Dancing with the Dead

7

Helen James said, “The police don’t think it’s significant that she danced.”

“That who danced?” Mary asked, working her feet into her Latin shoes. Leaning down from where she was seated on the vinyl bench, she fastened their straps in the last hole, so the shoes would stay tight; tonight’s lesson was going to cover cha-cha and mambo, which meant lots of pressure against the floor.

“Danielle Verlane.” Helen had her shoes on and was waiting for her seven-thirty private lesson with her instructor, Nick. She stood with her weight on one foot and was avidly reading this morning’s Post. “She’s the woman who was killed in New Orleans, remember?”

Mary said she remembered. She didn’t feel like talking about Danielle Verlane. Or listening. Work today at Summers Realty, where she was a closing woman, one of two brokers who handled final transfers of titles, had been a blur, an exercise she’d gone through automatically merely so she could reach this evening as soon as possible. She’d been so mindless she’d made mistakes she’d have to rectify tomorrow. But she wouldn’t think about them until morning.

The flowers had arrived at work at eight-thirty, and she’d had to shyly acknowledge they were from Jake, all the while avoiding Victor’s knowing gaze. What the hell had he been staring at? — the bruised tissue under her eye was no longer noticeable beneath her makeup. She’d become adroit at applying cosmetics to disguise injury.

She rummaged in her dance bag and found her wire brush, then began working its stiff bristles across the soles of her shoes, forward toward the toes. Satisfying work.

“The husband’s name’s Rene,” Helen said, still with her nose in the paper. “It turns out Danielle was seen dancing in a couple of French Quarter hot spots. Doing some fancy jive, was the way one witness put it. Another place she was tangoing with some guy, and that was the last time she was seen alive.”

Mary suspected that Victor, who was a fifty-year-old widower with male pattern baldness, had a crush on her. Well, the hell with him. He was too old for her, and he wore way too much perfumed deodorant, probably something male models dressed as cowboys splashed on in TV commercials. Why was that sort of man always interested in her? Did she send out some kind of goddamn vibes that attracted them, like smart bombs?

“The husband wants the police to check out dance studios to find the guys she was dancing with, but they don’t see it as all that significant that she was dancing. Hubby thinks it is significant. The cop in charge disagrees and says she happened to be in places where there was dancing, so she danced. Cops for you.”

“The cops might be right,” Mary said, standing up and shifting her weight from leg to leg, loosening her hips. She’d recently trimmed her toenails and one of them was digging into the side of the adjacent toe, but it was only a minor discomfort she could ignore. Once she began dancing she wouldn’t feel it.

“No, no, Mary, she was a dancer. Like us. So I say right on, Rene, don’t listen to the fuzz.”

“Nobody calls the police fuzz anymore,” Mary said, smiling.

“They do if you hang around the right places.”

“Where do you hang around?” Mary asked.

“Here,” Helen said. A subtle sadness had edged into her voice. “This is what’s left of my social life now that George is gone. And I guess you’re right, nobody here calls the cops fuzz. They’re all too refined. Or they pretend to be.”

Murder in New Orleans was bad enough. Mary really didn’t want to talk about Helen’s dead husband. Or the one she’d divorced last year after a disastrous two-month marriage.

“Ladies! We ready to dance and learn?”

Mel and Nick had come out of the office and were standing side by side behind them. Mel was much the taller of the two, smiling along with Nick, who winked at Helen. Nick looked Greek or Italian and was slightly overweight, but when he moved on the dance floor he seemed to weigh only two or three pounds.

“I’m ready to dance, anyway,” Helen said. Her voice suggested she was still thinking about George and the past. The past was sticky. It never really let go of anyone.

“Don’t be pessimistic, dear,” Nick said, gliding over to her and gently gripping her elbow. “Not here. Here’s where we learn and have fun.” He steered her out onto the floor, beneath twisted white ribbons of crepe paper and clusters of red and white balloons that had been strung for tomorrow night’s practice party. “Mambo tonight, dear,” Nick was saying. “We’ll practice arm checks, then I’ll show you how to do flicks.”

“You okay, Mary?” Mel asked quietly, still smiling at her.

She had to smile back. “Sure. I was just listening to Helen tell me about some woman who got herself killed down in New Orleans.” She nodded toward the folded paper Helen had dropped onto the bench before being escorted out onto the dance floor.

Mel’s gaze followed the motion of her head, then he did a double take. He walked over and picked up the paper. “Hey, she looks familiar.”

“Her name’s Danielle, I think. She did ballroom dancing. That’s why Helen’s interested in the case.”

“I remember her now!” Mel said, gazing wide-eyed at Mary. Death wasn’t part of his world, yet here it had dared to turn up, right here in the studio where even the slightest unpleasantness wasn’t supposed to intrude. It was as if the Antichrist had arrived in suede-soled shoes. “I remember her from about five years ago when I taught at a studio in New Orleans. God, she was my student!”

Mel seemed so stricken by surprise at the proximity of death that Mary didn’t know what to say. “Well, she’s dead,” she muttered stupidly.

“You say she was murdered?” Mel asked, not bothering to read the words that accompanied Danielle Verlane’s photograph.

“That’s what the paper says. Her husband wants the police to start questioning people who went to the same dance studio.”

“Huh? They don’t think a dancer had anything to do with her death, do they?”

“That’s what the husband thinks, according to Helen. What it says in this morning’s paper.”

“Well, that’s really weird.”

Mel dropped the paper back onto the bench and stretched his lean frame. He grinned, tossing off the news of his former student’s murder with an ease that astounded Mary, considering his previous apparent shock. What could it have to do with him? With smiles and balloons? With youth and life and promenade pivots?

“Time to dance, Mary.” He extended his arm for her.

“Keep your weight on the inner edge of your feet, dear,” Nick was gently admonishing Helen as Mel and Mary passed them. Helen was frowning in concentration, trying to shift her weight and rock her wide hips in the Cuban motion that was necessary for Latin dancing.

“We’ll work on mambo first,” Mel said. “That way we can use their music, if you don’t mind.” He moved close to Mary in dance position, tucked a hand around behind her back, then lifted her right hand and leaned slightly toward her.

Dancing to someone else’s tune, Mary thought, tightening her body and waiting for the beat. “I don’t mind,” she told Mel. What would it matter even if there were no music, as long as she was dancing and forgetting her boring job, her struggle to be competitive in Ohio, Angie getting older and more cunning at hiding bottles. And Jake and his fists and flowers. Jake.

What was it Angie had said about Jake being somehow beyond what Duke had been?

“Freeze completely on the one count,” Mel reminded her, rhythmically flexing his knees in time to the music. “… two, three, four, one. That’s it-freeze!”

Then the music took them and they danced.

That night she dreamed she was dancing the tango, but not with Mel. They were in a vast, airy place and she couldn’t see the man’s face, but he was a beautiful dancer, leading her through steps she’d seen only Silver-ranked dancers do. She slipped into perfect tango rhythm, feeling it pulsate through her entire body, through her soul. The man was whispering something to her she couldn’t understand. What he said didn’t interest her anyway; only the way he danced, and how it made her feel. Her body was young and strong and supple, and she knew it was acting out flawlessly the patterns and elegant lines of her imagination. Her feet knew where to go and when. She held her counts when she was supposed to, snapped her head around with precision, whirled with perfect grace and poise.

Then suddenly she was aware of another couple on the floor, dancing with the same grace and precision. They whirled into sight. Jake dancing with Danielle Verlane. He was smiling over her shoulder at Mary.

When she awoke she lay silently in the dark. She was perspiring heavily and her heart was beating very fast. The whine of truck tires drifted all the way from Kingshighway into her bedroom. In the distance a dog was barking frantically and forlornly. Night sounds.

Wondering what her dream had meant, she lay awake till daylight.