

“I couldn’t get in to complain to anyone!”

“Fascists!” He hit the bar with a force. The bartender made a face at another one of the patrons. “I mean, what, so now it’s some kind of dictatorship? Ninjas ?”

“Ninjas,” Amina said.

“Fuck them.” He set his beer down on the bar. “We’re going in.”

“Totally.”

Jamie waved to the bartender. “Hey, can we settle up?”

“Wait, now? You want to drive all the way to Mesa now?”

“We can hop that fence in, like, two seconds. And then we’ll pretty much be on the mesa in the dark until we get to the buildings.”

Amina imagined them storming across the marble-floored admissions office and threw her head back, laughing. The bartender smacked down their bill.

“I’m fucking serious!” Jamie glanced at it and set two twenties down. “We’re going to take our school back.”

Amina did not move.

“What, you’re scared of the ninjas?”

She nodded. She was totally scared of the ninjas, whom she had imagined as short and quick and Japanese despite Albuquerque’s notably small Asian population.

“Come on, that campus is huge! Forty acres, and most of it just barren mesa! How many of them can there be?”

“Twenty-five.”

“So we cut in through a random section of the fence across from that Chinese place — what’s it called? — the Great Wall. Yeah. And we stay away from the booth entirely. Then we’re golden.”

“Jamie.” She put a hand on his arm.

“Amina.” He pulled it to his chest.

“This isn’t a good idea.”

“It’s the best idea.”

“What if we get caught?”

“Then we explain to them that we used to go there and decided to take a harmless walk and I guaran-fucking-tee you they will not want to press charges against their own alumni, no matter how they deal with people at the gate. I mean, c’mon. I’m a UNM professor. They want to mess with that?”

“Oooh,” Amina laughed despite her misgivings. “Are you going to bring the full wrath of your department down on them?”

“I might.” Jamie dropped his voice a notch. “Or I could just bring the wrath of my department down on you.”

“What does that even mean?”

“No idea. Finish your beer already.”

She didn’t have to go. She knew this. But there was something really lovely about the smell of hops rising in the air, about Jamie’s wincing smile and yellow T-shirt, about how close her hand was to his heart.

She took a last gulp and slid off the bar stool. “Let’s go.”

Twenty minutes later they sat in Jamie’s car, under the yellow glow of the Great Wall.

“Okay,” he whispered, like they were already inside the Mesa Prep gates. He pointed to the far north section of the fence. “So I’m thinking we head to the north corner, hop over that big brick thing, and run through the mesa until we hit the parking lots.”

“Run through all that mesa? In the dark?”

“Thing is, we’ve got to avoid the security house and the spot where traffic slows, so I think the only way to do this is take the natural route.”

“Cactus,” Amina reminded him. “Rattlesnakes.”

Jamie leaned over her, opening the glove box with a smile. “Flashlight,” he said, handing her the cold metal. “I’ve got two. And I’ve got a first-aid kit in the car.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“What?”

“The amount of stuff you keep in your car! It’s got to mean something. Savior complex? Abandonment issues?”

“Quit stalling.”

Amina opened her door, popping out into the night. Jamie followed. They looked across the street. The wall seemed a little sturdier without the remove of the windshield, a little meaner. It was a combination of iron railing and thick brick posts, the kind of thing well suited to military schools and southern graveyards. Amina started doing jumping jacks.