“Naw, I always got bats in my stomach,” Nick said.
“Belfry, too,” Mel told him. Everybody laughed harder than they should have.
Helen pointed a glitter-enameled fingernail out the side window. “Our home for the next three days,” she said.
Mary thought, Only hours to Blast-off.
He sat deep and unnoticed in a warm leather sofa and watched them enter the hotel. They’d been arriving in groups and checking in all day. There was a look about women who danced, something in their posture and precise movement that flaunted and excited.
The heat and rage expanded in him as he watched them line up at the desk to register, talking and smiling, so at ease and unknowing. They even stood motionless like dancers, weight on one leg, hip thrust out, tempting, tantalizing. Where their flesh didn’t show, they glittered, or their strong bodies stretched fabric as tight as his skin was stretched by his desire. He thought about the knife and had to lower the magazine he’d been pretending to read, so it covered his lap.
Even the older women who danced kept their attitude of allure despite the fact that they’d become pathetic parodies of their younger selves. Once a whore…
But he barely glanced at the old ones hanging on the arms of instructors the ages of their sons. And it was only with the greatest effort that he didn’t stare at the young ones.
He formed a perfect image of the knife in his mind and waited confidently for the voice.
A perfect image.
38
The elevator zoomed to the tenth floor with a speed that made her stomach lurch.
To save on expenses, Mary was sharing a room with Helen. The bellhop, a pimply youth with a remarkably crooked nose, led them to 1011, a luxurious but oddly shaped corner room with an angular row of windows looking over downtown Columbus. Mary stood near the bed and stared at her unfamiliar surroundings on both sides of the glass. The reality of what was truly happening was still something of a shock.
The bellhop laboriously carried in their suitcases and garment bags from his luggage cart parked in the hall, then he showed Mary and Helen the room, demonstrating that the TV worked and doors did indeed open onto closet and bathroom.
As he handed Helen the perforated plastic cards that were used for room keys at the Hyatt Regency, the young bellhop wished them both luck in the dance competition.
“How’d you guess that’s what we’re here for?” Helen asked.
He grinned. “Easy. You both got the look of dancers. Real graceful-like.”
Helen tipped him five dollars.
“Anything else you need, ladies, let me know. Name’s Howard.”
“Thanks, Howard, we’ll do that” Helen said, and stood waiting while he bustled out and closed the door behind him.
“Howard knows the way to a dancer’s heart,” Mary said.
“Or wherever he wants to go.” Helen sat on the nearest bed and bounced up and down a few times to test the mattress. For a moment she looked like a twelve-year-old lost in play. Maybe that was really why they were here, Mary thought, to lose themselves in the maypole motion of childhood.
An adult again, Helen rested her hands on the edge of the bed and stared up at Mary, frowning as if she shared Mary’s pain. “Your friend Jake did that to you, right?”
“You know he did,” Mary said. “Everybody else seems to know, too, so there’s no sense talking about it.”
“Talking can help sometimes. Relieves the pressure.”
“Sometimes not.”
“I thought you threw the guy out again.”
Mary walked to the windows and looked out at the sun-streaked haze of pollution that lay over Columbus. Unhealthy, she told herself, but undeniably beautiful. Too much in the world was that way.
“Don’t let him come back this time, Mary. Be smart and don’t let him back in.”
Mary turned to face her. “He’s out for good, Helen. I know it this time. He knows it, too. I guess that’s maybe why he did this to me, because he knew it was finally over.” She raised her arms and did a slow rumba box. “Let’s concentrate on the competition, huh?”
“You got it,” Helen said. “First thing’s to see what we can do with makeup so your black-and-blue marks don’t show too much tomorrow.”
“I think that’ll have to wait till morning, when we know how much the bruises have faded.”
Helen stood up, making the bed creak. “Okay, then let’s unpack and go downstairs and register, find out when we’re scheduled to compete.”
Mary removed her two dresses from the garment bag and hung them carefully in the closet.
“You got a couple of great outfits,” Helen said, holding up her own competition dresses on their hangers, a pink and white gown, for smooth dancing, a low-cut red dress for rhythm. She was apparently waiting for Mary’s comment. A little confidence boosting was in order here.
“You, too.” Mary actually thought the red dress was a bad choice; it would showcase Helen’s gelatinous upper arms.
“I got real long gloves to go with the Latin dress,” Helen said.
Mary hoped they were long enough. She hoisted her suitcase onto the bed and began unpacking.
When she unzipped her shoe bag and withdrew the new black Latin shoes, she saw that both heels had been reduced to stumps less than an inch long, their truncated ends shredded as if they’d been sawed or whittled with a dull knife.
Jake! Jake with a parting gesture of disdain, a final slash at hope before her flight took off.
Her stomach tightened and blood rushed from her face. For an instant she thought she might have to dash into the bathroom and vomit.
“Whazza matter, Mary?”
She held up the shoes.
“Oh, Christ!” Helen said. “Goddamn him!”
Mary sat slumped on the edge of the bed, suddenly very tired. Weary of fighting Jake and circumstances and the world. And herself.
“What now?” she heard herself ask. “What in God’s name am I gonna do now?”
Helen’s hand was on her shoulder. “I front you the money for a new pair, that’s all. It’s no major deal.”
Mary looked up at her. “It took me four months to find that pair, Helen. I’ve got feet like an extraterrestrial.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Helen said. “Probably the places you sent away to for shoes have all got booths downstairs. There’s supposed to be a whole room full of merchandise down there, every kinda dance paraphernalia you can imagine. That’s what Nick told me. I’m planning on looking for a different pair of shoes myself.”
Maybe Helen was right! Maybe it was possible to replace the black shoes. And if the new shoes weren’t perfect, the hell with it, she’d dance anyway. She wouldn’t let Jake do this to her. She was finished with that.
At least her stomach had calmed down; it wasn’t tightened and drawing her body forward like a tautly strung bow. No way to dance feeling like that. “Helen, it’s great of you-”
Helen waved a hand as if swirling water. “You’d do the same, blah, blah, blah. C’mon, Mary Mary, let’s head down to the lobby and find out where we register. Then we’ll hit the vendors’ room and romp through those acres of shoes Nick told me about.” She was already striding toward the door.
Mary left her suitcase and cosmetic kit on the bed and hurriedly followed. There’d be plenty of time to unpack later.
On the way out, she hurled the mangled dance shoes into the wastebasket by the desk, listened with satisfaction as they thunked against the metal bottom. There was a solid finality to the sound.
