A Fine Cast of Characters - J. Dane Tyler [45]
I thought for a moment she’d sit beside me, but she only tipped her head and gazed her quizzical bird-gaze at me. I smiled back, because I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think I could stand in my present physical state. I thought it best to stay seated or betray too much of my first impression of her.
“Do you dance?” Her question was so strange, I knit my brows and cocked my head.
“I’m ... what?”
She laughed again, and I melted under its gentle warmth like a candle’s flame melts the wax.
“I said, do you dance?” She stirred the sand with a toe, one knee seductively overlapping the weight-bearing leg. I was entranced by its movement and shape. I wanted to feel its texture with my hand, my cheek, my tongue.
“Do you?”
I started, tore my eyes from her legs. “I don’t ... no, I don’t dance. Not well. Not often. I love music, though.”
“The music is playing now. Shall I dance for you?”
“Music is ...?”
“Yes. Don’t you hear the song of the ocean, playing for us? Shall I dance to it for you? Would you like that?”
My jaw was agape. It worked, tried to form words, and her smile took them from me. I tried to nod, but no movement was possible.
“You’ve always liked to watch me dance, haven’t you?”
I nodded again. I had no idea what she was talking about and it didn’t matter. I would have nodded if she told me to hang an anchor around my neck and throw myself into the cove.
And then she danced.
She undulated, her midriff liquefied, and I swear I watched the water coming alive again. She rippled and swayed, swelled and crested, her hips moved like living beings, apart from her, with minds of their own. She held her arms over her head and they writhed like serpents, her hips led her over the sand, twisting her, grinding and pumping and rolling. She undulated like the ocean, like the water behind her, somehow in time with it, somehow in concert with it, somehow one with it, somehow commanding it, controlling it, mistress of it. She moved like a part of the sea, like a thing born of it. And I burned for her as she danced. The more she moved, the more I burned. The more she swayed, the more my blood boiled. The more she tipped her head, hands playing and plying, neck open and exposed, muscles rippling under her skin, the more I wanted to have her, to become part of her, to take her and claim her and hold her and feel her around me, over me, plunging into her as one plunges into the sea, into the depths, into the mysterious fathoms.
But I couldn’t move. I could only stare at her, my breath ragged and short, sweating with desire and lust, shaking. I could only watch her as she danced and danced and danced and danced, and the ocean made the music for her, the surf moved in time with her, and together they were one entity, one being, one essence, one dancing life moving on the beach beneath the pale full moon.
I don’t know when she sat beside me. I don’t know when she stopped dancing. She was close to me but I couldn’t feel her warmth. She crossed her ankles delicately, leaned back on her hands behind her, head propped on one shoulder as she stared. We stared out to sea and never said a word, and exchanged so much in that silence, in that sharing. I have no idea how much time passed. I sat with my arms around my knees and felt her presence. I didn’t stare at her, only at the ocean, but all I saw was her.
The sky paled. The wispy clouds high above the cove, over the tree tops, changed to vivid pinks and purples, oranges and yellows. The slow transgression of daylight on the cove crept on us unaware, and she spoke, like a whisper, so she wouldn’t disturb the cove in its peace.
“Let’s go inside. The sun is coming.”
“Inside? Inside where?”
“The lighthouse. The sun is coming.”
“But the lighthouse is someone’s home. I—”
“Yes, the lighthouse is someone’s home. Let’s go there before the sun comes.”
“It’s someone’s home! We can’t just—”
“We can. I can. Come with me. Please.”
She held her hand out to me, and I saw then she wore something like a swimsuit, and something like a wrap around her waist, but couldn’t see the details. It