The Song of David (11 page)

“I guess I just replaced the stick with a pole—and when I dance, for a few hours, several nights a week, I’m living my dream. Even though it may not look that way to you. My mom wouldn’t have liked it. You’re right about that. But she isn’t here. And I have to make my own choices.”

Amelie stopped talking and waited, possibly to see if I was going to argue. When I didn’t, she continued.

“I used to dance and do gymnastics. I used to leap and turn. I could do it all. And I didn’t need a pole. Just like I used to walk down the street and chase my friends and live my life without my stick. But that isn’t an option anymore. That pole means I can still dance. I don’t need to see to dance in that cage. If that means I’m not a classy girl, so be it. It’s a tiny piece of a dream that I had to give up. And I’d rather have a piece of a dream than no dream at all.”

Well, shit. That made perfect sense. I felt myself nodding again, but punctuated it with words. “Okay. Okay, Millie. I sure as hell can’t argue with that.”

“So now I’m Millie?”

“Well, we’ve just established that you aren’t a classy girl,” I teased, and her laughter rang out again, echoing in the quiet street like a faraway church bell. “Amelie sounds like an aristocrat, Millie sounds a little more down home. A girl called Millie can be friends with a guy named Tag.”

“David?”

“Yeah?”

“I have a new favorite sound.”

“What’s that?”

“The way you say Millie. It shot straight to the top of my list. Promise me you’ll never call me Amelie again.”

Damn if my heart wasn’t pounding in my chest. She wasn’t flirting, was she? I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I wanted to call her Millie again. And again. And again. Just because she asked me to.

“I promise . . . on one condition.”

She waited for me to name my price, a small smile tiptoeing across her mouth.

“I’ll keep calling you Millie if you call me Tag,” I said. “You callin’ me David makes me feel like you expect me to be someone I’m not. The people I care about the most call me Tag. That’s what fits.”

“I like calling you David. I think you’re classier than you give yourself credit for. And everyone calls you Tag. I want to be . . . different,” she admitted softly.

I felt a slice of pain and pleasure that had me holding back and leaning in simultaneously, but I pushed the feeling away with banter, the way I usually do.

“Oh, I’m very classy.” She laughed with me, the way I wanted her to. “But you bein’ special and different has nothing to do with what you call me, Millie. But you can call me any damn thing you want to.”

“Any damn thing doesn’t have the same ring as David, but okay,” she quipped.

“You’re a smart aleck, you know that, right?”

She nodded, grinning and gave my nickname a shot. “So, Tag.”

“Yeah, Millie?”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday. Do you go to church?”

“No. You?” I was guessing she did. Amelie was full of contradictions. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if she was a pole-dancing church-goer.

“In a manner of speaking. Church is hard for Henry. I could go alone. He’s fine at home by himself for a little while, obviously. But when I was younger, my mom would try and take us, and when Henry would get agitated or start making too much noise, she would take us out. That’s when I discovered one of my favorite sounds. You want to hear it?”

“Now?”

“No. Tomorrow. Eleven a.m.”

“At church?”

“At church.”

Well, damn. Maybe I should go to church. Work on saving my soul. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Her smile knocked me over, and I mentally kicked myself. I was spending too much time with her, and the more time I spent, the harder it was to keep my head on straight. Before I thought better of it I spoke. “We’re just friends, you and I, right Millie?”

The smile wobbled and Millie reached out for her gate, feeling for the latch as if she needed something to hold onto while I kicked her in the stomach.

“Yeah. Why would I ever presume to be more?” she asked, her voice light. The gate swung open and without turning toward me again, she walked toward the front door, barely using her stick.

FRIENDS OR NOT, I found myself in front of Amelie’s door at a quarter to eleven. I knocked and waited, wondering if Millie had changed her mind. The friend comment had been insulting—I knew it as soon as it left my lips—but I had to make sure I wasn’t leading her on until I knew where I was going. I was dressed in my navy blue suit jacket and a starched white shirt, but I’d left the tie at home and pressed my Wranglers instead of wearing slacks. I could dress up when I needed to, but I was hoping my pressed Wranglers and shiny boots were good enough. I’d slicked back my shaggy hair and told myself I didn’t need a haircut. I’d never been attached to my hair, I just never got around to taking care of it. But it made me look a little unkempt, so I wetted it, threw some goop in it, and slicked it back. I looked like one of those shirtless guys in a kilt on the cover of a romance novel, the kind my mom used to read and collect. It didn’t matter. Millie couldn’t see my long hair or the way it curled well over my collar. She couldn’t see my jeans for that matter, so I didn’t know why I cared.

The front door swung open and Henry stood there with wide eyes and a baseball bat.

“Hey, Henry.”

Henry stared. “You look weird, Tag.”

Said the guy with the bat and the hair that looked like a burning bush.

“I’m dressed up, Henry.”

“What did you do to your hair?” Henry hadn’t moved back to let me in.

“I combed it. What did you do to yours?” I asked, smirking.

Henry reached up and patted it. “I didn’t comb it.”

“Yeah. I can tell. It looks like a broom, Henry.”

We stared at each other for a few long seconds.

“They use brooms in the sport of curling,” Henry said.

I bit my lip to control the bubble of laughter in my throat. “True. But I’m thinking you would look more like a baseball player with less hair. That’s your favorite sport, right?”

Henry held up the bat in his hands, as if that were answer enough.

“I was thinking . . . I was thinking that you and I should maybe head over to my friend Leroy’s and get a trim tomorrow. Leroy owns a barbershop. Whaddaya say? Leroy is nice and there’s a smoothie shop next door. It’ll be a man date. A date for men.” I might as well kill two birds with one stone.

“A mandate?” Henry ran the words together.

“Yes. I am mandating that you get your hair cut. We’ll go to the gym afterwards, and I’ll show you some moves.”

“Not Amelie?”

“Do you want Amelie to come?”

“She’s not a man. It’s a man date.”

Amelie chose that moment to gently push Henry aside.

“I am definitely not a man, but Henry, you really should have invited Tag inside.”

Amelie was wearing tan boots and a snug khaki colored skirt that came to her knees, along with a fitted red sweater and a fuzzy scarf that had streaks of red and black and gold in the weave. I wondered how in the world she coordinated it all. Judging from Henry’s hair, he couldn’t be much help.

“
On February sixth, 1971, Alan Shepard hit a golf ball on the moon,” Henry offered inexplicably, and moved aside.

“And today is February sixth, isn’t it?” Millie said, clearly understanding Henry’s thought processes a whole lot better than I did.

“That’s right,” I said. “So February sixth a golf ball was hit on the moon and on February seventh, 2014, Tag Taggert and Henry Anderson are going to get haircuts, right Henry?”

“Okay, Tag.” Henry ducked his head and headed up the stairs.

“Call me if you need me, Henry,” Millie called after him. She waited until she heard his door shut before she addressed me.

“Henry has an attachment disorder. He doesn’t even like it when I cut
my
hair. If my mom had allowed it, he would be the biggest pack rat in the world. But hoarding and blindness don’t mix. Everything has to be in its place or the house becomes a landmine. So he wears the same clothes until they’re threadbare, won’t cut his hair, still sleeps with his Dragon Ball Z sheets he got for his eighth birthday, and has every toy he has ever been given stored in plastic bins in the basement. I don’t think he’ll go through with the hair cut. He’s only let Robin cut it twice since my mom died, and both times he cried the entire time, and she had to put the clippings in a Ziplock bag and let him keep them, just to get him to calm down.”

I was slightly repulsed, and I was glad Millie couldn’t see my expression. “So he has bags of hair in his room?”

“I’m assuming he does though he won’t tell me where. I pay my next-door neighbor to come in and clean once a week, and she hasn’t found it either.”

“Well, Henry said okay. So I’m planning on it. But we won’t be bringing any bags of hair back home.”

Millie’s brows furrowed and she looked as if she wanted to argue, but stepped toward me instead, felt for her walking stick that was leaning against the wall, and changed the subject. “Did you drive? Because I’m thinking we should walk. The church is around the corner.”

I eyed my shiny red truck wistfully and then forgot it when Amelie slid her hand around my arm.

Other than a few scattered snow flurries that dumped in the mountains and frosted the valleys, Salt Lake City was enjoying the mildest winter we’d had in years, and though the temperatures plummeted here and there, in comparison to normal February temperatures, it was almost balmy.

We walked east towards the mountains that ringed the valley. The mountains were the first thing I noticed about Utah when my family moved from Dallas my junior year in high school. Dallas didn’t have mountains. Salt Lake City had staggering, snow-covered mountains. I’d spent more than a few weekends in them skiing, though I was careful about how much skiing I did when I was training. Unfortunately, I always seemed to be training.

Amelie lifted her face as if to soak up the sun.

“Can you see anything at all?” I wondered if the question would offend her.

“Light. I can differentiate light from darkness. That’s about it. I can tell where the windows are in the house, when the door is open, that sort of thing. Natural light is easier for me than artificial light. And the light doesn’t illuminate anything else, so it’s really only good for orienting me in a room with windows, if that.”

“So if I danced around in front of a spotlight, you wouldn’t be able to see my outline?”

“Nope. Why? You thinking about doing a little pole-dancing at the bar?” she said cheekily.

“Yes. Dammit! How did you know?” I exclaimed, and she tossed back her head and laughed. I admired the length of her throat and her smiling mouth before I caught myself and looked away. I stared at her way too often.

“You look nice, Millie,” I said awkwardly, and felt like an idiot for the understatement.

“Thanks. I’d say the same thing to you, but, well, you know. You smell nice, though.”

“Yeah? What do I smell like?” I asked.

“Wintergreen gum.”

“It’s my favorite.”

“You also smell like a pine-based aftershave and soap—”

“New cologne called Sap,” I joked.

“—with a hint of gasoline.”