Caged (8 page)

The waiter came and took our orders: two crab cake entrees and a bottle of Merlot. I knew we weren’t on a date, but it started to take on a decidedly date-like tone. More likely than not, I was just over-analyzing.

“What were we just talking about?” I asked, not waiting for a response. “Oh yeah, dance. So I started with my instructor when I was eight, and never stopped.”

“Is it different now?” he asked quietly.

“Different? Why would it…oooooh. Hmm. Well, it’s easier to do self-correction, that’s for sure,” I said laughingly, hoping to set him at ease. He looked as though he was treading on offensive ground.

“No, really. Please. Tell me how it’s different…I just can’t imagine.”

He looked truly curious, so I thought about his question at length before answering.

“Well. There’s the obvious answers to that question. It’s easier to learn something new, and far faster to pick up on choreography
etc.
I also now have a sense of whether or not I’m any good. I think in some ways it made it much more pure without sight because I wasn’t influenced by what I saw around me, or what I was told was good. I just did what felt right to me.” I realized I’d been looking down at the table as I answered his question, and shifted my gaze up to him. He looked absolutely riveted, as if what I was telling him was the most fascinating information ever. I was pretty certain that it wasn’t, but that didn’t seem to matter to him. “Now…now it’s totally different. At the risk of sounding vain, I love to watch myself in the mirror. I have a studio above my apartment and I use it all the time. Dance has always been an outlet for me for emotion of any kind. That hasn’t changed. But the ability to see what you’re feeling translated into movement that tells a story is so beautiful. It’s such a gift, and it’s way cheaper than therapy”.

“I’d love to see it sometime,” he said emphatically.

“I’m not much for performing. I prefer to dance for me. I guess that’s changed too because I never knew if I was performing or not before.”

“Shy?” he asked.

“Self-conscious.”

“Reasons?”

“Not sure.”

“Truth?”

I sighed.

“I don’t like being the focus of others’ attention. It makes me horribly uncomfortable.”

“Like now?” he asked.

“Like now.”

In our following silence, the wine was presented and poured. I feigned deep interest in the glass and swirled the wine around and around. He pretended not to realize what I was doing. The silence remained as our dinner was served. And eaten. The check came and went without a sound. We rose to leave in perfect unison and walked out into a chilly Boston evening filled with the sounds of the city. We contributed none.

Inwardly embarrassed that my shortness had once again ruined a perfectly normal and personable conversation, I moped alongside Sean. I was certain that he couldn’t wait to get away from me, the ungrateful and ill mannered ass who not only ruined a perfect day in the city, but also hadn’t thanked him for the dinner he’d just taken me to or for the stellar recommendation of crab cakes. They were amazing.

I opened my mouth to thank him for ending my vegan career with his enticement of crustaceans, but quickly snapped it shut. The only thing I seemed capable of at that moment was further digging a hole. I wasn’t interested in being six feet underground.

12

When Sean turned to enter the gorgeous apartment building downtown, I was thoroughly confused. I’d thought we were heading for the car to go home after a disastrous ending to a perfect day.

“Where are you going?” I blurted out.

“We are going inside to get changed. The day isn’t over yet.”

“It’s ten pm. Doesn’t that inherently make the day over with?” I retorted.

He paused and looked at me sideways, and made an odd snorting sound before continuing on his mission. I chased after him like a child.

“No, seriously…where are we going? And what do I need to get changed for?” I asked with an ounce more decorum than my previous interrogation.

“Out,” he said.

“Out?”

“Yes. Out. It’ll be good for you to be social for once,” he said to me before muttering under his breath, “I’m not sure it’ll be good for everyone else though.”

“I heard that,” I shouted.

“As was expected.”

I crossed my arms over my stomach and stomped through the foyer of the building, which was massive and contemporary with an industrial edge. Everything was stainless and granite with clean lines and angles everywhere.
Dwell
magazine would have been proud. Decoration was sparse, but there was a line of Dendrobium orchids occupying the shelf along the wall that led to the elevator. We got in and Sean reached over to press the “PH” button.

“Penthouse?” I asked incredulously. “That’s an awfully impressive place to own on a teaching salary.”

“It’s a friend’s place. He lets me borrow it on occasion if I’m in the city.”

“What if he’s around? How do you borrow it then?” I asked.

“He’s never around, so it’s never a problem,” he replied.

I figured it must have been some rich friend’s second or third home, and just dropped the subject altogether. Sean didn’t appear to want to elaborate much, and I’d done enough poking of bears with short sticks in my time to know when to stop. For the most part.

“Wait…you said I have to change. I don’t have any clothes here,” I stated, thinking this would get some information out of him involuntarily.

“Yes, you do. I took the liberty of having Ronnie pick some things out and ship them down here. They’re waiting for you upstairs. She said you’d love them…shoes and all,” he said with an air of satisfaction. He plainly enjoyed torturing me with his secrecy.
Sadist.

“Fine. But I’m not going anywhere until you tell me where we’re going.”

With that, the elevator dinged, telling us we’d arrived at the penthouse. We took a brief walk down the hall, which looked remarkably like the foyer, to the black door marked “PH”. Sean took a key out of his pocket and unlocked it. He threw the door open, exposing the most gorgeously decorated apartment I’d ever seen. He waited for me to soak it all in before entering. He had to actually call me in like a dog to keep me from gawking at it from the hall all evening. I guessed that wasn’t what he had planned.

He gestured me towards a bedroom that had a fabulous pair of shoes awaiting me inside of it. The outfit he’d had sent was laid out neatly on the bed. I could tell from afar that Ronnie had outdone herself this time. The skinny jeans were by Paige and the top was clearly a vintage piece. I didn’t recognize it from the shop, so I assumed it was something that had just arrived when Sean put in his odd request. It didn’t matter because it was a fabulous v-neck, no sleeve, tunic-length tank top in a deliciously faded magenta. She’d accessorized for me, pairing it with a chunky, jet black necklace, which also appeared to be vintage. The crowning glory of the outfit was naturally the shoes, or in this case, shooties: blank, ankle-height, suede and straight out of the eighties. I turned to Sean, grinning like a kid on Christmas, only to see that he was clearly amused by the whole situation. In that moment I didn’t care that he found me entertaining, my fashion buzz was
way
too strong.

I all but ran to the bed to further inspect my garb for the evening. I heard the door close behind me and turned to see that he’d left me alone to get dressed without a word. I walked over to lock it then hurled myself at the clothes. I was in my new outfit in seconds. I loved it. It dawned on me that I’d overlooked a coat draped across a very expensive chair in the corner of the room. She really had planned for everything, and I was glad because I certainly wasn’t throwing my Ibex zip-up over that ensemble.

I admired myself in the full length mirror for awhile before heading out into the living room. I thought I’d changed quickly, but there, on an exquisitely modern and very expensive couch sat Sean, looking every part the GQ cover model. His normally tousled, black-brown waves were managed back into a more structured style. Undoubtedly, he had used a product of some sort to accomplish it. He was wearing a tight black v-neck T-shirt and a pair of Diesel jeans. His shoes were clearly Michael Kors and were a plain black, euro-style slip on. To complete his look, he had a smug, satisfied look on his face as if he’d won the getting-dressed race that I was an unknowing participant in.

He motioned for me to come sit by him on the couch. In my most unobliging fashion, I sauntered over to the uber-expensive coffee table in front of him and planted my ass there instead. His grin spread wider.

“I see that everything fits,” he said, with elevator eyes scanning my new clothes.

“Ronnie knows my size well. I give her a lot of business.”

“Mhmm. Indeed she does and apparently you do,” he said while rising slowly to his feet. His eyes never left me. “Ready for the last stop?”

“Where are we going exactly?” I asked hesitantly. I hated going somewhere unfamiliar, especially not knowing if my attire was appropriate.

“I thought I’d take you somewhere you could dance,” he answered, pausing briefly. “I thought if I chaperoned, you could only get into a minimal amount of trouble.”

“That’s funny. To me it seems that trouble always happens when you’re around,” I said, feeling mildly insulted by his condescension.

“That’s because I’m always the one bailing you out of it. There’s two sides to that coin, Ruby,” he said hovering over me as I sat defiantly on the table. I was proud of myself for not shrinking under the weight of his stature. Instead I slowly peeled myself off of the table and uncurled my five-foot, nine-inch frame to stand only inches from him; toe-to-toe so to speak.

He stared down at me with an angry curiosity. I wondered if he was used to people cowering away from him when he was like this. I’d never seen this side of him before, but it mattered not at all. I didn’t back down.

His expression lightened after a minute or so of the unspoken duel we were having. I was right, he was wrong, and apparently he caught onto that. He laughed inwardly and asked if I was done with my pissing contest so that we could go. “Yes”, was my only response.

It irritated me to no end that he always looked amused by my anger, frustration, impatience,
etc.
That occasion was no exception. He turned towards the door and made his way to it with a cocky swagger that only he could pull off. It made me more mad that it was impossible not to stare at his ass while he did it.

“The party isn’t coming to us, Ruby,” he called out over his shoulder as he swung the door open. “It would be such a shame to waste that outfit on this apartment all night.”

I silently walked towards him giving him no response at all other than the obvious. He was right, it would have been a terrible waste of such a great outfit. It annoyed the shit out of me when he was right.

13

“
Vain
? That’s it? That’s the name of the club?” I asked with very dubious inflection. “Have you even been here before? How do you know it’s any good? This looks way out of my comfort zone.”

The line to get in wrapped around the corner and the inhabitants of it, at least the female ones, were on the near side of naked. I hadn’t known skirts came in that length, if they could be called a
length
of anything. The undergarment policy appeared to be quite loose as well.

I turned to look at him with my “hell no” face, but was met with a huge shit-eating grin.
He’s enjoying this!
He knew I was preparing to flee the scene.

“Everything is out of your comfort zone, Ruby. Learn to adapt,” he said, walking towards the massive building.

“I think we should go somewhere else. It’s pretty obvious that we’ll never get in anyways. Look at the line. We’ll be out here all night,” I said, desperately trying to plead my case.

“I know for a fact that we’ll get in right away,” he said before doing something completely unnerving. He leaned in very close to me and whispered right in my ear. “There’s no need to be concerned about your apparel. You look just fine. Amazing, actually.”

What the…

“Why do you think I’m concerned with my clothes? How I look?” I asked, defensively. I wasn’t worried about what
I
was wearing, but rather the lack of clothing that
others
were wearing.

“You need to work on your poker face, Ruby. I can read your every thought,” he said matter-of-factly as he proceeded towards the front entrance. He didn’t even pause as he unclipped the velvety red rope and moved it aside. He looked back at me and scoffed at my hesitation, but then gently grabbed my arm and ushered me through without so much as a glance to anyone working the door. They all nodded at him as he passed, but didn’t acknowledge me at all, unless I considered hostile stares acknowledgment, no doubt a statement of disapproval of my wardrobe choice for the evening. In my defense, I hadn’t known that we were going to that type of establishment, but prior knowledge would not have led me to wear anything more appropriate in their eyes. I pinched my eyes shut for a moment and reminded myself that sexy wasn’t about how much skin you flashed. Sexy was about flashing as little as possible to make someone want to see more. At least that’s what my fashion magazines told me.