The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel (11 page)

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here are small blessings, tiny ones that come unbidden and make a hard day one sigh lighter. The weather that greeted Amina on the ride up to the Highlands neighborhood for the Beale wedding on Saturday afternoon was just that kind of blessing. Yes, it was a bit cooler than it should have been in June, but the sky was scattered with a few pale clouds—perfect for everlasting union. The Commodores sang “Easy” on the radio, and she sang with them,
Why would anybody put chains on me
sounding existentially good. She was easy. She could make Lesley Beale happy. At ten minutes before two, she pulled into the Seattle Golf Club parking lot, where one of the many green-clad groundskeepers waved her around to the back entrance.

“She had some trees rushed in this morning for the long hall,” Dick, the bean-shaped grounds manager, explained, pressing a linen handkerchief to his upper lip as Amina passed through the doorway. “No one can go in for the next hour or so.”

“Is she here yet?”

“She’s been setting up the women’s lounge for the girls since ten. Eunice is back there, too.”

“What happened to the library?”

“Changed her mind, changed her mind,” Dick said, then turned abruptly to answer the question of a woman holding an armload of lilies.

Of course she had changed her mind. Changing her mind was a kind of sport for Lesley, whose clipped charm, equine good looks, and marriage to the heir of the Beale department store fortune had long ago turned her into the exact kind of person whose mind did not worry over how much each change changed. A fleet of handsome catering staff passed Amina as she made her way down the hall.

“Hello?” Amina walked into the lounge.

“Oh, good, I was just starting to wonder about you.” Lesley, in a crisp and flawless origami of white linen, watched as an older woman placed a crystal vase in front of each mirror. “To the left, Rosa. More. A little more. Good.”

Amina set her bag down, quickly glancing around. The room was a riot of competing pinks. Rose curtains, walls, and carpet glowed under chandeliers. Eight mirrors were ringed with baby-pink Hollywood lights, a peachy wingback chair sitting in front of each like a misplaced cockatoo.

“You’ll need to put your stuff in the coat check,” Lesley said.

“No problem. Just let me get set up.”

“Good idea.” Eunice, the perpetually startled-looking wedding planner, stood up from where she’d been squatting on the floor, one hand clutching a spool of white ribbon. “The girls finished at the salon early and are on their way.”

Amina nodded calmly, pulled out a light meter, and started taking readings from around the room.

“Where are the lilies, Eunice?” Lesley asked.

“Excuse me?”

“For the vases. They need to be in place before the girls come.”

“Right. I just don’t, ah, I think because we were going to be in the library and you decided the textures would compete?”

“But we’re in the women’s lounge.”

“Of course! Let me …” Eunice’s fast walk out the door was a blur in the corner of Amina’s increasingly worried eye. Low, pink light. She needed to fix low, pink light before everyone came out looking like fried chicken under a heat lamp.

“Amina, can you put your things down the hall at the coat check? They’re cluttering up the room.”

“Yup, one sec.”

“More to the left, Rosa.”

Amina walked to the wall and flipped the few remaining switches up until the place blazed like a flaming tutu. Good God, the mirrors. She might as well be shooting in a funhouse.

“Mom?” The whoosh of the dressing room door revealed the bride-to-be, cutely diminutive in an oversized man’s shirt and capri pants.

“Jessica!” Lesley smiled carnivorously. “You’re early!”

“Yeah. The other bride was half an hour late, so they took our party first. I felt bad for her, but I mean, whatev, right?”

“Whatev,” Lesley echoed with a goofy grin. “So let’s see.”

Jessica twirled around and Amina ran for her camera just as the door opened again and in came the rest of the girls—tan-limbed, smooth-haired, piled high with bags upon bags, plastic-wrapped dresses, several shoe boxes, a portable CD player. Accessories spread out over countertops. Jackie, the maid of honor, announced that she’d burned a special “love”-themed compilation for the occasion. Amina stepped frantically onto a chair to get a bird’s-eye view of the commotion as Madonna filled the air.

“Did anyone bring an extra razor?”

“I did.” Jackie held it up like a trophy, which would have been a great shot, but taking the picture sent a blaze of flash through all the mirrors, and Amina’s pulse went rabbity.

“Amina, your bag?”

There was a loud knock at the door, accompanied by a deep “Is everybody decent?” Brock Beale shoved through it half a second later, steel-haired and pug-nosed, his buttery gaze falling over the girls. “And how are my favorite ladies today?”

Lesley and Jessica, busy with the clasp of a pearl bracelet, barely looked up, but Jackie turned around with a sweet smile. “Wow, Brock. You look great in a tux.”

“You think?” He looked at his profile in the mirror, patting a toned midsection. “I can never quite get comfortable.”

This was a lie, a charming one, as there was absolutely no doubt in Amina’s mind that Brock Beale was just as comfortable in his tux as he was in pajamas, but it served the purpose of making Jackie all the more adamant in her reassurances, which in turn made him look all the more comfortable. The flash, when it went off this time, made both of them wince.

“Amina, the coat check,” Lesley repeated.

“I just need to get a few more shots.”

Lesley stepped in front of her camera. “Now would be great.”

Amina swallowed a flash of irritation, intently panning across the room, but all the girls had grown too aware of her suddenly, their limbs stiff with the nothing noise of smoothing on deodorants and hairspray.

“Go,” Lesley said. “You could use a break.”

Cooler air hit Amina’s face as she walked out of the women’s lounge and back down the hallway. She shivered a little as she turned the corner and headed toward the ballroom, cluttering bags in tow. Lesley’s trees stood sentry on either side of her, mummified in plastic. A few men measured the space between them.

“Coatrack?” Amina asked them, not stopping.

“Keep going back,” one of them said, and Amina walked faster, past the ballroom, past the kitchen, to the back of the greeting hall. She found the coat check—a few open racks just to the side of a back door—and snatched the first hanger she could.

“Can I help you, miss?” A teenage boy with a blond buzz cut and a face like a ferret seemed to materialize out of nowhere, tugging on the shirt cuffs that peeked out from a short burgundy jacket.

“I’m just hanging my suit.”

“I’ll do it.”

“I already did it.”

“Get your number?”

Amina stared at him, not comprehending until the kid reached for the ticket hanging from the neck of the hanger, tearing it off and giving it to her.

“Thanks.”

The kid smiled a funny smile at her, like they were on the inside of someone else’s joke. “I’m Evan.”

“Amina.”

He looked past her to the reception hall. “This one is going to be a pain in the ass, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much.”

“Good luck.”

“You too.”

Lesley had been right. It both chafed and relieved Amina to admit this to herself, but somehow, the walk to the coat check had reset her. When she returned to the women’s lounge, she had found the right perspective, which ended up being right next to any of the mirrors, cheating slightly away from the center of the room.

Now, four hours later, she swayed in the middle of the dance floor. Couples shuffled around her in huddled pairs, smiling at her through the lens. The room was thick with the smell of celebration—lilies, men’s cologne, wine, and warm skin.

With the ceremony over and dinner under way, the bride had relaxed into the groom’s body, her small frame folded in his tuxedoed arms like a dove between palms. Jessica looked younger and softer than she had during the ceremony, and when she turned her face up to her new husband’s for a kiss, Amina knew she had gotten the picture they wanted more than any other.

The shots from the day would be to Lesley’s liking, showcasing the Beale style, taste, extravagance. Lesley really had thought of every last detail, from the fruit and champagne and truffle bar to the silkribboned seating cards to special games for the kids and the tiny silver Space Needle favors. And while Brock had thrown a stiff arm around his wife for the family photos, holding her as though she were a minifridge, the rest of the bridal party was carelessly, casually pretty, the
guys tall and just beginning to put on the weight that would make them spread into their fathers, the girls toned and groomed and glossy.

On the dance floor, Amina turned to find Lesley and an older man waltzing slowly beside her, and she moved in step beside them to get a better angle. They bent their heads together.

“We’ll be cutting the cake in about fifteen minutes,” Lesley said through her teeth. “If you want to take a break or eat something, do it now, okay?”

She was not hungry for anything but air and space. Out in the hallway, caterers walked by with trays full of stacked plates and empty glasses. It was brighter and cooler in the hall, golden light bouncing from cream walls down to burgundy carpet. Amina passed the kitchen with its muted clatterings, its smell of gravy and dishwater.

Lesley had also been right about bringing in the trees. Unwrapped, they proved to be very tall shrubs, pruned to perfect cones as if they’d been uprooted from a gnome’s forest. The effect was strangely magical. Amina ran her palm against the bristles of one, then stepped behind it and peeked out to take a picture of the whole row, slant after slant after slant after slant.

The band in the ballroom announced the cover of a special request, and after a pause, the woman’s voice sang out the breathy first line of Etta James’s “At Last.” Chairs barked as guests rose to greet the champion of all wedding songs, the one that always brought indifferent or fighting or estranged couples to the dance floor for momentary reconciliation. If she hadn’t already taken too many dance shots, Amina would have headed back, but instead she kept walking,
My lonely days are over
following her down the hall like a forlorn ghost.

The coatracks were filled now, Amina saw as she walked toward them. The arm of her jacket stuck out from the mostly black coats like a drowning victim, and she looked at it longingly. How nice it would be to walk the twenty feet across the carpet, to pull it out and put it on and leave. She nearly screamed when it moved.

The rack moaned. Amina’s gut bunched up into her chest as a head rose up from the middle of the coatrack and sank down again.

“Fuck,” she heard someone say. She ducked behind the tree to her left.

The rack was moving now, the coats shivering as if cold. The head rose up again, and Amina pulled the camera up to her face, her heart beating staccatos into her fingers. The head bobbed lower, then turned suddenly, roughly, facing her. Amina froze, waiting to be spotted, but the maid of honor’s eyes were closed, and stayed closed as Amina zoomed in. Her pink mouth hung in an
O
, lips wet. The girl’s head moved in beats, rising and lowering, and Amina focused in tight on Jackie’s face, holding her breath to press the shutter. She pressed the shutter again as the girl reached out to steady herself, one manicured hand wrapping around the wire neck of the hangers, her head dipping to the side. When she moaned again, a man’s hand covered her mouth. She leaned forward into it. The coatrack disappeared in a thunder.

Through Amina’s lens, they were beautiful—pinned like sea creatures on a tide of black coats, limbs flailing against each other in fantastic spasm, white against the dark. The girl lay facedown, the flowers in her hair smashed to pulp. Under her, two ankles bound by pants ran in place, trying to find some footing in the mounds of material. Amina was swallowed by a clean calmness, fingers and eyes and lens suspended in the air twitching, twitching. She watched as two large hands grasped Jackie by the waist, throwing her roughly to the side. Underneath, Mr. Beale clutched his thigh, the whites of his eyes shining as Amina pressed the shutter again.

Jackie moaned.

“Get up,” Mr. Beale barked, but the girl did not move. Her breasts dangled out of her dress, and she fumbled, trying to pull the material back up.

“Oh my God,” she said.

“Get up
now
,” Mr. Beale said again, pushing her shoulder.

The swishing noise just behind Amina sent the camera to her waist, her lungs cinching. She turned to see the coat checker hurrying down the hallway toward them, eyes stuck on the scene in front of him. Amina followed behind him, slinging her camera around her back. Mr. Beale frowned as they approached, and Amina looked away as he stood and yanked his pants up.

“I’ll, um … take-take-take care of the coats, sir,” the coat checker stuttered, and Mr. Beale stepped off of them.

“Jackie, get up,” Mr. Beale said again, calmly this time, like he was talking to a toddler, but she didn’t stir. She was looking behind him, behind all of them. Amina turned around to see the grounds manager in the hallway, with Lesley and a few guests trailing behind him.

“What’s your name, son?” Mr. Beale asked the coat checker.

“Ev-Evan.”

“Evan, let’s you and me see if we can lift this thing.” Mr. Beale motioned to the coatrack. The folly of this was evident by what was on top of the coatrack, namely, Jackie, hands smashed over the bodice of her dress. Amina looked at Mr. Beale, who looked at the grounds manager, who looked at the coat checker, giving him a sharp nod, so it was the coat checker who bent down to the girl, hoisting her up clumsily while the guests looked on. Underneath her, Amina spotted her own crumpled coat.

“Too much to drink,” Mr. Beale announced loudly as the help heaved the coatrack up off the floor. “No big deal.”

He gave the guests in the hall a knowing wink, and Jackie’s face filled with color.