Dance With Me (20 page)

He ended up at Halcyon Center.

“Laurie!” Vicky beamed and rose when he stuck his head into the doorway of her office. “What in the world are you doing here? I thought you said you had a performance today?”

“Not until later. I was—” He stopped, not really sure how to explain why he'd stopped by, since he didn't know himself.

“I was hoping to take some of the kids,” she said, sounding wistful. “But my alternator died, and I had to replace it instead.”

This shook him out of his awkwardness. “Why on earth didn't you tell me? I'd have gotten you tickets. I still could, if you thought it wasn't too late.” He pulled out his cell phone. “How many do you want?”

Vicky looked flustered. “Laurie, you don't have to do that.”

“Vicky, you're being ridiculous. The profits from this event go to charity, some of it likely back to the kids at this center in some way or another. In any event, I have a wad of tickets they gave me as a thank-you for the donation of my performance. If you don't use them, they're going to waste.”

Vicky relaxed but only a little. “It's just—you know how I feel about the center owing anybody. The city, at least, is constitutionally bound to be impartial.”

Laurie felt refusing tickets to an amateur ballet was taking principle well past too far, but he kept this opinion to himself. He found the number for the box office on the Internet, punched it into the keypad, and turned away to make the call.

As he waited through the automated menu for the chance to press in a direct code, he saw a young man sitting along the wall. Laurie recognized him vaguely from Ed's group of young men that came to his aerobics class, but then the boy was clothed in the usual gym uniform. He was not so now. He wasn't just clothed; he was swathed. He was drowning in more clothes than Laurie would have ever thought one person could wear. An oversize red jersey bunched at the youth's waist and spilled over onto his thighs. He wore athletic pants of an iridescent material with a reflective stripe along the side, but he also wore a pair of shorts over them as well. Beneath the jersey there was a hoodie, but also a T-shirt. On his feet were unlaced high-top athletic shoes, gleaming silver and white even in the industrial-issue florescent glow of Vicky's office. Topping the boy's look off was a bright green ball cap that had BITCH stitched across the crown in neon pink letters.

Catching Laurie staring at him, the boy lifted dark, defiant eyes to the door and stared back.

The recording paused, and Laurie wrenched his focus back to the phone just in time to enter his code. He spoke to the receptionist, arranged for Vicky to collect as many tickets as she needed, and hung up.

“There. That's settled. Just go straight to the Will Call booth, and you'll be taken care of. You can take up to twenty-five.”

“Thanks,” Vicky said, still sheepish but also clearly pleased. “I'll round up some kids and bring in as many kids as I can stuff into the center's van.”

Laurie pocketed his phone. “Outside of your alternator, how are things going?”

Vicky looked grim. “Hectic.” She looked like she wanted to say more, but she clamped her mouth shut and cast the boy a threatening look. He hunched his shoulders and stared down at the floor, but he just looked angry, not chastised. She sighed and looked back at Laurie. “I'll tell you about it later. Did you ever get a hold of Ed?”

“Oh—yes.” He blushed. “Yes. Thank you. It turns out he was just busy.”

But Vicky didn't look like she bought it. “Seeing him anytime soon?”

“Tonight, actually,” Laurie admitted. “He'll be at the performance too. Your seats will be next to his.”

He cleared his throat and fished for a redirection of this conversation, but the boy was oddly distracting. Laurie felt self-conscious around the young man in a way he couldn't identify with any ease. It was a sort of aggression that filled the small office and pushed back against him at the door. It made him want to turn and go, and so he did, nodding and murmuring a good-bye and thanks to Vicky.

But no sooner was he in the hall than the same restlessness that had driven him to the center had returned. It was still too early to go to the theater. Most of the setup was likely done by now, but the second he appeared, Maggie would parade him in front of the parents, and he'd end up spending an hour pasting a plastic smile on his face as he pretended to enjoy listening to other people embellish his past. That wasn't going to help him burn off his restlessness.

Only one thing he knew of could do that. But he couldn't work out how, exactly, to explain to Ed that he needed him to come down to the center and dance with him so he could calm down.

It was a measure of his desperation that he tried. But though his heart hammered at the top of his throat all the way through the sequence of rings, in the end his call went to Ed's voicemail. Feeling ridiculous, Laurie faltered through a message saying what he'd already told Ed, that his tickets were at the Will Call booth, and hung up.

Now what?

You could always dance by yourself.

The thought arrested Laurie. Dance by himself. Not rehearse—that wasn't the problem. Dancing, though. Dancing for fun. Free-form. An improv, the way it was when he danced with Ed. Could that possibly work?

He didn't know, but he found himself abruptly eager to try.

Laurie turned back and stuck his head in the doorway of Vicky's office again.

“Sorry,” he said, “But I wondered—is there a room upstairs free just now? The regular aerobics room, maybe? Not the gym?”

Vicky paused, thinking. “The aerobics room is in use, but 3B is clear. Will that do?”

Laurie would make sure it did. “Yes. Thank you.” He nodded to her again, and this time added one to the young man as well. “I won't be very long.”

After a quick trip out to his car to grab his iPod and dig a portable speaker out of his trunk, he headed to 3B, heart pounding a little fast. The room was stale and stuffy and bordering on too small, but after Laurie pushed the boxes of yoga equipment to the side, he had adequate space. Probably. Well, it didn't matter really, did it? This was just a lark. Likely it wouldn't even work.

The dismissals didn't hold, though. He was eager for this in a way that, if anyone else were watching, would make him self-conscious. But that was just the point, wasn't it? No one was here. He almost laughed. Good God, how the mighty have fallen. He who had once performed at the Met was now worried someone might see him cutting loose in a storeroom.

But he felt very serious, each action weighted as he set the player up in the ledge by the window. He was more meticulous now than he had ever felt preparing for a performance. He took a moment to center himself. He did a few stretches. He made himself feel the space of the room, absorb the energy of it, let its boundaries, its weight, its feel become part of him.

He put on his favorite playlist, took a centering breath, and let himself go.

It was clumsy at first. He hadn't danced like this in a while, not by himself, not for himself. This was something he'd done a great deal of when he was very young, so young the memory was washed to sepia with age. Eventually instruction had burned improv out of him. Even now he couldn't quite shake the background notation of what he was doing: this was a slide. That was a leap. An arabesque but tweaked into something that would have cost him points in a competition but onstage would have been considered brilliant. But eventually even this faded too, and he lost himself and simply danced.

He didn't compose, didn't demonstrate, and didn't perform. He just let the music move him across the room as it would, let it slide under his skin and into his blood, letting it take his body. No movement was given to please a judge or dazzle an audience. He did not think. He did not plan. He simply moved. And in that movement, he found an ease he hadn't known he needed, a peace he had forgotten he should even seek. The soulless movement of the morning, the sadness of the past, the fear of the future fell away, leaving only the dance. Leaving him whole and strong and sure.

And then, like a slow tide, he felt the yearning come in. It mixed with memory, of the feel of Ed's hands on his body as he taught him to dance, the smell of him that had lingered in Laurie's bed and in the taste of his kiss. It was a terrifying want, and it should have slowed him down, but Laurie was an artist, so he used the terror as fuel instead, pushing it into the dance, exposing himself in movement in a way he would never let himself let go in life. He let his longing for Ed fill him, let it put an edge on every turn and a sharp ache in every extension of his arms. Thinking of the possible encounter to come this evening, Laurie let go, let himself imagine. Let himself want.

When it was spent, he stopped. He was dripping with sweat and breathing hard, his chest burning, his arms and legs aching. But he felt renewed all the way to his core, and he wasn't listless anymore. Smiling, he snapped off the music and wiped his face with the hem of his shirt as he leaned back against the wall.

He was reaching for the bottle of water he'd set beside the player when a movement on the other side of the room startled him. The door, which had been cracked just a hair open, slammed quickly shut. But before it did, Laurie thought he caught a flash of bright green.

Self-consciousness tried to rise, but it gained no real purchase. The dance had done its job. He felt good. He felt released, but he felt energized too. He thought of the performance ahead, and he didn't so much as flinch.

He thought of the night with Ed to come, and his blood hummed.

Draining the bottle of water, Laurie wiped his lips and pushed away from the wall.

It was time to dance.

Ed had gone to the State to see a show two years ago, but other than that, he really hadn't gone to the theaters in downtown Minneapolis for much. The State was a nice place, and the seats were comfortable. It was elegant and ornate, the walls all gilded and scrolled, and the lights dripped with little bits of crystal. It had made him feel underdressed the last time, though, and he'd forgotten that part until tonight.

Worst part was, he'd dressed up. It wasn't like Ed didn't own nice clothes. He worked in an office, for crying out loud. And thanks to that afternoon's cleaning spree, he'd remembered just how many nice clothes he had, and he'd come in a suit coat his mom had rushed out for one-hour cleaning after rescuing it from the bottom of the closet. But Ed was not naturally a dress-up kind of guy, and this place had been built, it was clear, for those who didn't know anything
but
dressing up. And it reminded him that Laurie was that kind of guy.

What he didn't understand, and what plagued his thoughts as he settled into his seat and waited for the show to start, was why suddenly he cared about that. It had been the haunting thought of Laurie seeing his place which had stirred him to clean when no one and nothing else had been able to do so. Because Laurie mattered. What Laurie thought mattered. What Laurie did mattered, which was why he was here, but it was weirding Ed out a little. A month and a half ago, he was baiting Laurie on a regular basis and had a hard time remembering his name. Now he was acting like a besotted lover. Which he supposed he was. Or wanted to be. Or something.

Ed slouched in his seat and rubbed his forehead, shutting his eyes as the confusion swam inside him. How the fuck did he get here? They hadn't even had sex, except for that drunken bit he couldn't remember. They'd had that just that one kiss. Well, two kisses.

But they'd danced. And as Ed sat there marinating in longing and confusion, he admitted it was the dancing that had done him in.

Ed swore and shifted in his seat. Goddamn, but this was the biggest fucking cock-tease ever, and the worst part was he couldn't figure out which one of them was doing the teasing.

Thinking of cocks made him wonder if he'd get to taste Laurie's tonight.

He hoped to hell he got to see him in tights again, at least.

“Put your feet down, Maurer, and let me get to my damn seat.”

Ed sat up abruptly, blinking at the familiar face glaring playfully down at him. “Duon?” He blinked again as he saw Vicky and several other kids from the center behind Duon. “What the hell! What are you guys doing here?”

“We're here to mow the lawn. What the hell you think we're here to do?” Duon nudged Ed's feet again. “Seriously man. We had to park a fucking mile away. Let me sit my ass down.”

Ed stood, letting the crew pass. There were ten kids total, plus Vicky; Vicky moved through and placed herself in the center of them. Duon sat next to Ed.

“Laurie gave us tickets,” Vicky explained to Ed's continued confusion. “Just this afternoon.”

Ed nodded, still slightly bewildered as he sat down. To Duon he said, “Didn't think you'd come to the ballet.”

“Same to you,” Duon shot back. He settled into his seat and looked around. He looked like he was fighting to keep from being impressed. And losing. “Man. I feel like I'm in a queen's palace or something.”

“Yeah,” Ed agreed. That was about all the eloquence he had. But it actually eased him a little to sit there with Duon, who was as fish-out-of-water as he was.

The house lights flickered and dimmed, and Ed settled in to watch the show.

It wasn't bad. Ed vaguely knew the story, but it was mystery enough that he got caught up in the show. Yeah, the kids were definitely amateur, but they were cute. It made him feel good to see all the families and aunts and uncles and grandparents in the audience—because, honestly, outside of him and a few other anomalies, it was clear that everyone was here for a kid—and made him think of his own youth, of his mom coming to all his games and his dad teaching him to throw. It made him yearn, just a little, in a way he'd never expected to, for a family of his own. He'd never really decided for or against kids, but he wasn't doing it without a partner, so he figured he should start there before he made the call.

He wondered what it would be like to have kids with Laurie.

Beside him, Duon shifted, and Ed glanced at him as surreptitiously as he could. Duon's expression was softer than it usually was. It remained that way even when the curtain came down for intermission. They left to file into the hallway with the others. After a visit to the restroom, they ended up holding up the same part of the wall, as Vicky took the few who had brought money to buy some refreshments.