American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [46]
That’s such a shame Joe. It’s such good money.
She smoothed her skirt and sat back down.
What’ll we do?
We’ll be fine, he said.
He took her hand across the table.
Only another year until I graduate. I’m doing well this semester. I’ll be getting legal work soon.
I’m glad you’re feeling optimistic, she said. Because I went ahead and bought these.
She took two tickets from her pocket and put them in his hand. They were for Count Basie Christmas Eve at the Roseland Dance Palace. He put them on the table and stared at them.
Pearl …
We deserve to have some fun, she said.
He held her hand and looked at her.
I know how much you like to go dancing, she said. Remember when we used to go? I know I’m not the best dancer, but …
He kept holding her hand and looking at her.
I’m not too shabby, she said.
2005
So who was he?
Who?
The person you lost.
She had been far away: the Bosphorus, a yellow kitchen, Roseland.
He was a journalist.
What kind?
A war correspondent.
I see.
She looked down into his back and saw the muscles tense slightly under his shoulder blades. It was where his wings would have been.
I met him when I first moved back to New York, around the time I first found work dancing. We lived in the same building. His studio was the floor above mine. He was a little older. He was out of college a few years.
A college boy. A fancy college, I bet. Smart, I bet.
Yes.
He took a deep breath. Keep talking, he said.
He was writing pieces about fires in the Bronx or waste transfer stations. He was on the Metro desk. He was just starting out. I was just starting out too. I was in a show, Off Broadway. It was doing well. We were talking about finding a bigger place.
She wasn’t thinking now she was just talking and she put her hand on his neck. Then suddenly he turned his head and she saw the muscle turn in his neck and it was like a long stretch of sand curving ahead she was walking along a beach in early May the air still stung and the sun threw out a cold unwanted light. The tide pulled things away. She was walking with Sam near his parents’ summerhouse but his parents were away they were always away and he said that he thought they should be together. He came up to her and pulled her close. Her hair blew in front of her eyes. The ocean was gray it had no blue in it and no green in it just gray and molten an almost colorless expanse of moving liquid and to her it looked beautiful that day she felt safe.
She kept her hand on his neck and she saw things she had not wanted to see: Sam in a restaurant the waiter hovering and then sliding away as Sam was telling her that they would be sending him it was a big step it was a vote of confidence it was very important for his career. She saw Sam’s parents at another dinner this time a restaurant with many waiters and his parents were very polite to her, too polite, she could tell they didn’t take her seriously even though her background was good but what had she done with it? She hadn’t gone to college she was a dancer her family was from New York but where was her mother exactly? Yes, they had heard of the college where she taught but they quickly changed the subject and asked Sam more about his plans. She had wanted to say that they weren’t really Sam’s plans they were plans that other people, institutions, governments, and countries had made for him but she knew she would sound young and foolish and immature. His father was boyish and had been successful in local politics. His mother came from so much money she could afford to look unfashionable and she seemed basically kind but she would never have wanted anything like this dancer for her son and she seemed eerily excited that he was being sent into another world because he would move on from this infatuation. Of course she must have been terrified but to Honor she seemed like someone so rich for so long that it wouldn’t necessarily occur to her that anything bad could happen. Later, Honor thought that she was wrong. She realized that what she had observed was an entirely public performance