The Dance (4 page)

“He was an artist. He was showing her all kinds of far-out techniques, opening her up.”

“Were they romantically involved?”

Polly’s face darkened. “What do you mean?”

He had to keep in mind Polly had gone out with Clark before Alice. “Were they boyfriend and girlfriend?”

“You mean, did they sleep together? Of course they didn’t. Do you think I would let my little sister have sex with someone like that? I was the one who told Alice not to invite him to the party. If she was here, she would tell you that.”

Michael stopped, feeling a chill at the base of his spine. “Did Clark come to the party?”

“What?”

“Was Clark at the party?”

“I told you, I told Alice not to invite him.”

“But did he come? Without being invited?”

“He wouldn’t have come without an invitation. He was weird, but he wasn’t weird like that.”

“But—”

“Polly,” the aunt called.

Groaning, Polly got up. “Coming,” she said, disappearing down the hall off the central foyer. She reappeared a moment later. “I’m sorry, Mike. I can’t talk anymore. I have to—take care of her. I’m really sorry.”

He stood up, pulling the permission form from his back pocket. “That’s OK, I shouldn’t have barged in on you like this anyway. Maybe we can talk about this some other time?”

“Sure.”

“Hey, could I ask a big favor? You see this paper? It’s a legal document that gives me permission to review the report that was done on your sister.”

“What report?”

He hated to use the word. “The autopsy report.”

She accepted the sheet, glanced at it. “You want me to sign it?”

“No, I want your aunt to sign it. She was Alice’s legal guardian.”

“But why?”

“I feel there may be something in the report that the police overlooked.”

Polly folded the form. “I’ll ask her to look at it.”

“I’d really appreciate it. Another thing. Could you please keep this visit between us private? Don’t talk to Jessie or Sara about it? They think—I don’t know, that I should just drop the whole thing.”

Polly nodded sympathetically. “They’re like that a lot of the time.”

She showed him to the door. As he was stepping outside, she put her hand on his arm, looked up at him. Again, the pain behind her eyes was all too clear, and he wondered if he’d added to it with his questions. She seemed to read his mind, as Alice used to do.

“I don’t mind talking to you about how she died,” she said. “She always told me what a great person you were. She told me I could trust you.”

Michael smiled uncomfortably. “That was nice of her.”

She continued to hold on to him. “Don’t go after Clark, Mike. Alice told me about him, too. The night she died—She said he was no good.”

“Are you saying he might hurt me?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Was he at the party, Polly?”

Now she let go of him, raising her hand to her head, trembling ever so slightly. “I don’t remember,” she said softly. “There were so many people there. Too many uninvited people.”

He patted her on the shoulder, thanked her again for her help. Climbing into his car, he felt vaguely disoriented. If she hadn’t loved Alice so much, and if he hadn’t seen her go out to the pool immediately before the shooting, he would have added Polly to his list of suspects.

“
That’s what the doctor at the hospital told me. The man with the electricity.
”

It was later. Michael was gone, her aunt was sleeping, and the sun had gone down. Polly sat alone in the dark, the TV on, the sound off. She preferred it that way, watching people she didn’t have to listen to. Sometimes at school she felt as if she would go mad, all those people talking all the time. Even her best friends, Jessica and Sara, they never shut up. And whenever she had something to say, they were too busy to listen.

Polly reached for another carrot. She had read that eating a lot of carrots improved your ability to see in the dark. Since she spent most nights awake answering her aunt’s calls, it was important to her. Besides, carrots helped you lose weight. That’s what Alice used to say. And look how skinny Alice had been. Thin as a stick.

She wasn’t sure what she was watching, some stupid sitcom. Practically everything on TV these days was stupid. She didn’t know if many people realized it, but the networks were even beginning to rerun the news.

Polly sat up suddenly. What was that sound? She had heard a banging noise. It seemed to be coming from out back. She hoped it was a cat. She was terrified of burglars. She didn’t have a gun in the house, only her dad’s old shotgun, which she couldn’t even find. Getting up, she peeked through the drapes covering the sliding-glass door.

There was nobody there, at least nobody she could see. But with the approaching storm, it was unusually dark outside. She stood still for a moment, listening to the wind, the rustling of the trees. The noise was probably nothing but a branch knocking against the outside wall. There was probably no need to call the police.

Oh!

A bolt of white light split the sky, causing her to jump. Instinctively, she started to count, as she had been taught as a child. The crack of thunder hit between two and three. The rain followed almost immediately, pelting the pool water like sand particles blasting a windshield. Like sometimes happened in the desert when a car went off the road.

Polly bowed her head, leaning it on the glass door. All of a sudden she missed her parents, missed them real bad.
Their
car had gone off the road, right into a ditch, where it had exploded. She had been small at the time, but she remembered exactly how it had happened. There had been an argument about something, and then the car was burning and the doctor was telling her everything was all right. She didn’t understand why doctors always lied.

“
The wires won’t hurt. You won’t even feel them.
”

But she felt everything. Liars.

Polly walked upstairs, headed down the hall, and turned right, entering the last room on the left, her parents’ bedroom and the room where Alice had died. The chalk outline the police had drawn had been washed away long before she had returned to the house after her sister’s death, but she could still distinguish a trace of it on the hard wooden floor—even in the dark. Sometimes, when she felt sad as she did now, she found it soothing to come into this room and rest on the spot where they had found Alice. Stretching out on the floor, she lay with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling.

Lightning flashed, thunder rolled. The gaps between the two seemed to lengthen. But the rain kept falling, and the storm was not going away. She noticed that the time between her breaths was also growing. She counted ten seconds between inhaling and exhaling, then fifteen. She wondered if her heart was slowing down. Lying there, she often felt as if she understood what it had been like for Alice when they had found her on the floor. It hadn’t been so bad. The dead might bleed, but they never cried.

Polly realized she was crying. It was all because she was alive. They had all gone and left her alone. A wave of despair pressed down on her, but she fought it, fighting to sit up. They hadn’t cared about her. They hadn’t asked what she wanted with her life. Her dad had decided to drive off the road. Her mom had gone ahead and burned. And Alice had taken that stupid gun and—

No!

Polly leaped to her feet. That banging sound again. Only now it was coming from outside the window. She crept to the shades, lifted it, and peered down, seeing nothing at first but the garden, the rainy night. Then there was another flash of lightning. And there he was! Someone in her backyard!

“Hey you! What are you doing there?”

The sound of her voice didn’t cause him to run away, nor did it startle him. He cupped a hand over his eyes, looking up, his long straggly hair hanging over his shoulders. She took a step away from the window, her heart hammering. She should have kept her mouth shut, she thought, and called the police. But then he spoke.

“Is that you, Polly?”

Relief flushed through her, followed by a fear of a different sort. “Clark? What are you doing down there?”

“Trying to get in. It’s wet out here. I rang the front doorbell a dozen times. Why didn’t you answer?”

“The front doorbell doesn’t work.” It had broken the night of the party.

“I knocked, too.”

“I’m sorry, I thought—I don’t know. Just a sec. Go around to the back patio. I’ll let you in.”

He had on the black leather jacket and pants he wore on his motorcycle. For the most part, the rain had left him untouched. Except for his tangled red hair. Soaked, it seemed much darker.

“I was beginning to believe you’d left this big box to the ghosts,” he said as she slid open the sliding-glass door that led out onto the roof-covered patio. “How are you, babe? Been a long time.”

“Yeah, months. I can’t believe you’re here. Why didn’t you call before coming?”

He wiped at his pale face with his long bony fingers. He had always been skinny. Now he was close to emaciated. “I wanted to see you, I didn’t want to talk to you.” He grinned. “You look exotic, Polly, real tender.”

She beamed, relaxing a notch. She didn’t know why she had felt she had to warn Michael away from Clark. Why, here he was right in front of her and everything was cool. “Thanks, you look nice, too. Do you want to come in?”

“Nah,” he said, nodding to his mud-caked boots. “Better not. Don’t want to spoil the scene. Like to keep pretty things pretty.” He turned toward the side of the house where she had first seen him, and the grin seemed to melt from his face as if he were a clay sculpture in the rain. His entire manner changed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said.

She bit her lip. “I thought you knew.”

He looked at her, his green eyes darkening. “I didn’t know until I read about the funeral in the papers.”

“Did you go?”

“You know I didn’t.”

“I didn’t know. They had me in the hospital.”

He was angry. “But I called. I left messages.”

“The machine was acting up. I didn’t get them.”

He shook his head, stepping away from the door, turning his back to her, reaching his palm out from beneath the shelter of the patio. The rain continued to pour down. “Who killed her?” he asked.

“The police say it was a suicide.”

He thought about that a moment, then his mood changed again, and he chuckled. “The police. What else do they say?”

“Nothing.”

“Did they ask about me?”

She hesitated. “They didn’t.”

He whirled. “Did someone else?”

She had never been able to lie to him. He had some kind of power over her she didn’t understand. “A boy at school.”

“What’s his name?”

“Michael.”

“What’s his last name?”

“I’m not sure.” She added weakly, “He wanted to know your last name.”

He moved to her, briefly touched her chin with his wet fingers, and it was almost as if an electrical current ran through his nails; she couldn’t help quivering. “Remember when we met?” he asked. “On that sacred ground? The Indians buried there believed if you knew a person’s secret name, you could make him do anything you wished. Anything at all.”

“Is that why you never told me your full name?”

He grinned again. “Do you believe that nonsense?”

“No.”

He held her eyes a moment. “I remember this Michael. I met him at the football game. Do you know if he saw me at the party?”

Lightning cracked again, thunder roared, the smell of ozone filling the air. Polly put a hand to her head, rubbed her temple. She didn’t feel pain, only a slight pressure and immense surprise. “You were at the party?” she said.

“Yeah, I came at the end like you told me to. Don’t you remember?”

“Yeah,” she said quickly. “I had just forgotten for a moment, that’s all.” She really did remember, not everything maybe, but a lot. The three of them had been in the room together. They had gotten into an argument about the paper cups, or why Clark hadn’t come earlier, something like that. Then she and Clark had left Alice alone in the room and gone downstairs. He had left on his motorcycle and she had gone out the back to check on the chlorine in the pool. Then Alice had gone for the gun…

The loneliness Polly had experienced in the bed-room suddenly crashed down upon her, and she burst out crying. Clark’s wet arms went around her, and she leaned into them.

“All I did was fight with Alice and make her think I hated her when I loved her more than I loved anything,” she said. “And now she’s gone, and Aunty’s here, but she can hardly breathe. Help me, Clark, you’ve got to help me. I can’t live like this. I feel I have to die.”

He didn’t say anything for the longest time, just held her as he used to hold her before he had started to see Alice. When he finally did release her, she felt a little better, though slightly nauseated. He brushed the hair from her eyes, accidentally scratching her forehead with one of his nails.

“You’ll be all right, kid,” he said. “You don’t have to die. You didn’t do nothing wrong. Nothing at all.”

“But I—”

“Shh. Enough tears. Mourn too much and you disturb the sleep of the dead. Tell me, does Michael say Alice was murdered?”

She dabbed her eyes. “He’s suspicious.”

“Hmm. What else?”

“He gave me a paper he wants Aunty to sign.”

“Show it to me.”

He barely glanced at the form when she handed it over, folding it and sticking it in his coat pocket. “I’ll look at it later,” he said.

“If you want, I can read it to you now. I’ve been eating lots of carrots. I can see in the dark.”

He brushed aside her comment, sticking his head in the doorway, sniffing the air. “It stinks in this place. That old lady’s still here?”

“Yeah. She’s sick. She had a heart attack. I take care of her.”

“Why? Old people—when their number’s up, they die. It doesn’t matter what you do.”

“Don’t say that!”

“That’s reality, babe. Sometimes they choke to death on their tongues. It’s a hassle watching her all the time, isn’t it?”

“I don’t mind. I take good care of her.”

He grinned and started to speak again just as someone knocked at the front door. “Who’s that?” he snapped.

“I don’t know. I’ll go see.”

“No, wait, I’ll go. My bike’s parked at the end of your driveway beneath that ugly tree, but it’s probably getting wet.” He grabbed her by the arm, pulled her toward him. She thought for a moment he was going to kiss her, but then he let her go, gesturing for her to follow him away from the patio. “Come here.”

“Out in the rain? I’ll get wet.”

“Who cares?” She walked over and stood beside him in the downpour. The person at the front door knocked again. She hardly noticed. The water felt delicious atop her head, the drops sliding down inside her blouse and over her breasts. Clark took her into his arms again, leaned close to her ear. “I like you this way,” he whispered. “Cold, like me.” He kissed her neck lightly, and she could imagine how the rain must have drenched deep into his flesh while he had raced through the night on his motorcycle; his lips sent a chill into her blood, a warmth up her spine. “Do you love me, Polly?”

“I-I’m glad you’re here.”

“Do you want me to come again?”

“I do.”

“Then I will.” He kissed her again on the neck, took a step back. “I have a secret to tell. Can you keep a secret?”

“Sure.”

“First you must promise not to talk about me to anybody.” He scratched her shoulder lightly, pinching the material. “You must cross your heart and hope to die.”

She sketched a cross over her chest. “I promise. What is it?”

“Michael knows something. But what he knows, he knows it backward. Alice didn’t kill herself.”

“How do you know?”

“Your sister was too cute to wash her hair with her own blood.”

“Who did kill her?”

He stared at her with his bright green eyes. The person at the front door knocked a third time. “You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Would you lie to me?”

She began to feel a bit sick again. “I honestly don’t know.”

His face softened with a sympathy she had never seen in him before. “Maybe I can’t remember, either. But I paint what I see. Listen closely and ponder deeply. It wasn’t you who killed her, and it wasn’t me who pulled the trigger.”

She smiled at the absurdity of the idea. “Well, of course we didn’t.”

He turned to leave, spat on the grass. “Stay alive, babe, and stay cold. It’s the only way for the likes of us.”

He disappeared around the west side of the house, in the direction of the gate. He was such an interesting guy, she thought. She hurried to answer the door.

It was Russ. All he had on was a green T-shirt and blue jeans. Someone had punched him in the eye. The swelling reached to his nose. It was absolutely cool he had come over to see her messed up the way he was. “I need a place to stay,” he said.

She had always known he liked her. Suddenly she was quite happy, and not the least bit lonely. All these nice boys wanting to talk to her and kiss her. It should rain more often.

But Clark might not like Russ kissing her. She could see his motorcycle at the end of the long driveway. Her eyes darted toward the side of the house. He probably hadn’t even gotten past the gate yet. She reached out, taking Russ by the arm, pulling him inside. “You poor dear,” she said. “Let me make you dinner and you can tell me all about it.”

She cooked him a steak and fries. There wasn’t any beer in the house, but he seemed to enjoy the expensive bottle of French wine she fetched from her aunt’s closet. He finished it off before getting to dessert. When she asked who had belted him, he just shrugged, which was OK with her. She wasn’t the nosy type, not like a lot of people she knew.