“I didn’t know you were here. Are you instructing?”
“Nope. AOC. Someone’s got to keep an eye on all those fine young cadets. How ’bout you? Instructing?”
“Yep. History.”
“So why are you here?”
“I was hungry. There’s free food, right? Anyway, Todd, this is Jackie.”
I held out my hand to shake his.
“Todd and I were in the same squadron at Elmendorf, up in Alaska.” He glanced at his friend. “Jackie and I work together.”
“Nice to meet you. I was thinking I could do a touch and go, but it looks like I’m here for the night. Anyway, nice to see you.” He punched Joe in the arm and took off toward the dance floor.
Joe led me over to one of the food tables.
“Would you like to translate?”
“What part?”
“Is Todd supposed to be flying tonight?”
“I don’t think so.”
“He was talking about touching and going somewhere.”
“A touch and go. It’s a maneuver. When you’re flying, you power off, touch down on a runway, and then reignite the engines and go up again. At the start of things like this, there’s always a receiving line. So as a cadet, if you were required to be at one of these but didn’t want to stay, you could come down that staircase,” he pointed toward the one we’d just come down, “shake all the hands, keep moving, go up the other one, and be on your way. A touch and go.”
“Is that why he didn’t expect you to be here?”
“No.” He picked up a cracker and popped it into his mouth.
“Would you care to elaborate?”
“Not really. Want something to eat?” He was holding out a plate toward me. “Aren’t you hungry?”
Now that he’d mentioned it, I was. I hadn’t really eaten since…dinner the night before. How had that happened? I took the plate from him and watched him pick up one for himself. I waited for him to start piling it high with food.
But he had decided to wait for me. “Ladies first.”
“No. Please, go ahead.”
“If I go first, I guarantee Mrs. Merchant will materialize before us and bean me over the head with a candle snuffer.”
“Really. Please.”
“You first.”
“I’m not hungry.” Of course, that wasn’t true. But all the food was booby-trapped with toothpicks and sauces and dips. And I wasn’t good at…parties. Was I supposed to use the same toothpick for fruit that I used for olives? Or was I supposed to take a separate toothpick for each piece of food? Was the spoon in the dip for putting it directly on top of the cherry tomatoes and baby carrots, or was it for putting the dip onto my plate? Was I supposed to slather cheese spread directly onto my crackers?
Joe sent a glance in my direction, took my plate from me, and saved me from starvation. “Tell me what you want and I’ll just put it on the plate for you. That way, you won’t get those gloves dirty.”
That sounded good. Great, in fact, but were you really supposed to eat at events like this?
When I failed to answer, Joe just started taking one of everything. “How about this—just tell me if you don’t want something.”
I nodded.
“Or better yet, why don’t you get some punch and then find a table?”
Punch was something I could be good at.
At least I thought it was.
Several minutes later, Joe joined me at the table. By that time I’d managed to get two glasses of punch to the table, but not without spilling them over my gloves. So I’d taken them off and was trying to figure out what to do with them. If it hadn’t been Betty who loaned them to me, I might have just thrown them away.
Joe set one of the plates in front of me. He picked up a cherry tomato that had rolled off the edge and popped it into his mouth. Apparently he assumed I had the appetite of a horse.
For this night, at least, he was right.
I’m glad I hadn’t taken “Buffet Dining” as a graded course. I would have failed. At least by Mrs. Merchant’s standards. There was a forest of toothpicks covering my plate. And a lake of dip and a puddle of cheese spread. Among which stood several islands of mini-quiches and chicken wings. “Thanks.”
Joe was in the middle of a mouthful of food, so he just smiled.
After he’d finished his food he excused himself.
I watched him wind through the tables, stopping to talk to cadets. Clap several officers on the back. Eventually, he ended up talking to the DJ. I saw him glance at his watch. Shake the DJ’s hand. Then he returned to me.
Joe cleared his throat. Then he picked up my gloves and stuffed them into the inside pockets of his jacket, one on each side. “Would you like to dance?”
“Um…the honest truth is I don’t know how. Not really. Oliver tried to teach me last week, but…”
“That’s okay. I don’t know how, either. But that shouldn’t stop us from trying.”
“Mrs. Merchant didn’t teach you?”
“There was a limit to what even the sainted Mrs. Merchant could accomplish.”
He was holding out his hand, so I took it.
A doo-doo doo-doo ’70s underbeat started. The crooning words were about some girl who had no money and dressed funny. Wild and free. Someone named Rosemary who had love growing all over the place.
Joe sang right along, doing some Egyptian walking, throwing his arms out and shouting “Hey!” along with the music, dancing circles around me. Catching my hand to pull me in close and dance several steps. Letting it go to dance around me again. Clearly he had no problem finding rhythm. Or finding a sub-beat. He was a one-person floor show.
Then the song segued into something slightly slower. Something lighter.
He grabbed my hand. Keeping it in his, he repositioned us so we could face each other. He put a hand to my back, underneath my shoulder blades. Began dancing, a sort of quickstep version of the dance. Oliver had done. He was more limber than Oliver had been. He looped us crazily around the dance floor in a series of three quick steps and then a pause for a double-long beat. Warbled words into my ear. They were lyrics about “never finding another you.”
I had put my hand on his upper arm, the way Oliver had showed me. I didn’t have any problem with tension. Or interpreting signals. For just that one song, just that one night, I figured I could handle it.
So when Joe pulled me close, I followed his lead.
When he pushed me out and then spun me, I went along. But he didn’t spin me back. He kept me close, my back against his chest, his arm across my waist, singing into my ear.
Then when he finally spun me back, his arm tightened, pulling me to his chest, and I laid my head on his shoulder.
When his cheek grazed my head, I closed my eyes.
But when the song ended, I wasn’t quite sure what to do. What was the right thing to do? He’d asked me to dance, but was the offer only good for a few dances or for all of them? Were we supposed to go sit down now? Or were we supposed to stay and dance the next?
Before I could decide what to do, the music started up with a tropical tempo. Joe began dancing again. And so did everyone else. I mean everyone. The song started with a bunch of “Ole’s.” The tables emptied and everyone bounced out onto the dance floor. The main theme of the song seemed to be about feeling hot-hot-hot.
And I was not-not-not.
Everyone else seemed to know you were supposed to shout hot-hot-hot with your arms up in the air. And that you were supposed to rumba around like the Chiquita banana girl. Fortunately, the floor was so crowded, I don’t think anyone noticed I wasn’t dancing.
Except for Joe.
He slid an arm around my waist. Had me swaying with him to the beat, letting me go only to chant the hot-hot-hots.
When the next song began, it was clear it was going to be another fast one. Joe grabbed my hand and drew me toward the closest set of stairs. We climbed them and found a span of unoccupied railing. We braced our forea
rms on it and leaned forward, watching the pulsating crowd below.
It provided a chance to recover from the dancing.
A chance to get a grip on my heart.
Twenty-Five
Thanks, Joe.”
He turned his head toward me. “For what?”
“Dancing with me.”
“Ah. Well, technically, I should be thanking you for wasting your dance time on a guy with limited moves and even less talent.”
“I’ve never danced with anyone before. Except Oliver.”
“Why not?”
“No one ever asked me.”
“What else haven’t you ever done?”
“I’ve never…” held hands with anyone, kissed anyone, slept in anyone else’s bed but my own. Stop it! “I’ve never been downhill skiing.”
“Ever? And you grew up in Colorado?”
“It was against Grandmother’s policy.”
“So you guys never went up to the mountains on vacation?”
“We never went anywhere on vacation. Except one time when I was little. We went to the beach. Have you ever been before?”
Joe nodded, his eyes roaming my face.
“I’ve always wanted to go back.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Somewhere in Oregon. We drove. But I’d go anywhere. Did you know every seventh wave is a big one? I’d read it somewhere, so when we reached the ocean, I sat down in the sand and I counted. It’s true.”
“Why didn’t you go back?”
“I don’t know. I guess I could have visited the Atlantic while I was at MIT, but there was never enough time. And then Grandmother had her accident.”
“The one with her hip? She seems to get around fine.”
“She does. But I wouldn’t feel right about leaving her alone.”
We stood there for a while, watching the cadets dancing below. And then I got a call I couldn’t ignore. “Do you know where the restroom is?”
He turned around and offered his arm. “It’s just down the hall.”
A cadet from one of Joe’s classes saw him and stopped us to ask if we could take a picture. There were four couples, the girls fresh and dewy-eyed in glittery eye shadow, glossy lips, and upswept hair. They lined up for the picture. Smiled. Smiled again for the backup picture.
Then their little party broke up so the girls could go to the restroom.
I trailed them.
The restroom was filled with girls, but the stalls were empty. Lots of giggles. Lots of laughter. No flushing of toilets.
They were all facing the mirrors, but observation revealed they were actually talking to each other in the course of reapplying lip gloss or rearranging pins in their hair.
I did what I needed to.
They were all still there when I was done.
I gave myself an extra glance in the mirror. My hair looked fine. It hadn’t moved. Neither had my eye shadow or lipstick.
I smiled at myself like I had seen the other girls do. Ended up feeling silly.
Left.
Joe was loitering in the hall outside. We walked back the way we’d come, but instead of returning to the dance floor, we went the opposite direction, into an alcove in the wall, opposite the railing.
“How would you feel about a game of foosball?”
“How would you feel about getting your butt kicked?”
Joe was digging the ball out of the slot, but he glanced up at me from underneath his brows. “I don’t think I’ll have to worry about that.”
I grabbed two handles and leaned over the table. “Bring it on.”
As it turned out, Joe did have to worry about being beaten.
Three times.
Merry Christmas, Lt. Col. Gallagher!
After the third game, we took a break and stepped away from the table, only to find ourselves surrounded by cadets.
We ended up playing doubles. And we beat every couple willing to challenge us.
“Just call us the King and Queen of Foos.” Joe and I high-fived after the last game. Joe glanced at his watch. Looked around the room and out into the hall.
I realized the music had stopped. And so had the buzz of voices.
“The dances ends at midnight. We’re about to turn into pumpkins.” He spun a handle. “Let’s go.”
I didn’t know what to say on the ride home, so I settled on asking him about Christmas.
“I’m going home. I mean, back to Idaho. My mom really gets into the holidays.”
“And you’ll have a sweater waiting for you.”
“Probably.”
“When do you leave?”
“In a week and half. Day after the cadets go on break. What are your plans?”
I shrugged. “Just the normal.”
“Decorate a tree? Make eggnog? Go to church?”
“I’ll probably go to church. Now that I have one.”
“No tree?”
“You mean why don’t I chop one down and kill it for my own pleasure? Americans chop down twenty-five million trees a year just so we can haul them inside and enjoy them for four weeks at our leisure.” I hadn’t decorated a tree since third grade, when the thought of cutting one down became too cruel to contemplate. Grandmother had been happy to agree. Less fuss.
Joe was giving me a strange look. “There is such a thing as an artificial tree.”
“It’s not like Christmas tree equals Christmas. A third of Americans don’t even put up a tree. And think of people in Africa and South America. Where would they get a tree? Or ornaments? That doesn’t mean they can’t celebrate.”
“So how do you celebrate?”
“By taking the thought of Christmas and extending it out through the year.”
“And the thought of Christmas is?”
“John 3:16.”
“For God so loved the world that—”
“Exactly.”
“I didn’t finish.”
“You already said the most important part.”
“No…that would be ‘gave his only begotten Son.’”
“But he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t ‘so loved the world’ first.”
Joe took his eyes from the road, turned his head, and looked at me.
“He loved the world. Not just the people in it, but the entire thing. The ground, the trees, the animals, the air…he created all of it. With the same care he created us. We’re so egotistical that we put ourselves and our own conveniences first, ahead of all the other thousands of things God made. And the ironic thing is he put us in charge of all this. We were supposed to protect it. And keep it. And all we’ve done is ruin it. There’s no way we’ll be able to get around that on Judgment Day.”
“Yeah, well, I think most people are more concerned about explaining why they lied to their mothers or cheated on their science tests. So the Bible according to Jackie is…?”
“God with us. Emmanuel. Jesus left the place where he was loved and everything he had and chose to spend the day with us in his perfect world that we had messed up. He saw beauty in things that were broken and people who were discarded. He redeemed us. And then he taught us how to reduce ourselves for others. Reuse the mess we had created to redeem each other. Recycle his words and share them with everybody.”
“I can’t decide whether you’re weird or just plain different.”
“I’m me.”
He laughed. “That’s the only thing I’m sure of.” The SUV slowed as he downshifted and turned off onto the exit. “Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Redeem. So what do you give for gifts?”
“I give trees.”
“But you just said—”
“Trees and geese, although with avian flu I might give something else this year…”
“Well, do me a favor and leave me off the geese list, okay?”
“There’s only Grandmother and me, and we have everything we need. So I give gifts to people who don’t have anything they need. Did you know an acre and a half of rain forest disappear every second? And
when trees vanish, then erosion and pollution show up. Sixty dollars to Heifer International buys a bunch of trees. I used to buy flocks of geese…you know, six geese a-laying…”
“I never thought of you as the sentimental type.”
I scowled at him. “And FARMS International sponsors a pedal-powered van rickshaw project in Bangladesh.”
“That sounds right up your alley.”
“You asked, so I’m telling. It’s a micro-loan project. All the loans have to be repaid and then recipients have to tithe. Which in turn helps support a church, which can then start reaching out into the community.”
“So you give gifts to people you don’t even know.”
“I give gifts to people who need them.” And every year I made one big gift. Last year, it had been a Gift Ark through Heifer International. It had cost five thousand dollars.
“Then maybe you could give a little my way.”
“What do you really need that you don’t already have?”
Joe fluttered his eyelashes at me.
“If you really want to do something for someone, go in with me on a women’s development project.”
“Which is?”
“Training women in livestock development. Most of those who live in poverty are women. They produce the majority of the third world’s food, but they own less than one percent of the land. Does that sound fair?”
“So what are you doing? Agitating for revolution?”
“Soliciting for education.”
“How much is it?”
“Ten thousand.”
“Dollars?”
“Dollars.” And I was almost there.
“You just plan to give away ten thousand dollars?”
“What use do I have for it?”
“Okay. I decided. You’re weird. You must be the only person in the world who thinks that way.”
When we reached Manitou, I decided to make things easy on him. “You can just go straight to your house. I can walk home from there.”
“Not while I’m driving.”
“It’s only a couple blocks.”
“And I only asked you to a dance. So only I get to decide where I drop you off. And I’m dropping you off at your house.”
He did better than that. He parked the car and came around to my side to open the door. Took my hand and helped me out. Only he didn’t let it go. He walked right up to the front door with me.
The Cubicle Next Door Page 20
