Dancing with the Dead (4 page)

Only the beige-shaded lamp by the sofa—the one she always left on when she wasn’t home at night—was glowing, and the living room was dim and shadowed. She switched on the brass floor lamp and illuminated the tasteful contemporary furniture that was mixed with older things given to her by Angie. Angie had explained there were certain possessions she didn’t want around anymore because they reminded her too much of Duke, so Mary was the recipient of a wing chair, the oak curio shelf that had held Duke’s bowling trophies, the floor lamp, and various odds and ends that felt like 1963 and childhood.

Mary slipped out of her shoes but didn’t sit down. Instead she wandered through the apartment to put her mind entirely at ease, even opening closet doors. The faith she’d placed in the heavy-duty locks the landlord had installed last summer seemed justified.

She went into the black-and-gray tiled bathroom and got a large Rubbermaid pan out from beneath the washbasin, ran hot water into it, then carried it and a folded white towel into the living room. She placed the pan on the floor, settled in a corner of the sofa and lowered her feet into the hot water.

Heaven!
Dancing sure took a toll on the feet, but it was worth it.

Letting the hot moisture penetrate and loosen her stiff muscles, she wriggled her toes underwater and wondered if she should call the police about the door. That kind of thing happened in this neighborhood, so she was sure nothing would come of it, but she pulled the phone over to her anyway and punched out Information.

They were there sooner than Mary would have guessed. A young patrolman and an old one with a gray mustache. They studied the damaged doorjamb, made sure the lock was in order, and questioned Mary about potential enemies. She said she had none, glancing at the roses and not mentioning Jake.

Possibly it was the work of kids looking for drugs, the mustached cop speculated, as if that were in a league with playing hopscotch. His partner pointed out that there’d been a lot of that the past few months, frustrated addicts committing vandalism and random attempted break-ins because of a recent police crackdown on local dealers. They’d run extra patrols by her building, they assured her, and if she noticed anything suspicious she was to phone them.

Fifteen minutes after their arrival she was seated again on the sofa with her feet submerged in hot water, and they were no doubt a few blocks away looking into crimes actually committed. Probably they were right about the marks on her door. Frustrated vandalism. Not likely to be repeated.

She withdrew her bare feet from the water and patted them dry with the towel, then carried the pan into the bathroom and refilled it so the water was steaming.

When she’d placed the pan before the sofa again, she didn’t sit down. She was going to play the Ohio Star Ball video she’d taped from the Public Broadcast System presentation of last year’s finals. It showed only the highest levels of competition on the last night, when Juliet Prowse acted as hostess. But the same glitter and motion would be there during the earlier Novice and Intermediate Bronze pro-amateur competition, the categories in which Mary would dance with Mel.

As she stood up to pad over to the TV and slip the cassette into her VCR, the phone jangled.

She picked up the receiver and pressed cool plastic to her ear, standing gracefully with her feet in fifth position, waiting.

“Mary? It’s me, Jake.”

She wasn’t surprised. The old pattern was developing, the dance of contrition and forgiveness.

“You get the flowers?” There was music in the background. And voices. A woman laughed hysterically. Good times rolling. He was probably speaking from Skittles, the bar near where he worked. He’d go there often after his afternoon shift’s ten-thirty quitting time and stay until well past midnight, drinking with his warehouse buddies. “Hey, Mary? Babe?”

“Yeah, I got them, Jake.”

He was quiet for a moment. She wondered if he was drunk. Probably at least halfway.

“Jesus, Mary, I’m sorry!”

“It said that on the card that came with the flowers,” she told him.

He gave a short, sad laugh. “Yeah, I guess it did.”

“Jake, did you do something to my door?”

“Your door? What’s that mean?”

“Just what I asked.”

“Why would I do something to your door?”

“I thought you mighta forgot your key and tried to get in.”

“I always got my keys with me.” When she didn’t say anything right away, he said, “Mary?”

“You hurt me pretty bad, Jake.”

“How bad?”

“Bruised some ribs.”

“Christ! I’m sorry, babe, you know I am.”

“Do I?”

“Well, I hope you know.”

“You been drinking, Jake?”

“Some. I needed to get a little bit drunk so I’d have the guts to call. Last night—damn! I don’t know what the fuck came over me, Mary.”

“You never do.”

“I know it sounds dumb of me to promise it won’t happen again. But I
can
promise you this, and I swear it on all I hold holy: I’ll try my damndest not to ever let it happen again. I never meant to hurt you that way; I’d kill anybody that’d hurt you. I mean
really
hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know it, Jake.” And she did know it; she believed him.

“I guess you don’t wanna see me again.”

“Would
you
, if you were me?”

“No, I gotta admit I wouldn’t. Tell you the honest truth, I don’t know why you put up with the shit I hand out.”

“I don’t put up with it. I’ve quit. You and I are over, Jake.”

“I hear it but I can’t believe it, Mary.”

She said nothing, letting him squirm while she listened to the faint hollow hiss of the connection. She was pressing the receiver so hard to the side of her head that her ear was beginning to ache as if he’d hit her there.

“Lemme come over,” Jake pleaded. “We can talk about it, huh?”

“No, Jake, and don’t call me back.”

“Mary! Don’t hang up! Please! Give another shot, huh, babe? You know I mean well. It’s just that I got this . . .”

“Sickness?”

“If you wanna call it that. This sickness in me. I hurt people, and not just with my hands, then I’m sorry as hell. I been doing it all my life. Christ, I hate myself right now, Mary.”

“I’ve gotta hang up now, Jake.”

“Mary, lemme see you again, okay?”

“I don’t think so, Jake.”

“Mary! Don’t hang up, Mary. Mary?”

She slowly replaced the receiver.

Absently, she switched on the TV, then slid the tape of the Ohio Star Ball into the VCR and punched Play.

But when she’d sat back down on the sofa and resubmerged her tired feet, she didn’t watch the dancers whirling on the flickering screen. She thought about Jake, how he could control her with his love, his violence, and his self-pity. Bondage wasn’t too strong a word. But now it was bondage broken. She wasn’t sure if she’d really been in love with Jake, because no one had ever given her a reliable definition of love. Jake could be violent, but he could also be as gentle as a kind father, and as approving and encouraging. Yet always the other half of him was there, a lurking ugliness of soul, a beast leering out from beneath the surface and somehow holding her in thrall.

And at the studio there was Mel. There was no violence in Mel, she was sure. He was so young, only in his twenties, and professionally solicitous and handsome. Mary suspected that if her money ran out, so would Mel’s affection. But did it matter? Mel was, in his fashion, no less a real love object than Jake. She saw both men in her own way, mentally shaping them to her intimate yearnings, as if they were romantic figures in a novel she was reading and wanted to continue and conclude at the same time. She was nurtured not by the present, but by what might grow from their relationships someday.

That was her problem, she thought. She lived for Someday.

But she’d been abused for the last time. Now it would be a someday without Jake.

Familiar music blared and her eyes focused on the TV screen. The tango finals had begun.

In the searing water, her feet moved.

He stood staring into the freezer. Before the repairman had arrived, he’d wrapped everything in white butcher paper. Even the knife. The knife had to be kept in the freezer to keep it pure and free of the disease. It wouldn’t have done for the repairman to see what was in the freezer.

Somewhere he’d read that near the South Pole tiny animals that had lived and been frozen alive before the birth of Christ had been thawed out and were still alive today. So there was no reason time couldn’t be made to stand still in a small freezer that was just as cold.

Anyway, the repairman had finished and said the freezer was as good as new and would last for years. Years would be fine; a new freezer could be bought soon, one that would last a lifetime. Some of them even had lifetime guarantees.

He unwrapped the knife and looked at it, looked at what else was in the freezer, and smiled.

There was no way to guarantee a lifetime.

H
ELEN
J
AMES SAID,
“The police don’t think it’s significant that she danced.”

“That who danced?” Mary asked, working her feet into her Latin shoes. Leaning down from where she was seated on the vinyl bench, she fastened their straps in the last hole, so the shoes would stay tight; tonight’s lesson was going to cover cha-cha and mambo, which meant lots of pressure against the floor.

“Danielle Verlane.” Helen had her shoes on and was waiting for her seven-thirty private lesson with her instructor, Nick. She stood with her weight on one foot and was avidly reading this morning’s
Post.
“She’s the woman who was killed in New Orleans, remember?”

Mary said she remembered. She didn’t feel like talking about Danielle Verlane. Or listening. Work today at Summers Realty, where she was a closing woman, one of two brokers who handled final transfers of titles, had been a blur, an exercise she’d gone through automatically merely so she could reach this evening as soon as possible. She’d been so mindless she’d made mistakes she’d have to rectify tomorrow. But she wouldn’t think about them until morning.

The flowers had arrived at work at eight-thirty, and she’d had to shyly acknowledge they were from Jake, all the while avoiding Victor’s knowing gaze. What the hell had
he
been staring at?—the bruised tissue under her eye was no longer noticeable beneath her makeup. She’d become adroit at applying cosmetics to disguise injury.

She rummaged in her dance bag and found her wire brush, then began working its stiff bristles across the soles of her shoes, forward toward the toes. Satisfying work.

“The husband’s name’s Rene,” Helen said, still with her nose in the paper. “It turns out Danielle was seen dancing in a couple of French Quarter hot spots. Doing some fancy jive, was the way one witness put it. Another place she was tangoing with some guy, and that was the last time she was seen alive.”

Mary suspected that Victor, who was a fifty-year-old widower with male pattern baldness, had a crush on her. Well, the hell with him. He was too old for her, and he wore way too much perfumed deodorant, probably something male models dressed as cowboys splashed on in TV commercials. Why was that sort of man always interested in her? Did she send out some kind of goddamn vibes that attracted them, like smart bombs?

“The husband wants the police to check out dance studios to find the guys she was dancing with, but they don’t see it as all that significant that she was dancing. Hubby thinks it
is
significant. The cop in charge disagrees and says she happened to be in places where there was dancing, so she danced. Cops for you.”

“The cops might be right,” Mary said, standing up and shifting her weight from leg to leg, loosening her hips. She’d recently trimmed her toenails and one of them was digging into the side of the adjacent toe, but it was only a minor discomfort she could ignore. Once she began dancing she wouldn’t feel it.

“No, no, Mary, she was a
dancer.
Like us. So I say right on, Rene, don’t listen to the fuzz.”

“Nobody calls the police fuzz anymore,” Mary said, smiling.

“They do if you hang around the right places.”

“Where do you hang around?” Mary asked.

“Here,” Helen said. A subtle sadness had edged into her voice. “This is what’s left of my social life now that George is gone. And I guess you’re right, nobody here calls the cops fuzz. They’re all too refined. Or they pretend to be.”

Murder in New Orleans was bad enough. Mary really didn’t want to talk about Helen’s dead husband. Or the one she’d divorced last year after a disastrous two-month marriage.

“Ladies! We ready to dance and learn?”

Mel and Nick had come out of the office and were standing side by side behind them. Mel was much the taller of the two, smiling along with Nick, who winked at Helen. Nick looked Greek or Italian and was slightly overweight, but when he moved on the dance floor he seemed to weigh only two or three pounds.

“
I’m
ready to dance, anyway,” Helen said. Her voice suggested she was still thinking about George and the past. The past was sticky. It never really let go of anyone.

“Don’t be pessimistic, dear,” Nick said, gliding over to her and gently gripping her elbow. “Not here. Here’s where we learn and
have fun.
” He steered her out onto the floor, beneath twisted white ribbons of crepe paper and clusters of red and white balloons that had been strung for tomorrow night’s practice party. “Mambo tonight, dear,” Nick was saying. “We’ll practice arm checks, then I’ll show you how to do flicks.”

“You okay, Mary?” Mel asked quietly, still smiling at her.

She had to smile back. “Sure. I was just listening to Helen tell me about some woman who got herself killed down in New Orleans.” She nodded toward the folded paper Helen had dropped onto the bench before being escorted out onto the dance floor.

Mel’s gaze followed the motion of her head, then he did a double take. He walked over and picked up the paper. “Hey, she looks familiar.”

“Her name’s Danielle, I think. She did ballroom dancing. That’s why Helen’s interested in the case.”