“You mean it?”
He sniffled. He wrapped his arms around me. Flashbulbs exploded. Helicopters dived.
“I know it’s not a perfect world. I wish it were, Toby… . But the bag. Don’t open it till after we’ve waltzed.”
All the lights in the cafeteria were out—except for a mirrored ball that cast swirling shadows—and the security guards were outside shooting craps, and the cops were eating crullers behind Jai Alai programs, and the media—who must have bribed security well, unless organized crime owned the local TV stations and got distribution rights to the most select footage—had emerged from the bushes like so many roaches and stood with their lenses propped up against the glass trying hard to sneak a peek at potential fag couples through the whirling mirrored shadows and unfurling fog machines. Midnight had arrived, and it was time for the waltz, and everything was secrecy and saturnalian shadow, and even the helicopters seemed suspended in midair, caught up in the question marks of arching silver searchlights.
An enterprising anchor who’d seen Ian and me embracing in the moonlight on the fifty-yard line shouted out behind us as we threaded our way back through camera wires and empty kegs toward the prom, “Would you two fellas care to formally declare your love for each other on the twelve o’clock news?”
“We have a prom to get to,” I said, not looking back, and slapping Ian’s ass to a flurry of flashbulbs.
“I’ll meet you inside,” Ian said at the backdoor leading to the curtained stage that bordered the dancefloor. “I’ll find Courtney, you find Angelina, and in the middle of the waltz we’ll switcharoo, okay?”
“I’m trusting you, Ian,” I said, looking at him.
“You can trust me,” he said. “There’s no turning back now.”
And he kissed his index finger and he put it to his lip, and he told the world, “Shhhh!”—as if the world had guessed our secret—and then he put the finger he had kissed against my lip and said, “I’ll see you, Toby,” and he disappeared inside.
When Ian Lamb left, I took the bag from my pocket-—the bag Ian had given me on the fifty-yard line. It was the same paper bag in which I’d hidden Ian’s rose—the pink rose I’d stolen the day I first saw Scarcross. Now the bag was weathered and softer than leather. It felt like an animal’s pelt in my hands. But I wouldn’t look inside it until we had waltzed. I had promised Ian Lamb, and I would keep my promise.
As I bundled up the bag and stuck it in my pocket, I heard a voice searching for mine in the dark. I was standing in the stairwell leading to the stagedoor; I took a step down, and my eyes scanned the shadows. “Toby,” the voice cried. I took a step forward. “Toby!” the voice repeated. “Toby… Toby Sligh!” Behind me, a hand brushed the nape of my neck. I turned to see Anquanna. She was hugging herself.
“Where you been, boy? I was looking all over!”
“For me?”
“For my Leonard … You the next best thing.”
“Juice isn’t inside?”
“He ran away, Toby!”
“Where’d he run away to?”
“You didn’t see what happened?”
Anquanna sat down on the steps to the stagedoor, squeezed her body once, and sighed apocalyptically. Inside, they were waltzing. The music had started. I could picture Ian dancing. Anquanna offered me a joint.
“No, thanks,” I said curtly.
“Have a seat, Toby! You been with Ian Lamb or you been with my baby?”
“With Ian,” I said.
“That’s okay. I believe you. I know Juice ain’t like that. … So you didn’t see what happened?”
I told her I hadn’t and watched her nurse her joint; she sucked it in slow drags and shivered in the heat.
“Juice’s mama, Valilian, Valilian Compton—I dunno, she musta seen Juice on the news, ’cause a little while ago she arrived at the prom in a housecoat my mama she give her for her birthday, and Juice and me, you know, we dancing on the dancefloor, we was having a good time, just holdin’ one another, and Mrs. Compton see us, and I say, ‘Juice, yo’ mama,’ and she walks across the dancefloor in her bunny rabbit slippers. Juice, he just stands there, he stand there like a baby, his arms open wide and his mama walkin’ to him. And he grinnin’ like a kid; he wasn’t lookin’ at Valilian; that boy be so happy that he couldn’t see straight. And, Toby—I never will forget it, Toby Sligh—Mrs. Compton, she stops about twenty feet from him, and she take a long look, and then she draw a breath. And Juice, he goes to her and he says in this voice, so everyone can hear him, so everyone can hear, ‘You wanna dance, girl? You wanna dance with your baby?’ And Valilian, you could see her lower lip workin’, she cryin’ to herself, and her mouth is sealed tight. And she goes up to Leonard and spits in his eye: ‘Dealer,’ she say. ‘You killed your brother Eddy,’ And then she slapped his face. And she just walks away.”
Inside the cafeteria, the first waltz had ended—the first of three waltzes. Ian would be waiting.
“So where is Juice now?”
“He disappeared, Toby—I tol’ you! No one’s seen him! And who’s gonna dance with me?”
“I’d dance with you?’ I said, “but—”
“What? Angelina? Girl’s gone, Toby. She went home with her brother.”
We passed through the stagedoor, past a struck set—a rack of clouds were lying in a pile on the floor, the sun had snapped in half, and a tree was upside down—-and it was pitch black, with shadows whorling in the darkness, and Anquanna squeezed my arm and she whispered, “What was that?” We stopped and we listened. We saw a figure moving.
“Maybe it’s Juice!” Anquanna said, and took a step.
Out on the dancefloor, beyond the closed curtains, the second waltz of the evening had officially begun. There was just one more, the last waltz of the evening; then the lights would flood up and everybody would go home.
“C’mon, Anquanna—!”
“Gotta see if it’s Juice! Never thought my Leonard might be hiding back here!”
“But the last waltz, Anquanna—!”
“I’ll dance with you, Toby! Don’t leave me here alone and— Shhh! Somebody’s movin’!”
It was true: in a corner of the stage beside the curtains, before a grand piano that was slightly out of tune, a figure sat hunchbacked on a squat piano bench, a shadow in the darkness, staring at the two of us. It was sitting very still; it gave off an acrid odor. All we could hear was raspy breathing in the dark. Then there was a rolling noise of levers and pulleys, the figure on the piano bench bolted upright, and the curtains separating the stage from the dancefloor opened on a teeming sea of senior prom faces. McDuffy took the stage with a microphone in hand and pointed at the figure huddled on the crooked bench— a woman, a nun, a collection of wrinkles, a come-undone mummy: she looked older than the world.
“It has been a tradition,” McDuffy began, beaming at the audience beneath a single spotlight, “to let Sr. Aloysius of the Holy Dames Academy perform the final waltz at the senior prom. Alumni down the ages have remembered her fondly, and have said that of all their high school memories, Sr. Aloysius’s final waltz at the prom has remained a special highlight and a treasured memory. I would like to congratulate all of you for weathering what has proved to be a truly trying ceremony; and I would ask you, for a moment, to step back from all the chaos and to celebrate this waltz in the spirit God intended it— a spirit of faith, and of truth, and of honor, and of family, and community, and dignity, and love. And with that said, bow your heads and ask God’s blessing.” McDuffy spoke Latin; everybody crossed themselves. “And now, without further ado—the last waltz, as performed by our very own Sr. Aloysius!”
The single white spotlight directed at McDuffy diverted its beam and landed on the seated nun. She seemed composed of dust and other less substantial stuff, but she was sturdy and graceful in an ageless white habit, like a girl who’d never jettisoned her First Communion dress. There was a disarming serenity about her, and her face was bright and mocking, and her long fin
gers fine as she sifted through leaves of desiccated sheet music as if she’d never seen the waltz she’d played for countless years. She took a sip of soda, winked at me and at Anquanna, then coughed, and made the sign of the cross, and struck a chord. Then she stopped, and smacked her lips, and she wrinkled up her nose; and she stood at her piano bench and announced to everybody:
“I would like to dedicate ‘the last waltz’ to Father Eli Scarcross who is dying tonight at the AIDS ward at St. Osyth’s. Eli is the most remarkable man I have ever met, and when he is gone I will miss his presence dearly. Eli has God’s love if he has nobody else’s. And he has mine. This last waltz is for him.”
Only then did she begin. She didn’t wait for anybody. So Anquanna and I had to hurry to the floor.
The last waltz —
And I’m with you —
Can it be true?
Last waltz —
The party’s end
And two hearts blend… .
Waltzing with Anquanna was like waltzing with a shadow—her svelte figure felt insubstantial to the touch, and no doubt Juice’s substitute felt insubstantial too. She had longed to waltz with Juice; I had longed to waltz with Ian; and Ian was waltzing with Courtney Ciccone in a corner of the floor where all the pretty couples were—while Juice had disappeared with his pride into the night, as had Angelina, who longed to waltz with me. Certainly Bubba, who had vanished with his sister, hadn’t thought twice about abandoning Grace Cage. On the purlieu of the dance floor the modest Mormon dormouse sat talking to her girlfriend with the choppy hair. They wore doomed but persevering pioneers’ expressions, and occasionally the pair would press their foreheads together as if they were conspiring against the whole human race in that way that girls who’re never asked to dance tend to do. Then they would smile at all the silly waltzers, and once they even stood up. But they sat back down again.
Heaven —
This night was heaven —
For at last I have met you —
Oh! how can I forget you?
Sr. Aloysius—whose voice was angelic in spite of, or perhaps because of, her age—had taken an obscure melody by Chopin and given it just the sort of wistful little twist that could send a room of young lovers twirling through the ceiling. Anquanna wasn’t really a very good dancer, and neither was I—we were hopeless together—but Sr. Aloysius invested the waltz with such sadness, such pathos, such willowy yearning that we pressed against each other to stem the melancholy the otherwise hopelessly hopeful words implied:
Once more,
Let me repeat —
You’re oh! so sweet …
Once more,
Remember this —
A goodnight kiss
Means love.
The waltz would have sounded twice as heavenly with Ian: we would have borne each other up into the empyrean. After all, it was our waltz; it was written for us; it meted out the alpha and omega of our love. I could still close my eyes—as I’d done with my mother, as I’d done with Angelina—and imagine it was him. I could imagine his body brushing up against mine as it had so many times in so many darker waltzes; I could imagine his words as he murmured in my ear: “It’s me, Toby Sligh… . It’s Ian Lamb, Toby… . I love you so much… . Never ever let me go!”; I could imagine the Mickey in his artificial eye, the breeding pool of all the lies he’d spread to seem more truthful. Would it sparkle in the shadow of the mirrored glitterball that projected chilling chiaroscuro phantoms of us all? Would it engender all our skeletons beneath the shadowlight as if the lies that we had told were taking shape before our eyes? How many waltzers—straight or gay—were dishonest? And how many waltzers—true or false—had the virus? And how many would get it? And how many would spread it? And how many would be spared it? And how many would die? A dozen years from then, at a ghostly class reunion, would the waltzers who were living underpopulate the dead? And which side would I be on? And Ian? And Courtney? And Juice? And Anquanna? And Bubba? And Grace? Or would we all be ravaged by an enemy more common: heartbreak—which was deadlier, and easier to catch. How many couples turning circles round each other had betrayed a tender confidence or sacrificed a heart? How many guys (apart from Ian and yours truly) longed to dance with other guys assembled there that night? And how many girls longed to dance with other girls? Or guys with other girls? Or girls with other guys? Heartbreak didn’t give a damn for sexual preference; heartbreak was an equal opportunity destroyer. And if the crosseyed kid who overshot the Teflon arrows could set aside his bow to rearrange these moving targets, how many miserably mismatched waltzers would find themselves coupled with the ones they’d always wanted? Somebody, somewhere, should have shouted out:
“STOP!”
Everyone was executing bad steps gracefully. So I closed my eyes, and leaned my cheek against Anquanna’s (feeling as battered as her, in my way); and dreamed about Ian, and about a perfect world, and about the love that stood a chance until the last waltz ended; and Anquanna said, “Shhh! You ain’t as bad as all that!”; while Sr. Aloysius spread her tender tendrils through the night:
In my dreams , love,
I’ll be dancing
The last waltz with you,
The last waltz with …
“You care to dance?”Ian Lamb interrupted.
He was standing by Anquanna, his hand outstretched to mine.
“Anquanna, do you mind?” Ian asked my partner.
“Go for it, fellas,” she said and stepped aside.
A hush like a brushfire rustled through the crowd as other couples cleared the floor and Ian drew me to him. It wasn’t a dream; this time I wasn’t dreaming: Ian’s body was real, and his smile was real, and his face was fresh and shaven as he pressed it next to mine. Sr. Aloysius slowed the waltz’s presto tempo so Ian and I could make a full turn round the floor. And nobody was screaming. Nobody was complaining. Everybody stepped back and let us have our final waltz. And I thought to myself, as I held my boy to me, If I’d known it was this easy, if I’d known it was this simple, if I’d known it was this painless I’d have done it long ago! Ian danced beautifully; he glided like a swan—and I could feel my mother gliding somewhere underneath his skin. I had never been more conscious of the beating of my heart; it was like an undiscovered ocean opening in my veins. And I looked at Ian’s face, his lovely face, still not believing: Had God really given me this angel for my own? Was this person, this courageous young man, really mine? If he had lied to me before, he had made good on his promise: we were waltzing together at the Sacred Heart prom! Here we were, at last, in front of everygoddamnbody, glorious and graceful and unabashed in love! We were even more naked than my parents had been when I spied them from the rooftop several hours before; we were even more naked because we’d cast aside the clothes we had worn for so long and had now forsworn forever. Why wasn’t there a riot? There were riots in my blood. I could feel Ian’s soft balls pressing into mine. And our souls were together; they had never been closer—they were twirling in midair to Sr. Aloysius’ waltz. And I wanted to kiss him. I needed to kiss him. We needed to kiss more than anything then: but as I looked into his eyes, at his glittering Mickey, and I looked at his lips, and I finally parted mine, a laugh escaped his throat, a dry bitter laugh, a laugh like a pebble skipping down a dirty hillside, while behind it, an avalanche of jollity began, little laughs and bigger laughs and rollicking boulders of crushing, mocking sound, and the lights flooded up and security burst in and Ian jerked his head back and clapped me on the shoulder, and I stepped away and saw, separating on the dancefloor, fifty other couples just like Ian and me, fifty other guys dancing with their secret boyfriends, fifty sets of lovers who had tumbled from their closets. And their girlfriends were applauding, and their teachers were applauding, and the media and Mafia, they were applauding, and the curtains on the stage had swallowed Sr. Aloysius, and I watched Courtney run and give her loverboy a kiss, and only then did I realize it had all been prearranged, a practical joke to dispel the ugly rumors: thro
ugh the course of the evening all the guys and their girlfriends had agreed to stage a big faggot waltz for a finale—as a joke for the media, who were starving for scandal, as a gag for the faculty, for being such good sports, as a cover for each other, to cover up the awful truth: that only through a joke could they turn themselves away from the punchline that would hover in their shadows all their lives. The only party unamused by all this was Anquanna. She stood with her hands on her hips and said: “Jesus! Bunch a’ mean motherfuckers, ain’t they, Toby Sligh?” And then music, ghost music, swelled to life behind the curtains, a waltz the likes of which no one had ever heard before. And with all the lights on, Grace Cage and her girlfriend with the choppy hair started waltzing in a corner. They waltzed very poorly. They kept tripping on each other. Their breasts were pressed together. Then they stopped and French-kissed. No one said a word. Everybody was quiet. Then the ghost music stopped. But Grace & Co. kept dancing. Lonnie and Johnnie, the former football players, the guards on loan from the mafioso chieftain, finally had to pull the tender couple apart. By then they were screaming. It was triumphant screaming. They were screaming the words I had wanted to scream: “I love you… . Forever! … I’ll never let you go!” And they were taken outside, and the media were on them, and already the squad-cars had switched their sirens on, and Principal McDuffy took the stage with a microphone and shouted at the audience, “Everybody is dismissed!”
Ian and I stood at opposite corners of the Sacred Heart High cafeteria that night. We were looking at each other across a gulf of faces.
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