The Seal Wife - Kathryn Harrison [38]
The song is over, and she bends as if to adjust her shoe, slips a pilfered bill beneath the pale sole of her foot, making him smile because that’s where he’s hidden his own money, in the toe of his boot.
“I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier.” Bigelow requests the song because he wants it to be the same as it was the time before, at least in this respect. Having had another dime’s worth of bootleg, he steps up to her; he places his left hand at the small of her back, feels the damp cloth, the heat of the flesh beneath. He wants to put his tongue in her mouth, but he’s not going to, not yet. Whatever was in the dirty glass, it hasn’t made him feel dull, just the opposite. The brass of the trumpet, the light in her eye, everything glitters sharply. Above them, stars are out, bright pricks in a black sky.
Four turns and she hasn’t made a move, she’s good enough at what she does that she must feel the suspicion in his body, the way he’s pulled taut with attention, boxstepping a little too neatly. It isn’t until he half closes his eyes and lets his head loll toward hers that her left hand drops down his side, a twitch, nothing more; he misses his chance to catch her. One pocket left, and it’s a trick to be vigilant while seeming to fall asleep. She jostles him into another couple, a strategy—she’s too accomplished a dancer to stumble. He shoves his hand in after hers, catches it, hot and squirming.
Bigelow drags the girl’s fingers from his pocket and up to his mouth and—this isn’t what he intended, he’s as shocked as she—bites them, the first and the middle. Bites them hard. With a jolt she stops dancing, she snatches back the hand, wipes her fingers thoroughly on her skirt. Then she spits at him.
The scene draws an audience, amused laughter and stares. Couples dance over and stop, forming a circle around Bigelow and the girl. “Aw, Mary,” someone says. “What’d he do to you?”
“Bit me,” she answers, “Goddamn crazy son of a mother-fucking bitch,” speaking plain English and holding up the fingers, visibly dented. Several dancers lean toward her to see how the purple arcs left by his incisors interrupt the creases of her knuckles.
“I . . .” I didn’t, he was going to say, except that obviously he had. “She’s . . .” a thief, a pickpocket. But she hasn’t taken anything from him, not this time. Bigelow feels himself sweating, suddenly drunk. A Russian the size of a walrus steps forward and grabs his shirt.
“That’s my wife,” he says, and he snatches up the girl’s hand, holds her fingers under Bigelow’s nose. “You bit my wife.”
“I . . .” Bigelow tries. “Your . . .”
But what’s the point? He holds his hands up in surrender. All right, he thinks, everyone gets beaten up sometime in his life. And I’m drunk, he thinks gratefully. Thank God I’m drunk.
“My—” the big Russian says.
“Shut up, Alexi!” The girl cuts him off. She twists out of his grasp, reaches up and slaps the man on the side of his head, a stinging blow that reddens his ear. She spits again, at Bigelow and at the Russian, who spits back, and then she turns on her shiny heel and walks off, dancers parting before she has a chance to shove them aside.
“Stupid,” the Russian says, rubbing his ear. He stares at Bigelow, who stares back, both of them clearly wondering what’s coming next.
“Buy you a drink,” Bigelow tries. The Russian nods slowly, still holding the side of his head.
“Is she your wife?” Bigelow asks, forty cents later, the two of them sitting on stumps just beyond the dance floor, watching the girl, snug in a fat man’s grasp—but not too snug, her hands are busy.
“Uh,” the Russian says, nodding. “Uh-huh.”
Bigelow laughs,