The mirror was twenty feet long and eight feet high in this long room, with barres on the end walls, a piano (ignored) at one side, and soundproofing in the ceiling to keep the reverb down. Brenda was interested in the mirror not only for what she saw in it, her own cute ass, firm body, rhythmic movements, but also for what she couldn’t see beyond it.
This hardwood floor she and the group were step-step-stepping on was part of the parade field from the building’s military days. The field, she knew, continued on under the mirrored wall. Over there, imaginable in her mind’s eye, was the jewelry wholesaler, like something out of the Arabian Nights. Another reason to smile at the mirror.
When she traveled with Ed Mackey, Brenda called herself Brenda Fawcett. Since she seemed to travel With Ed all the time, she might as well beBrenda Fawcett, so a while ago, for a birthday present, Ed had given her various kinds of ID driver’s licenses from different states, credit cards she shouldn’t try to use all in that name. What made it a real present was, all the IDs made her a year younger.
She’d called herself Brenda Fawcett here at the Johnson-Ross Studio of the Dance out of habit. She wouldn’t be flashing ID here because she was paying for her lessons this was the third in cash, explaining to the receptionist at the initial interview, showing a smile that was both confidential and sheepish, ‘I don’t want my husband to know. Not yet.’
The girl smiled, charmed by her. ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ she said. ‘You’re not the first like that. It’s such a sweet surprise, I think.’
‘Me, too,’ Brenda said.
One of the nice things about this low-impact routine, you could have a quiet conversation under the music because, if you were in any shape at all, what you were doing didn’t use up all your breath. The first session, Brenda had taken a position next to a petite blonde in a pink leotard, who turned out to be named June and to be just as gabby as she looked. In two hours and counting, Brenda had learned a lot about June’s love life, which tended toward the high impact, but also about this city, this dance studio, and this building.
Which was the point. What Ed did was always illegal and sometimes dangerous, especially when he was teamed with Parker. More than most people, he needed somebody to watch his back. That’s what Brenda did, and she’d come in useful more than once. To know the territory was, she believed, part of the job.
And June was happy to talk about the territory. ‘There wasn’t anything like this here before,’ she explained. ‘You’d have to go to LA to see a facility like this. Or maybe Vegas.’
‘Then we’re lucky it showed up,’ Brenda agreed.
‘It’s all Mrs Johnson-Ross,’ June assured her. ‘She’s a local girl, she went away to New York, she had a careerthere, and when this opportunity came along, all this space, she came back and snapped it up.’
‘Good for her. And good for us.’
That conversation had been during lesson number two. Now, in lesson number three, they were both being quiet, following the leader’s sinuous movements, Brenda feeling the stretch in those long side muscles it’s so hard to tone, and then, in the mirror, she saw the door centered in the wall behind them open and a woman walk in.
Not for a second did Brenda doubt this was Mrs Johnson-Ross. Tall, too blonde, she carried her just-a-little excess weight as though it were a fashion accessory she was pleased to own. She dressed in verticals, a long dark jacket open over a darker pantsuit with deep lapels, in turn over a blouse in two shades of vertical light blue stripes. The effect was to make the body fade away and emphasize the blonde-framed face, slightly puffy but still very good looking.
Dramatically attractive. How old? Midfifties, maybe.
Brenda turned her head toward June: ‘There’s the boss.’
June looked at the mirror, and beamed with pleasure. ‘Isn’t she something?’
‘She certainly is.’
Mrs Johnson-Ross, Brenda knew, herself only took individual students, in modern and jazz and ballet, in other smaller rehearsal rooms, leaving the ballroom dancing and aerobics to her staff, though she did occasionally, like now, drop in to see how one of the classes was coming along. Brenda watched her watch the class, then suddenly she realized she was making eye contact.
Mrs Johnson-Ross did not look away. Expressionless, her blue eyes cold, she looked at Brenda through four beats of the music, as though to memorize her. Then, abruptly, she turned away and, as silently as she’d come in, left the room.
Jesus, she’s tough, Brenda thought. I wonder what thatwas all about.
5
The most exciting part of it, Henry Freedman knew, and the thought frightened him as much as it titillated him, was the knowledge that he could be caught at any second, exposed, ruined, as much a pariah as any biblical outcast in his cave. Even more than the sex, it was the danger that aroused Henry. Maybe not the first or second time they’d been together, but every time since.
In the car, driving to or from the assignations, or on the phone, spinning out more tortured lies to Muriel, he kept telling himself he had to stop, he had to stop now,the thrill wasn’t worth the risk, he wasn’t that kind of man. He was fifty-two years of age, for God’s sake, he’d never been unfaithful to Muriel in twenty-two years of marriage until the last year and a half. And now he was helpless, he was like a hypnosis subject, it was as though Darlene had a hand inside his trousers and just steadily, inexorably, pulled him toward her.
He’d met Darlene Johnson-Ross more than five years ago, when she’d moved her dance studio into the Armory, the neighbor of his father Jerome, and for nearly four years she’d merely been the attractive if somewhat over-the- hill person he occasionally saw when he visited his father or met with Harrigan, the Armory manager. Henry was one of the more active principals in Armory Associates, the consortium that had bought the old white elephant from the GSA and given it, and the downtown around it, a whole new life. He’d been proud of his part in it, and he’d never for a second suspected that the Armory would be the source of his ruin.
Oh, well, he thought, driving yet again toward the Armory, grin and bear it, though in fact he was doing neither. Tortured, obsessed, so deeply mired in his midlife crisis he couldn’t even see it, like a disoriented diver plunging toward the depths while trying desperately to reach the air, Henry drove the Infiniti around the Armory that late afternoon at five-thirty at least he could still take pride in that,the elegance of the conversion to the garage
