Verbal Magazine

Dancing Days

“Well,” she said, with something like fear in her voice. “You might say something.”

Thomas stood at the window. There was still some light in the sky but already the streetlights were flickering on. That lingering dusk of long summer evenings, and then the pulse of orange, heavy at first in the late hour but softening towards a more genteel yellow. Still ugly, though.
He cleared his throat. “What do you want me to say?”
Helen picked up the newspaper, bounced clumsily from page to page, just for something to do, then tossed the whole heap down on the settee. It was not the time for reading.
At last, he turned away from the window. Night was stealing in and, despite how she was feeling, it took every inch of her willpower not to convulse with laughter at how strained his expression had become, the gaping puncture wound of his sucking mouth, the gruesome, disembodying pallor of his skin. Entirely by accident, she had invented a time machine. With one informed sentence she had caused him to revert back to a twelve-year old version of himself. But she didn’t laugh, because that would have been a terrible thing to do, and tantamount to disaster.
“How did it happen?”
“What? How do you think it happened? The usual way, of course.”
“But you said _____”
“I know what I said.” She shrugged her shoulders. More laughter stirred in her, made it all the way to her throat this time. She covered it up with a cough, using a fist to conceal the curl of her lips.
“And you’re certain.”
She nodded. “Certain.”
He drifted around the room like a boat that has slipped its moorings. His hands felt the way; his eyes, it seemed, had shifted their focus to other deeper things. She watched him collide softly with the back of one of the dining chairs, his pale hands fumbling along the chair’s high back. Then he was past that and touching tablecloth, then a forgotten coffee cup. Finally his fingers closed over the handle of an unused steak knife. As he picked it up, the blade caught some tinge of light from somewhere and flashed, just for an instant, like the belly of a turning fish.
“Thomas?”
“What?”
“What are you doing with that knife?”
“Hmm?” His open stare dragged across the room and settled, a moment too long, on her face. “What? Oh, the knife. Nothing.” Then he smiled, and he was his old self again. “Don’t tell me… You did, didn’t you? You thought…”
Helen closed her eyes and shook her head slowly, suddenly weary. She could feel him looking at her, the knife still in his hand, and then she could feel him moving. A few seconds later he was beside her on the settee, and she opened her eyes to find him sitting there, skinning an apple. In those few seconds, the room seemed to have become very dark, and she felt a tremor of concern that he might cut himself. The knife’s blade made the sound of wild things as it hacked its way beneath the skin and through the apple’s juicy pulp. He cleaved off a chunk and raised it, held flat against the blade by one thumb, to his mouth.
He chewed slowly, and winced. “Jesus, is that ever bitter.” After a moment, though, he was chiselling away at the apple again, back for more.
“Can’t we have some music?” she said, when she could stand it no longer. Her voice quivered, a touch too highly pitched, but he gave no indication that he even noticed, not so much as a glance in her direction.
“Don’t you think that we should talk about this?” he asked, his eyes still on the apple in his hands. “I mean, it’s not every day…”
“No,” she said, and she stood so quickly that the blood rushed to her head, almost causing her to swoon. “There will be time enough for talking later. Right now, I want to dance.” Then she skipped across the room and switched on the radio. Dry chatter filled the apartment, reams of measured political spiel, the sort of talk that means nothing unless you understand the context in which it is spoken. Helen inclined her head and let her finger turn the tuning dial. For the greater part of a minute, static hissed and fuzzed, stations blurting occasionally into focus only to recede just as quickly back down again into the static. Music flashed, though nothing to her taste. She had allowed her eyes to fall closed once more, and somehow that made the spikes of visiting melody even more of a surprise. And eventually, just as the tuning needle was nearing the end of its band, she fell across something she liked, some old-timey thing that sounded good even flecked in snow, something that was all orchestra and good feeling.
“Foxtrot,” Thomas said, from across the room. Then he stood and began to dance, his arms flailing, his legs keeping seemingly separate tempos.
Helen laughed. The sound started deep in her stomach and this time heaved all the way upwards. “That’s not how you foxtrot,” she said, when she could speak again.
“It’s how I foxtrot,” said Thomas, smiling through the darkness.
They came together, feeling their way to one another, and Thomas held on and led the way around the room, weaving between obstacles, stopping whenever he felt there was need, and space, to risk a spin or chance his luck on a dip. He was a terrible dancer and they both knew it, which somehow made everything okay. As he moved Helen across the floor, he pressed his cheek to hers and scatted nonsense syllables along to the orchestra’s thunderous trumpet blasts. She could feel the sharp dusting of his evening stubble and was glad that he hadn’t bothered to shave. They danced, or at least moved to the music, whispering things to one another, things meant for no one else but them. And when, in the middle of it all, he caught his thigh on the corner of the table and muttered, “Fuck,” even that seemed funny, first to Helen and then, after much rubbing and cringing, to both of them.
After ten minutes, they stopped for water. Thomas reached for the light switch but Helen stopped him with just the lightest touch against his elbow. “No,” she said. “Let’s keep the darkness.” He held his place for just a second, gasping hard for breath, and then he leaned in and very tenderly kissed her cheek and her mouth. Runnels of sweat slathered his face, and Helen fumbled through his pockets for his handkerchief. In the darkness, he was everything she had ever wanted him to be. When he kissed her again she responded with a smile.
“So,” he said, after taking half a glass of water in a single gulp, “what’s the damage report? How long have we got?”
“Seven months, give or take.”
He tried to calculate, but his mind had turned to soup where figures were concerned. “Seven months… That’s when? Now, let me see…”
“March,” she said, after waiting a few seconds. Her heart was racing and now that she had started smiling it seemed as if she’d never stop. She could feel it disfiguring her face, making her something more than she had any right to be.
“March?”
“The 12th, if all goes to plan.”
“Christ, you even know the date?” He leaned against the table and finished off his water. Then, after a few steadying breaths, he reached out for her glass and took to sipping that. Even in the darkness, he could see her smiling. For some reason, her water felt cooler than his, though both glasses had been filled in tandem, and from the same faucet. Some things just made no sense. “You better not be late,” he said. “Knowing our luck, the 12th will be a Thursday.” He finished the water, sighed and, stepping away from the table, offered his hand.
“Again?” she asked, surprised and delighted in equal measure.
“Why not? Once more around the room. For old times’ sake.”
As they came together again, the radio slipped out of something fast and into the gentle cant of the Blue Danube. Thomas held his young wife close and together, in slowly drifting one-two-three steps, they waltz-time floated across the floor of their cramped one-room apartment, navigating the darkness together. And when the music finally gave out, they stood in place for a few minutes longer, in the room’s only open square of floor space, holding one another. Thomas could feel the feathery touch of Helen’s breath warm against the clammy skin of his neck, and he could feel the strong pneumatic lumbering of her heart beating through her cheap cotton summer dress and all the way into his own chest.
“We’ll need a bigger place,” she said, softly and almost to herself, as they finally pulled apart from one another and attended to the task of folding out the settee. Thomas took away the cushions and flattened out the armrests while Helen busied herself with laying out a sheet. “It takes some imagination to make this place do for two people,” she said, in the same soft way, testing the ground, planting seeds. “Adding a third hardly even bears thinking about. And one thing is for certain: our dancing days are done.”
Thomas unbuttoned his shirt, then peeled off his jeans. He stood a moment longer, watching Helen’s silhouette undress, then together they lay down on their makeshift marriage bed. She lay a hand across his chest and he brushed the sun-browned hair from her face and kissed her smooth forehead.
“Don’t worry,” he sighed, after a long time had passed and they were both tottering on the very brink of sleep. “This worry about space is one problem easily sorted. I can always move out. That will leave plenty of room.” Her hand made a fist and drummed him playfully on the chest. She was smiling again, all the way through the darkness. He kissed her forehead again and let his mouth linger there until she stirred in affirmative reply. After all, they had the rest of their lives for sleep. This was the time for dreaming.

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