Dancing with the Dead

11

A single red rose this time, held like something injured in his huge rough hand and backed by an embarrassed smile. He said, “I heard someplace a rose by itself meant I love you.”

She could meet his rage easier than his shame. Looking at him obliquely, she said, “It takes more’n a rose, Jake.”

“Don’t you think I know it, Mary?”

“No.”

“So, can I at least come in?” He glanced from side to side; he didn’t want any of the neighbors seeing him standing there like a schoolboy with a peace offering.

“Come on,” she sighed, and stepped back to let him pass. He hadn’t been home, wherever he was staying, after getting off work last night; he smelled faintly of old dust, old sweat, and stale beer. She closed the door behind him, suddenly thinking, God, he’s in now! A few nights ago I swore this would never happen.

“Cool in here,” he said, looking around as if the place were strange to him.

“What’d you expect?”

He smiled. “Naw, I mean the air’s cool. But sure, I expected you to be cool to me. You got a right.”

“I sure as hell do.” She tried to muster anger, but it rose and then fell back in her, unable to sustain itself. It found the level of irritation, aimed more at herself, for letting him in, than at Jake.

She looked at him, still looming awkwardly with the rose in his hand. He was a tall man, and hefty. Handsome when he dressed up in jacket and tie, which was seldom. Wavy black hair going thin on top; permanently arched black eyebrows above narrowed and seeking gray eyes; a drooping dark mustache that gave him a somber expression despite his habitual half-smile. Today he was wearing khaki slacks, smudged from the warehouse and with a pair of leather work gloves protruding like limp severed hands from a back pocket. He had on scuffed brown loafers, a blue pullover shirt with an alligator sewn over the pocket. See you later, she felt like saying.

“You thought about our phone conversation?” he asked.

“There was nothing to think about; it was a conversation we’ve had lots of times. I don’t believe I wanna see you again, Jake.”

He waved the rose helplessly and with desperate meaning, as if it were a signal light on a black night. “Hey, Mary, you can’t mean that!”

And maybe she couldn’t mean it. Maybe she was simply acting out a charade because the alternative might be some crueler truth. But she had to try. She studied the dark pouches beneath his eyes. “You look like shit, Jake.”

“Well, I stopped off for a couple drinks and some socializing after work. I been up all night.” He extended the rose toward her, along with the boyish half-smile. “Be nice to me, Mary. A thorn’s digging into my hand. You got a place to put this flower, or should I drop it so you can stomp on it?”

She went into the kitchen and rooted through the cabinet over the sink. All she could find that might accommodate the long-stemmed rose was a tall beer glass with “Busch” stenciled on it in dishwasher-faded blue letters. She ran three fingers of water into it and carried it into the living room.

Jake hadn’t moved. She took the rose from him and inserted it in the tall glass, then set the glass on top of a TV Guide on the television set. A jackhammer chattered outside, off in the distance. Something being built, or torn down.

“What happened to your door?” Jake asked.

“I don’t know. It looks like somebody tried to get in while I was gone.”

He shot her a concerned look. “You call the police?”

“Yeah. Not much they can do.” She considered telling him about last night outside Casa Loma, then decided she didn’t want to confide in him and give the impression she needed him.

“So,” Jake said, “you leaning toward forgiving me?”

“You know which way I’m leaning.”

He started to cross his arms, but he changed his mind and absently scratched a bulging bicep. Then he let his hands dangle at his sides, like lifeless appendages made obsolete through evolution. “Listen, you sure you’re… okay?”

“I’m about healed, if that’s what you mean.”

“Goddamnit, Mary, I hate to hurt you… to have hurt you. You know that, don’t you? It’s important to me that you realize it. I wouldn’t admit this to anybody else, but I get scared sometimes, Mary. I just lose it and lash out. It’s fear, that’s what it is-fear. You understand what I’m trying to say?”

“What kinda fear?”

“Hell, I’m not sure, or I could do something about it, you know? Sometimes I can’t figure out why I do things, Mary.”

She felt the familiar pity trying to coil itself like snakes around her heart. Not this time, not this time! “Jake, Jake… I could have you arrested.”

“Yeah, you could.” He stared at the carpet. “I wouldn’t blame you. Maybe you should.”

“It won’t be necessary,” Mary said, “if we stop seeing each other. Or if you go get some professional help.”

His mustache arced down and his eyes flashed anger. He drew a deep breath, containing his aggravation. “It’s nothing I can’t handle myself!”

“You haven’t so far.”

“That’s so far, right?”

She sighed. “Right, Jake.” How he wanted to be tough, to kill the parts of himself that felt.

The weekend early news had gone full circle and was rerunning on TV. Mary had been barely conscious of it, but now a name snagged her attention: “Danielle Verlane.”

A severe woman in a tailored suit was co-anchoring the news this morning. She led into a repetition of the tape Mary had watched earlier, Rene Verlane being interviewed in his New Orleans home, seated on his sofa and looking handsome and suave and deeply touched by tragedy, wearing his grief like a true Southern gentleman. He again expressed his opinion that his wife’s murder might have had something to do with the world of ballroom dancing, since on the night of her death she’d been last seen doing a tango with a man in a New Orleans night spot. Not many men, he pointed out, knew how to tango. This tape ran several seconds longer than the last version Mary had seen. She watched as Verlane barely repressed his outrage at how the police and some of the media were suggesting Danielle was somehow to blame for her own murder.

“See what your dancing can get you?” Jake said, his injured gray eyes fixed on the screen.

Mary knew he was only partly joking. They’d talked about her dancing before. Jake thought it was a stupid pastime and refused to join her in it, but he accepted her absences when she spent time at the studio. She’d tried to explain why she danced, but either he couldn’t understand or she couldn’t find the right words. It was her fault, she supposed, because she’d never completely explained even to herself why she so desperately needed to dance.

“None of my business, Mary, but I know how much those lessons cost.”

“Cost doesn’t have anything to do with-”

“So whadda we have here? Art?” For some reason he was angry. “You’re no twenty-year-old Ginger Rogers. You’re a thirty-five-year-old yuppie career woman, am I right?”

“You’re right if you wanna be, Jake. You get outa bed right every morning, and you go to bed that way at night.”

He grinned and shook his head hopelessly. “Hey, I went and got you mad again. Got myself mad. I’m sorry, babe, I really am.”

She knew he was, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it. “I have to leave for work, Jake.”

“Huh? It’s Saturday.”

“I’m working extra hours. Besides, weekends are the biggest days in real estate.”

“You’re really serious? You’re going to work?”

“That’s why I’m up and dressed, Jake.”

“You never worked before on Saturday.”

“Sure I have.”

“Not very often.”

“Well, I need the money.”

“For what? Something to do with dancing, I bet.”

“You’d win that bet.”

He thought about that, then shrugged. “Well, if it makes you happy it’s okay with me.”

“That’s indulgent of you, Jake.”

He glanced again at the TV: a commercial for dog food now, edited so beagle pups appeared to be dancing in unison. The New Orleans murder hadn’t been a big story, so it had played toward the end of the broadcast.

“You oughta remember what happened to that guy’s wife, Mary. I mean, in a way it was her fault, out dancing with strange characters. You take a big chance, doing something crazy like that.”

“She didn’t murder herself, Jake.” The pups began to sing.

“You wanna play games and run back and forth across the street blindfolded, eventually you’re gonna get hit by a car. It’ll be the driver’s fault, but then again it won’t be. It’ll be your fault for tempting fate. That was the game she was playing, tempting fate.”

“She went where men knew how to dance,” Mary said. “That’s not tempting fate, it’s wanting to tango.”

“Her husband shouldn’t have let her go. So in a way it’s kinda his fault, too.”

“He obviously didn’t know where she was. Or maybe he knew and didn’t care. I mean, for God’s sake, she was only dancing.”

“And now she’s only dead.”

Mary picked up her purse. “I gotta get outa here, Jake.”

He put on his hurt-little-boy expression, ludicrous on such a big man. “Mary, I worked till past midnight, and I been up all night.”

“So go home and go to bed. I’ve gotta leave.”

“Hey, I’m exhausted. Why can’t I catch some winks here?” Hint of a smile. “I mean, it’s not like I’m a stranger to the bed.”

“Jake-”

“I’ll be gone way before you get home, Mary. I promise. So what’ll it hurt? If I try to drive now, I’m so beat I’m liable to fall asleep at the wheel and plow into some kid on his way to school.”

“Not on Saturday, Jake.”

“So maybe he’s going to school to earn extra credit, the way you’re going to work to earn an extra couple of bucks.”

It was impossible to argue with him. And he looked immovable, all 220 pounds of him. But she didn’t want him here, in her bed again. Didn’t want to make that concession, turn that corner.

Then she saw again the horrible thing on her car last night, and the knife marks on her door. There might be some advantages to having Jake in the apartment while she was away. Anyone watching the place might assume he was still living there, or that he might turn up at any time. She thought, Better than a doberman.

She said, “All right, Jake. Just this once. I’m only working till one o’clock, and I expect you to be gone when I get back.”

“Hey, Mary, didn’t I promise?”

“You’ve promised before and broken your word.”

“I know,” he said miserably. He peeled off his shirt and turned his broad back on her, swaggering toward the bedroom. The shirt had been plastered to his flesh. He was sweating heavily despite the coolness of the apartment. He raked his fingers through his dark hair. “Don’t work too hard, Mary,” he called over his shoulder.

She wouldn’t. The office was only her first stop, and she planned on spending a little over an hour there to get her desk in order. Then it was on to Romance Studio for an extra lesson with Mel.

She said, “Thanks for the rose,” and closed the door behind her.