Dead Man Waltzing

It was well past nine o’clock by now and the crowd had thinned out. A waiter came by and we both shook our heads at him. He collected our glasses and swiped at the table, leaving a damp swirl on the polyurethaned wood. Tucking the cartridge under his arm, Maurice slid off his stool. I followed suit. We headed for the door and Maurice collected a few “congrats” and “good nights” from the remaining drinkers. “See you in the morning,” I said, trying to sound natural and spritely.

“A demain,” Maurice said, walking me to my car and declining a ride home. I watched from behind the steering wheel as he started down the sidewalk toward his house, shoulders slumped just a little, stride a bit less sure than usual. Striped by a car’s headlights, he crossed a street and I lost sight of him.

* * *

Vitaly stomped into the studio the next morning for our practice, tossed his designer sunglasses on top of the stereo cabinet, and announced, “John is being a total fanny.”

I had to think about that one for a moment. “Ass?”

“Da!” He nodded, adding a phrase in Russian that probably translated to something ruder than “ass.”

He marched in place to warm up, each foot pounding down in a way that suggested he was envisioning his partner’s head under his heels. I’d never seen him so worked up. His thin cheeks were flushed, and his strawlike hair flopped as he marched. He had moved from Russia to live with John in Baltimore three or four months back, and I’d met John several times since Vitaly and I had become partners. He was a bit older than Vitaly-in his forties, I’d say-and seemed like a steady, kind man. I carefully didn’t ask what John had done to merit being called an ass, since getting involved in Vitaly’s love life-even peripherally-seemed like a bad idea.

“You is wanting to know how John is being an ass, yes?” Vitaly said, launching himself across the room in a series of deep lunges. “Well, I am telling you. He is insist we must kennel Lulu when we is vacation in France next month.”

My brain worked to dredge up Lulu. Their boxer puppy. “Um,” I murmured, going through my own warm-up routine. Frankly, it didn’t seem too ass-ish to me. A not-yet-house-trained puppy in a hotel on the Cote d’Azur sounded like a big pain in the ass to me.

“Lulu is being lonely without I and John. She is not like living in a box.”

“Maybe Lulu’s afraid of flying,” I said. Damn, I hadn’t meant to get involved.

“You think?” Vitaly looked struck.

“There are lots of very good pet sitters who stay in your house and take care of your pets. Walk them, feed them, keep them company.” In for a penny, in for a pound. “I’m sure if you asked around, some of your dog-owning friends could recommend someone.”

“John should have thinked of this,” Vitaly announced. “I will telling. Now, we dancing.”

He pulled me toward him and spun me away and we sprang into the jive, spending a sweaty hour practicing our side-by-side figures and our lifts. Our timing still wasn’t quite right on some of our lifts-we’d been working together only a couple months, after all-and if I didn’t want to end up on my nose when he swung me up so my heels kicked toward the ceiling, I had to hit his hands just right with my pelvic bones, my hands and locked-elbow arms bracing against his shoulders. Our foreheads clunked together at one point, but we kept going until our trembling arms forced a break.

I was collapsed on the floor sipping a bottled water, and Vitaly was downing his usual grapefruit juice, when I heard the outside door squeak open. WD-40, I reminded myself as Hoover bounded in. His toenails clicked on the ballroom’s wood floor and he skidded to a stop in front of me, licking my face and then sniffing at the bottle I held.

“Hi, Hoover.” I patted his head, edging away from the strand of drool about to decorate my tank top. The Great Dane trotted over to see whether Vitaly’s bottle held anything more tempting than water, and Mildred entered the room, a beatific smile on her face.

“Hello, everyone,” she said as if Vitaly and I were a crowd of dozens. “We have news!”

“We” turned out to be her and Maurice, who entered moments after her, looking more his usual self than when we parted last night. I smiled at him. “The cartridge?” I asked.

“Yes, Anastasia, the cartridge.” Maurice held up the black plastic case, which now had a loop of ribbon hanging from its pointy end.

“We have decoded it,” Mildred announced importantly, waving a thin sheaf of paper. Her white hair bounced happily around her plump cheeks. “We have divined the mysteries of Corinne’s manuscript.” She flourished one hand into the air like a fortune-teller announcing messages from the great beyond. “All is revealed.”

Vitaly looked confused. “What is this cartridge?”

Taking turns and talking over each other, Maurice, Mildred, and I explained what the cartridge was and how we had gotten it. “Now,” I finished, “they’re going to tell us what they learned.”

Vitaly and I turned expectant gazes on the older pair.

“It’s not quite what we were hoping,” Maurice hedged. “It turns out this must have been a new cartridge, because there were only a couple pages’ worth of material on it. That’s why we were able to copy it off pretty quickly.”

“So tedious,” Mildred put in. “Letter by letter. I don’t understand why dear Corinne”-I didn’t think she’d ever met Corinne Blakely, but Mildred was the kind of person who made friends immediately, even with a dead woman-“didn’t use a computer. I can’t imagine life without a computer.”

That was rich, coming from a woman who’d lived more than half her life before the invention of the silicon chip.

“Why, it’s so much easier to keep up with my sorority sisters and friends with Facebook. I remember when one had to write letters by hand and hunt for one’s address book to address them, and then wait for the postal service to deliver them, and the friend to find time to write back-phah! Twitter’s the way to go. I have seventy-four followers, you know.” She beamed at us.

“The manuscript?” Maurice nudged her gently.

Hoover settled beside me, his heavy head on my lap, as Mildred began to read. “It starts in midsentence. ‘… lucky to have lived most of my adult life in the world of dance, surrounded by friends and family who venerate the art form. Although it might seem, from some of the reminiscences I’ve shared with you, that the world of ballroom dance is rife with scandal and backbiting and skullduggery, I suggest that this passion finds its way into the dance and makes it the art form that it is. In every walk of life, there are husbands who cheat, children who disappoint, friends who betray. In dance, at least, there is also beauty and movement, expiation and forgiveness in the sweat and rigor and partnership. In dance, it really does take two to tango, so relationships become paramount.

“‘As I pen these words, the International Olympic Committee is deciding whether or not DanceSport should become an Olympic event. If you’ve stuck with me through the last two hundred some-odd pages, you know how I hope the vote comes out! But even if DanceSport does not receive the IOC’s blessing, it has still blessed my life in innumerable, immeasurable ways. And I am thankful for it.’”

Mildred glanced up from the page and wiped a tear from her eye. “So beautiful.”

I locked eyes with Maurice. “But… two hundred pages! This isn’t an outline-it’s a final chapter.”

“Just so, Anastasia,” he agreed.

“Then… then there is a completed manuscript.”

“Unless she is starting at the end?” Vitaly suggested.

I considered it briefly before shaking my head. “No, the page count makes it sound like she’s already written the whole thing.” I jumped up, dislodging Hoover. “Mrs. Laughlin lied!”

Chapter 28

Maurice tapped a finger against his lips. “Now, Anastasia, maybe there’s some other explanation. Maybe