'What kind?'
'What kind you want?'
'She dances good.' Dix finished loading the joint. He sealed the papers with his tongue before lighting up and taking a couple of long drags. He passed it across the table to me.
'Here, it goes good with whisky.'
Sylvie laughed.
'Goes good with everything.'
'Cheers.' I took a long toke, pulling the smoke right down into my lungs then coughed against its goodness. 'Quality stuff.'
My voice had taken on the same dry essence as Sylvie’s uncle’s.
'The best.' He nodded.
I took another couple of drags. I could feel it working on my bones, better than any massage.
Dix squinted at Sylvie through the smoke.
'You should dance for him.'
Sylvie got to her feet, I noticed again how slight she was, how upright her posture. She leaned towards me, taking the spliff, then threw her head back, sucking down a long drag of the joint, twirling her small body into a pirouette. She tumbled out of it laughing, 'You should try this, Will, it surely ups the high.'
'If I get any higher I won’t come down.'
Dix repeated, 'You should dance for him.' He looked at me. 'They need any dancers at your place?'
'I don’t know. I could ask around.' I looked at Sylvie. 'You don’t have to.'
'But I’d like to.' She walked over to a CD player and started flicking through a handful of discs on the floor beside it. 'I need the practice.' Sylvie lowered her voice into a parody of an artist. 'I’m between engagements.'
'She quit her job.' Uncle Dix smiled proudly. 'Told them to stick it up their ass.'
Sylvie looked up from the CD in her hand, 'That kind of job you can get anywhere.'
Dix shrugged his shoulders; he was already rolling another spliff.
I asked, 'What’s your line of work?'
He looked at me and I wondered if he didn’t understand the phrasing of the question, then he grinned and said, 'I mind my own business.'
'Dix can turn his hand to anything.'
Sylvie found the disk she was looking for and slid it into the machine. She kicked off her boots, bent into a couple of stretches, knocked back the last of her whisky, and pressed
<Play>. The CD started with a lazy saxophone solo. Sylvie was already backing away, shaking her hips to the contra-beat, moving upraised arms against the melody, rolling her eyes as if in ecstasy as she reversed onto the bare floor in front of Dix and me. She eased her hips into a long weaving roll like a Hawaiian girl who’d had some soma slipped in her coconut milk. Then the rhythm changed to a percussive beat and Sylvie cartwheeled backwards into a handstand that was slow and sexy, showing the length of her leg, a flash of secret seam. She drew herself up to her full height, raising her arms till she was posed like JC on the cross and shook into a rhythm that was old and elemental. Sylvie smiled as she altered her moves to meet the tempo, pointing her toes like a ballerina, high-kicking like a burlesque showgirl then dropping to the floor in avantgarde writhings impossible to classify. Dix nodded his head and I fought an urge to look at my feet. At last the music ended, Dix and I clapped and Sylvie broke her final pose, slumping back onto the ground looking like she hadn’t broken sweat. She smiled and said, 'That was my audition piece.'
I woke in the morning with a dread of my forthcoming performance, a sore head, dry throat and only a vague recollection of the night’s end. I rolled over, hoping against hope to see Sylvie’s dark head beside me, but the rest of the bed was empty, the sheets rumpled as if I had been thrashing about, though the stiffness in my back suggested I’d slept like the dead.
After Sylvie’s dance it had been my turn for a party piece. Sylvie had produced a pack of cards and asked me to give them a show. I’d palmed them for the deck in my pocket and given my hosts a simple routine. She’d been full of gasps and exaggerated wonder but Uncle had kept his cool, looking like he’d seen it all before. After a while he’d asked, 'So are cards just for tricks or can you play serious games?'
'Like what?'
'Like poker.'
He inclined his head, his face so card-sharp straight it was hard not to laugh. I guess the grass had started to work on me by then. I pushed down the giggles and said,
'Sometimes.'
'Any good?'
I folded the deck into a fancy weave.
'Too good to play you for money when I’m accepting your hospitality.'
'Ah, that good.' He took the pack from me and riffled them into a neat shuffle. 'I’d like to see you play all the same.'
'Fine by me if we make it a friendly stake.'
Dix looked amused and I wondered if he thought I was after his grass or his girl, if indeed she was his girl, but
