The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel (52 page)

T
hat night Jamie and Amina sipped wine at a new place in the Northeast Heights. Dark and cavernous, it boasted stools that looked like slabs of ice, an impressively large wine list, and an inversely diminutive bartender (“Let me know if I can help,” she’d offered, with a face that said she couldn’t possibly). On either side of them, Albuquerque’s moneyed set watched one another’s jewelry catch the light. The bar menus, rich cream card stock embossed with a font so modern it looked like a digital sneeze, suggested things like “rice paper crab” and “foam of duck.”

“What are we doing here again?” Amina asked, trying and failing to sit comfortably.

“Risking everything to save innocent lives.” Jamie handed her an errant flyer—a lone misstep of cheap pink Kinko’s paper.
Come see us for happy hour!
it read.
Watch the sun set in a symphony of color!
“I don’t know, I thought maybe we should mix it up with people our age.”

“These people are our age?”

“Does that make you feel old?”

“It makes me feel poor.”

The bartender came by again, a smile taped to her face. “Any questions?”

“What’s a symphony of color?” Jamie asked. He held up the flyer.

She didn’t even look at it. “We have a really nice sunset.”

“Ah, thanks. Do you also have Budweiser?”

“We only have Sierra Nevada on tap.”

“We’ll take two,” Amina said.

An hour and two beers apiece later, they were grinning. They were also talking too loudly. Amina knew this from the way the bartender was pointedly avoiding them. But who cared? She was on a date with Jamie Anderson. He smelled like something she wanted to eat.

“So I went to Mesa Prep today,” Amina said.

“Oh yeah? What for?”

“I don’t know. I wanted to take pictures of it. Anyway, I couldn’t get in.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they literally wouldn’t let me in. The guard outside.”

“Guard? Wait, that little booth at the gate is actually
manned
by someone?”

“Yeah!”

“No way!” Jamie said. “I’ve passed it a couple of times. I just thought it was for, I don’t know, show or something. They have real guards?”

“Ninjas.”
Amina spat out the word.

Jamie laughed and took a long tug of beer.

“No, really. That’s what they’re called. Ninja Security. That’s what the guy’s pocket said. There are, like, twenty-five of them on campus. Apparently they will stop anyone who doesn’t have an appointment or a press pass.”

Jamie choked a little. “Wait, he asked if you had a
press pass
?”

“Yes. Because I had my camera.”

“But you were a student!”

“That’s what I said!”

“That’s bullshit! It’s not like you’re some … some”—Jamie’s hand gestured furiously in the air—
“delinquent!”

“Sha!”

“I mean, you
paid
to go to
school
there for, like,
years
! And they treat you like a
criminal
?”

“Insulting.” Amina nodded. “Criminal.”

“So did you complain to someone?”

“I couldn’t get in to complain to anyone!”

“Fascists!” He hit the bar with a force. The bartender made a face at another one of the patrons. “I mean, what, so now it’s some kind of dictatorship?
Ninjas
?”

“Ninjas,” Amina said.

“Fuck them.” He set his beer down on the bar. “We’re going in.”

“Totally.”

Jamie waved to the bartender. “Hey, can we settle up?”

“Wait, now? You want to drive all the way to Mesa now?”

“We can hop that fence in, like, two seconds. And then we’ll pretty much be on the mesa in the dark until we get to the buildings.”

Amina imagined them storming across the marble-floored admissions office and threw her head back, laughing. The bartender smacked down their bill.

“I’m fucking serious!” Jamie glanced at it and set two twenties down. “We’re going to take our school back.”

Amina did not move.

“What, you’re scared of the ninjas?”

She nodded. She was totally scared of the ninjas, whom she had imagined as short and quick and Japanese despite Albuquerque’s notably small Asian population.

“Come on, that campus is huge! Forty acres, and most of it just barren mesa! How many of them can there be?”

“Twenty-five.”

“So we cut in through a random section of the fence across from that Chinese place—what’s it called?—the Great Wall. Yeah. And we stay away from the booth entirely. Then we’re golden.”

“Jamie.” She put a hand on his arm.

“Amina.” He pulled it to his chest.

“This isn’t a good idea.”

“It’s
the best
idea.”

“What if we get caught?”

“Then we explain to them that we used to go there and decided to take a harmless walk and I
guaran-fucking-tee
you they will not want to press charges against their own alumni, no matter how they deal with people at the gate. I mean, c’mon. I’m a UNM professor. They want to mess with that?”

“Oooh,” Amina laughed despite her misgivings. “Are you going to bring the full wrath of your department down on them?”

“I might.” Jamie dropped his voice a notch. “Or I could just bring the wrath of my department down on you.”

“What does that even mean?”

“No idea. Finish your beer already.”

She didn’t have to go. She knew this. But there was something really lovely about the smell of hops rising in the air, about Jamie’s wincing smile and yellow T-shirt, about how close her hand was to his heart.

She took a last gulp and slid off the bar stool. “Let’s go.”

Twenty minutes later they sat in Jamie’s car, under the yellow glow of the Great Wall.

“Okay,” he whispered, like they were already inside the Mesa Prep gates. He pointed to the far north section of the fence. “So I’m thinking we head to the north corner, hop over that big brick thing, and run through the mesa until we hit the parking lots.”

“Run through all that mesa? In the dark?”

“Thing is, we’ve got to avoid the security house and the spot where traffic slows, so I think the only way to do this is take the natural route.”

“Cactus,” Amina reminded him. “Rattlesnakes.”

Jamie leaned over her, opening the glove box with a smile. “Flashlight,” he said, handing her the cold metal. “I’ve got two. And I’ve got a first-aid kit in the car.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“What?”

“The amount of stuff you keep in your car! It’s got to mean something. Savior complex? Abandonment issues?”

“Quit stalling.”

Amina opened her door, popping out into the night. Jamie followed. They looked across the street. The wall seemed a little sturdier without the remove of the windshield, a little meaner. It was a combination of iron railing and thick brick posts, the kind of thing well suited to military schools and southern graveyards. Amina started doing jumping jacks.

“What are you doing?”

“Warming up.”

“Oh. Right.” Jamie followed her lead. They did twenty together and stopped, breathing hard.

Jamie leaned into a lunge. “Remember to stretch your hams and quads.”

Amina nodded, lunging. “And we should do our shoulders after this.”

Thirty seconds later Jamie was chicken winging his arms with vigor, while Amina pulled her elbows across her chest.

“You ready?” Jamie asked.

Amina looked across the road to the darkened mesa surrounding the school. “Absolutely.”

Ten minutes later they panted outside the gate, hands and forearms and shins surprisingly banged up for what was supposed to be an easy hurdle. Amina spat to the side while Jamie paced and coughed.

“Okay,” Jamie said, frowning down at his scratched palms. “Okay, so maybe not? Maybe we just quit while we’re ahead?”

Amina shook her head. No, they would not be giver-uppers in the face of Mesa Preparatory. Now she wanted this.

“I mean, it’s bigger than we thought, right?” he said, motioning to the gate. “Definitely bigger than what you see from the road. So there’s that.”

“You are simply capable of more,”
she told Jamie, putting a foot at the base of the ironwork. “Here, give me a boost.”

Jamie held his hand out.

“No, dummy, like …” Amina wove her fingers together, hunched down.

“What am I, a mind reader?” Jamie leaned down.

“I mean, it’s a boost. People know how to give a boost.” Amina shoved up and over, holding on unsteadily to the iron railing. And then suddenly she was falling, the spade points receding. She landed on her ass with a thud.

Jamie smiled at her through the fence. “Nice.”

“At least I got over.”

“Hold on.” He followed her lead, looking decidedly nervous as his groin skimmed the iron points. He lowered himself with shaking biceps and grinned at her.

“We’re in.”

Amina looked at the blank expanse of mesa in front of them, the wooly darkness tinged brown by the edges of sagebrush catching light from the road.

“Don’t worry. If there are any snakes here, they’ve heard us and they’re moving out,” Jamie assured her.

“You’re not going to lay any bullshit on me about them being more scared of us than we are of them, are you? Because I know for a fact that I’m the scaredest animal out here.”

Jamie squeezed her hand and they walked forward. On their right, the campus was clearly visible, rows of lights blazing down the cement walkways and bricked arches. On their left lay the football field, ringed by the track and bordered on one side by a small mound of built-in stadium stands.

“Where are we going?”

“Stadium.” Jamie pointed.

“What about the ninjas?”

“I mean, it’s a football field. What is anyone really going to do to it? Besides, the lights aren’t on, so it’s not like we’d be so easy to see.”

They walked forward for what seemed like fifteen minutes, though
of course it could not have been. She followed Jamie, trying to avoid the darkest shadows, until he stopped suddenly, grabbing her arm.

“Shh!”

“What?”

Amina froze, listening. Far away, a car honked at another. Beside her Jamie slowly squatted, holding his finger over his lips. She followed, her heart pounding.

“I thought I heard someone,” Jamie whispered after a moment.

“A ninja?” Amina looked around, eyes wide.

“I don’t know. What do ninjas sound like?”

“Padded footsteps. Chinese stars.”

“It was totally a ninja.”

She laughed silently, terrified of the ninjas and of pissing herself. Jamie waited a few moments, then rose slowly to standing and put out his hand, pulling her up. They looked across the road to the stadium, which rose into the black night like a temple, the empty metal benches watching nothing.

“Beautiful,” Jamie said.

They split a joint on the grass, staring up at the place the stars would have been if there wasn’t a weird, brownish haze clouding the night. The grass was itchier than Amina would have liked, and she needed to pee, but other than that, the campus was bizarrely peaceful, full of the hypnotic symmetry found on campuses everywhere—trees and lampposts and benches evenly spaced. She exhaled a tiny cloud, and it seemed to float right up into the pollution, where it would join gaseous and particle pollutants and come back down as acid rain in some northwestern lake, if that’s how that worked. Was that how that worked?

“Who did you have for chemistry?” She handed the joint back.

“Brazier. Who did you have?”

“Wills.”

“Huh.” Jamie took a long pull. “Why?”

Amina shrugged, not quite sure what she had asked, much less
why. She looked over at Jamie, trying to gauge if it was important, but there was a little black seed of something caught in his teeth. She wanted to tell him, but it felt like too much work.

“Remember that night at the dance?” he asked. “You looked so hot.”

Amina smiled in the dark, deeply pleased in a way that made it seem like feminism had never existed. “Yeah, right.”

“I was dying to do this with you.”

“Get me high?”

“No, dummy. Get you next to me.”

“Bullshit. You barely looked at me.”

“That was just part of my moves, man. Play it cool.” Jamie sucked his teeth. “I went to that stupid dance looking for you.”

“You did?” Amina sat up, steadying herself. She peered down at him, trying to see if he was fucking with her. “Are you fucking with me?”

“You think I wanted to be there?”

“Aw, Jamie,” she said, more touched than she knew what to do with. She rubbed his forehead, the little patch between the edge of his eyebrow and hairline that she’d grown especially fond of, and his hand slid under her shirt.

“Hold on a sec.” She stood up and waited for the world to recalibrate so she could walk properly.

“Where are you going?”

“Behind the bleachers to pee.”

Jamie raised his head, assessing the dark hill that held the built-in bleachers. “All the way over there? Just squat here.”

“I’m not peeing in front of you.”

“It’s not a huge deal or something.”

“Yes it is. It’s a commitment.”

“What?” Jamie laughed. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve been
married
.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

She did not know, really, but she knew it had something to do with peeing while talking, and showering with the door open, and being optimistic in a way she had never been. Maybe someday his easiness
would rub off on her. Maybe someday she’d even become the kind of woman who could hunker down in front of him, but today was not that day. “Be right back.”

She walked across the grass and then the track and then to a little side path that led to the dirt parking lot behind the bleachers. As she rounded the corner and the field disappeared behind her, her skin tingled. It was all patches of light and dark back there. A shaggy ring of piñon trees mostly sheltered her from the bright lights of the parking lot, but the occasional patch of ground glowed eerily, like sun dappling the bottom of a lake. Amina stopped, dropped her pants, and squatted.