Dancing with the Dead

8

Friday night Mary drove to Casa Loma. It was where several of the Romance dancers met occasionally outside the studio, fledglings venturing from the nest and testing their wings.

Casa Loma was a vast, art deco ballroom on the corner of Cherokee and Iowa in South St. Louis, and it had existed as long as Mary could remember. She could recall Angie and Duke going there at least once, long ago. Though it had recently been refurbished, the dance hall was little changed from those days. The spacious floor was worn but gleaming waxed wood, its perimeter surrounded by blue-clothed rectangular tables. At opposite corners were small bars that sold bowls of popcorn as well as drinks. The floor was encircled above by a balcony along which lights twinkled in sequence. The upper floor also contained tables, and Mary liked to sit alone up there sometimes and look down from the balcony at the dancers swirling in kaleidoscope patterns.

She could hear the band as she paused on the landing of the steps leading to the ballroom and paid her five-dollar admission to an elderly woman behind a cashier’s window. A drum pounded out a frantic, syncopated rhythm, then a trumpet’s wail rose like a melancholy sob as the rest of the band joined in.

Dangling her dance shoes in their drawstring bag, she climbed the rest of the steps, handed her ticket to an attendant, then passed through a small seating area and entered the ballroom itself.

The music was suddenly much louder, a waltz now. Beyond the tables, dancers were whirling about the floor in elegant rise-and-fall motion, their movements exaggerated as they swirled through the dappled light cast by a glittering mirrored chandelier. The band played their gleaming instruments in front of an elegantly draped royal blue curtain patterned with stars and a crescent moon. There was an unreal quality to all of it; or perhaps it seemed that way because it was so vividly real. Mary couldn’t decide which.

Casa Loma was crowded tonight, as it usually was on Fridays. Many of the dancers were older and had been regulars for decades, but there were also a lot of younger people, some of them in their twenties and even a few who looked like teenagers. Mary saw Helen dancing with Willis from the studio. He was slightly shorter than his partner, but the waltz was one of the wiry little man’s best dances, and they made a graceful pair.

Mary scanned the tables and spotted June sitting with big Curt, who was sipping a beer and gazing out at the dancers, no doubt wishing he’d taken lessons long enough to learn their moves. Most of the dancers at Casa Loma were at least somewhat skilled, which made it one of the few places where there was a proper counterclockwise line of dance, and a couple could do a waltz or fox-trot and not expect a collision.

As Mary moved toward the table she noticed equine Lisa, the fashion model, dancing with a dark-haired man. Mary didn’t recognize him, but he was holding Lisa close and rubbing up to her in a more than friendly way. Fridays brought out the hunters at Casa Loma; Mary made a mental note to refuse politely if the man asked her to dance. There were no instructors from Romance Studio dancing at Casa Loma. The no-fraternization rule applied. Mary understood why it should. One paid to dance with an instructor. Business did play a part in this; there had to be more to count than beats and measures.

“Over here, Mary!” June, smiling and waving, didn’t realize Mary had seen the Romance Studio table.

Mary squeezed between chair backs and the occupants of the next table. She nodded to Curt, who tore his gaze from the whirling dancers and grinned at her. “Band good tonight?” she asked.

“They sound fine to me,” Curt said, “for whatever that’s worth.” He hadn’t been taking lessons long enough to lose his self-effacing attitude. Give him another six months, Mary thought, and he’ll probably be telling all the women how to dance. Too many men were like that. Male-pattern boldness, she decided, and almost giggled at the thought.

As soon as Mary had slipped into her dance shoes, a tall, gaunt man named Jim, who used to be a student at an Arthur Murray studio, asked her to dance. He was wearing dark slacks, a gray sportcoat, and a red tie with a fresh stain on it. His long, pale face was somber, but she knew it often broke into slow smiles that suggested wisdom but possibly meant nothing.

She stood up and he led her out to the floor. They’d met at a Romance Studio guest party when he’d been invited by a former student, and she’d later seen him at Casa Loma. There was a kind of ballroom dancing subculture in St. Louis, as there was in most big cities. After a few years, the people who did this kind of dancing knew each other as those who communicated in a special language of the body.

“So how you been?” he asked, as he gathered her in for a fox-trot.

“Okay. You?”

“Same as always.” He assumed a rigid dance frame, waited for the one beat, then stepped forward. “I haven’t been taking lessons for a while, but I’m gonna go back soon as things slow down at work.”

“I’d never know you laid out.”

“Thanks.” He smiled. “Now I better not trip and fall.”

“I’m still out at Romance,” Mary told him, following his lead through a neat promenade pivot.

A couple in their twenties was doing swing near the edge of the floor, instead of toward the center where they’d be out of the way of the other dancers. The man led the woman through multiple underarm turns. Jim did a neat contrabody turn and guided Mary around them. He was smooth and had a confident lead, and he didn’t try to show off by taking her into intricate steps she might not know. Mary enjoyed dancing with Jim.

He opened her into promenade position just as the music died, so he merely did a neat check, extending his right leg forward, then drawing it, and Mary, briskly back.

They stood somewhat awkwardly for a moment in the vacuum left by the suddenly silent band, then he thanked her for the dance.

“Gonna do any competition dancing?” he asked, as he escorted her back to her table.

“I’m sorta planning on Ohio in November.”

“The Ohio Star Ball?” He seemed surprised.

“Sure, why not?”

He shrugged and grinned. “I can’t think of any reason why you shouldn’t. Hell, you’re good enough, Mary.”

“I’ll have to train.”

“Everybody trains hard for that one. It means a lot to dancers all over the country.”

“The world,” Mary corrected him. “Some of the top Canadians and Europeans compete there, too.”

“Okay,” Jim said, laughing, “the world.” He squeezed her arm gently. “Take it easy, Mary. If you compete and lose, life won’t punish you.”

She sat down thinking that was an odd thing for him to say. Maybe he’d glimpsed some intensity in her she didn’t suspect was that obvious, a desire to compete and win. A desire that, burning bright enough, could be visible in people, like madness. She got up, and went to the bar for a diet Pepsi.

When she returned, Helen and Willis had joined June and Curt at the table.

“Saw you dancing with Jim,” Helen said, her smile made sly by violet eyeliner.

“Well, that’s why I came here,” Mary told her, “to dance.” She pried up the tab on her soda can, fizzing some of the cold liquid onto her knuckles, and poured Pepsi over the ice in her plastic cup. Helen could be irritating; she sounded like a teenager at times, every school’s overweight, gossipy sophomore.

The bandleader said something into the microphone that, where the Romance Studio people were seated, sounded like an echoing, indecipherable announcement at a bus terminal. Then the band began playing a rumba. Big Curt thought he could handle that one, so he stood up and asked Mary to dance.

She followed him out to the edge of the floor.

Curt had improved in the last few months, but he still couldn’t stay on the beat. Mary listened to him muttering under the music, “Slow, quick-quick; slow, quick-quick,” as he guided her through a series of simple box steps. She began back-leading to make it easier for him, and he grinned in appreciation. Affable Curt. “Not one of my better dances,” he said apologetically. He told her that about every dance, every time they danced.

About halfway through the rumba, Mary glanced beyond Curt’s hulking shoulder and saw something that surprised her. She back-led skillfully so she was facing the right direction, and made sure her eyes hadn’t tricked her.

They hadn’t. There was old Fred Wellinger, dancing with a woman about forty who was wearing a tight red dress that belonged on a woman about twenty. He had his gray hair plastered sideways over his bald spot and was grinning down at her, and she smiled and said something, then rested her head against his chest. Fred’s right hand slid down to the swell of her buttock, his fingers gently stroking the taut red material of the dress as she swayed her rear in Latin rhythm.

Fred, you bastard! Mary thought. What would Angie say if she knew?

Fred happened to glance her way. A shock of recognition played over his features. Seen a ghost, Fred? He quickly danced his partner out of sight on the opposite side of the crowded floor.

Well, at least he hadn’t dragged the woman over and introduced her as a platonic relationship.

Curt stepped on the very tip of Mary’s toe, pinching the nail and causing a jolt of pain that made her temporarily break rhythm. Immediately he faltered, shaking his huge shaggy head and apologizing as fervently as if he’d just insulted her and all her ancestors.

Mary told him not to worry, he hadn’t hurt her, it was her fault, really. One of the first things dancers learned was that it was always the woman’s fault if she got stepped on, some flaw in her technique.

Reassured, he danced on, and she concentrated on following.

After the evening’s last dance, a waltz Mary did with Jim, she changed her shoes, said her good-byes, and left the dance hall to cross the street to the lot where her car was parked.

The night was dark, and Mary was almost at the car when she noticed something odd. It took several seconds for her mind to accept it. Something, a bird, seemed to have alighted on the car’s antenna. At first she was amused, until she realized the bird was motionless and in an awkward position with its wings drooping, and she could see the antenna protruding a few inches above it.

Her stomach tensed and moved with revulsion as she stepped closer and saw that someone had broken off the antenna to a sharp point and then impaled a sparrow on it.

She moved along the car and slumped against the rear fender, nauseated and trembling.

Something touched her shoulder and she jumped, almost shrieked.

“Mary?”

It was Jim.

“What’s wrong, Mary? You sick?”

She nodded toward the dead bird, frozen in its macabre imitation of flight. Heard Jim say, “What the hell?”

He walked closer to the bird, shook his head, then returned to her. “Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of it for you, Mary.”

She said nothing as he went to his car and returned with a wad of Kleenex in his hand. She turned away, and when she looked back, the bird was on the ground.

“Kids, I guess,” he said, dropping the Kleenex near the bird. “Probably saw a dead bird in the street and thought they’d give somebody a scare. Guess they managed.”

She knew that was what the police would say. No crime had been committed here. There was no victim other than a sparrow. There was no proof someone was trying to terrorize Mary and had sent her a sick and frightening message. Even she couldn’t be sure. Maybe the marks on her door and the dead bird were in no way connected. Maybe.

“Want me to follow you home, Mary?”

She told him no, she’d be okay. He moved close and strapped his arm around her.

“I’ll be all right,” she said. “Thanks, Jim.” She squirmed. Right now she didn’t want a man hugging her.

He sighed and removed his arm, smiled his slow smile. “Okay. Go home, have a drink, and try to forget this. Can you do that?”

She nodded, thinking a drink was the last thing she wanted.

Avoiding the dead bird, she climbed into her car and started the engine.

Jim stood watching as she drove away.