by Claire Cook
“That’s how I roll,” I said. I felt so bloated that if I were a comedian, I might have held my stomach for a cheap, self-deprecating laugh. I brushed the thought aside to make room for something more positive.
A whole group of professional dancers and their celebrity partners, plus wardrobe and hair and makeup, were sitting around a long rectangular table. Tag was clearly holding court. He munched the end off a huge strawberry, then turned his palms up. “So, basically I think it comes down to this: Ask not what your professional dancer can do for you, ask what you can do for your professional dancer.”
“And your celebrity gymnast, of course.” Ashleyjanedobbs blinked her cornflower blue eyes up at my brother. I’d seen that look a million times before, so I knew exactly what Ashleyjanedobbs was hoping Tag would do for her.
Tag smiled down at her as if she’d just said the most adorable thing in the world. “The point is that by taking the focus away from me-me-me, you not only help the other person but also take the pressure off yourself.”
“Does that mean you’re buying us all dinner?” slipped out of my mouth before I thought it through.
“Absolutely,” Tag said. “Name the place.”
“There’s a great barbeque joint a few blocks down the street,” Ilya said.
Ashleyjanedobbs’s eyes were still fixed on my brother. “Mmm, barbeque,” she said. “My fav.”
The portobello mushroom things on the table were in fact minipizzas and somebody had cooked the whole tray. I didn’t really feel like eating, but I knew that a stomach full of chocolate would only mean plummeting blood sugar and the urge to pig out again an hour or two from now. The portobello pizzas looked really healthy, so I put one on a plate and added some fresh fruit and a handful of baby carrots.
There was one seat left at the table, so I took it. The people I hadn’t met yet introduced themselves: a former wrestler, an actress, a singer, and their respective professional dance partners. So far I’d spent the week almost entirely with Ilya, but I wasn’t the least bit surprised that the minute Tag showed up, it turned into a party. He had that magic.
“Back to work,” Ilya said as soon as I finished my last bite of food.
I gave Tag my please-go-away look.
He laughed. “Don’t worry. Karen wants me to record a promo, and then I promised Ashley I’d peek in on her rehearsal.”
“Great,” I said.
Tag looked right past me. “So, Ilya. Just give me a call when you guys wrap and we’ll all meet up at the barbeque place, okay?”
I turned to Ilya. “I’ll give you the number.”
Ilya grinned. “It’s already on my speed dial.”
Taking things one step at a time seemed like the way to go, so when we got back to the studio I put all my focus on our cha-cha. We did it over and over and over again, so many times I lost count. I gave it everything I had and tried my hardest not to worry about whether that was enough.
“Break time,” Ilya said two hours later.
“Already?” I couldn’t believe it.
This time we had the craft services room all to ourselves. I grabbed bottles of water for both of us and placed them on the table. I counted out ten almonds and added a few slices of cantaloupe and a piece of string cheese to my plate.
Ilya piled his plate high and sat down across from me. I turned my head away from the smell of peanut butter cookie.
“Men,” I said.
“We got the metabolism. Women got the brains.”
“Good point,” I said.
He grinned. “So, your brother tells me you’re a whiz at social networking.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, he couldn’t stop bragging about his genius little sister.”
“Right.” I took a bite of cantaloupe and tried to focus on how it was not only good but good for me, and how I’d much rather have this than a bite of disgusting peanut butter cookie. “Well, I have to tell you being a social-networking whiz has its downside. That’s kind of how you got stuck with me.”
Ilya popped the rest of the cookie into his mouth and reached for a strawberry. If I were him, right now I’d be feeling completely disgusted with myself that I’d given in to temptation. He just looked happy to have gotten to the strawberry.
“For the record,” my partner said, “I am not feeling the least bit stuck with you. You’re a hard worker and you don’t take phone calls during practice—”
“That’s because I have no life.”
Ilya shook his head. “That’s the only thing that really gets to me. I can’t tell you what it feels like to be standing there tapping my toes while some celebrity whines to her manager on her cell phone like I’m not even there. Like my time has no value.”
“That’s awful,” I said. I ate another almond. They weren’t cashews, but they were pretty tasty in the scheme of things. “Okay, so what was that thing my brother said—ask not what your professional dancer can do for you—”
“—ask what you can do for your professional dancer.” Ilya grinned. “I gotta tell you, most celebrities I’ve met don’t live up to the hype, but that brother of yours is the real deal.”
“Whatever,” I said. “Okay, so my question is what do we need to make happen here, and how can my genius and I help?”
We finished our last hour of rehearsal for the day, and then Ilya pulled his laptop out of his backpack. We folded one of the mats in half for extra cushioning and sat side by side with me holding the laptop.
First I logged onto Tag’s Facebook account. “Whoa,” I said. “His fan count has almost doubled.”
“Dancing With the Stars will do that for you,” Ilya said.
I wrote a note from Tag and Ilya helped me tweak it. Five minutes later, it was posted on the virtual playground of Facebook, where over 51 percent of Americans hung out, many of them already connected to my guru brother.
Galactic greetings and the sunniest of salutations, my friends.
My deepest thanks to you for making my worthy and wonderful sister Deirdre’s lifelong Dancing With the Stars dream come true. And now together we have the pleasure of supporting her journey. The season premiere will be on Monday at 8 p.m. EST. As your humble servant, I will be sitting in the front row cheering her on and sending winning energy her way, and I want you to know that you will all be in that seat with me. And most important, each of us will have the honor of casting our votes for her via a toll-free number, on the official website, and with text messages. The maximum number of votes per voter per medium is equal to the number of couples performing that night, or five votes, whichever is larger. Between now and then we can also pre-approve up to eleven e-mail accounts per person for voting, so our message to ourselves and to all of our friends will be: Vote early and vote often.
Peace in, peace out,
Tag
Twitter was our next step, where we managed to keep Tag’s message well under the allotted 140 characters and spaces. This is an important part of Twitter strategy since many people won’t bother to spread your message, or retweet, if adding their twitter handle puts the message over the character limit. So our Twitter-friendly version was this:
Watch DWTS on Monday and vote x11 by phone & email 4 my sister Deirdre. Pls RT. in/out, Tag
“Wow,” Ilya said. “I can’t believe Tag has that many Twitter followers. This is some serious clout. And here I thought my own Twitter following was respectable.”
“Don’t compare yourself to anyone else,” I said. “Just do the best Twitter dance you can do.”
Ilya laughed. “Now where have I heard that one before?”
My fingers were too busy dancing across the keyboard to answer.
“Okay,” I said. “Tag has asked all his followers to follow you. And I just remembered that I opened an @DeeCanDance account just before I came here.”
I clicked on it. “Whoa. Not too shabby.”
Ilya leaned over my shoulder. “You got all those followers in a week?”
I
shrugged. “Every once in a while my big bro comes in handy.”
The next step was a Facebook page. I didn’t have my own personal Facebook account, so I set it up quickly and then built the page. We went through a few names for it and finally agreed that the best page name for a tidal wave of quick support was TAG TEAM. In the info box I wrote: Vote for Tag’s sister Deirdre and her partner Ilya on DWTS!
“Wow,” Ilya said as I downloaded a photo of the mirror ball trophy to use as our profile picture. “You’re amazing.”
“Stick with me, baby,” I said. “Before my fifteen minutes of fame are over, you won’t be able to churn out those dance videos fast enough.”
I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam.
By the time we got to the barbeque place, Ilya had a Facebook page for his business. I’d gone to his website to find a photo to use for his profile picture and made a few changes there as well. I wanted to do more, so my plan was that I’d pick away at it during our breaks.
Half the DWTS cast was already seated at two big red-checked, oilcloth-covered tables that had been pulled together. Tag was at the head, of course, holding court once again. Even the stars appeared to be starstruck as Tag flashed his pearly whites and gestured eloquently while he told one of his favorite stories. I wondered, as I had a gazillion times before, what it would be like to always be so on. It was as if my brother didn’t even exist unless he had an audience.
Ilya held out a chair for me.
“Thanks,” I said as I practically collapsed into it. Every muscle in my body was tired. It felt like a good tired, a tired that I’d earned. Until I looked around the table and saw how much peppier everybody else looked. Even the octogenarian former soap opera star was sitting up straight with her eyes wide open. Except for the fact that her face didn’t move anymore, she probably looked younger than I did.
Ilya caught me looking. He leaned toward me. “Repeat after me,” he whispered. “I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam.”
“Popeye?” I whispered.
He did his eyebrow thing. “I believe Olive Oyl gave him the line.”
“I’m sure she did. By the way, I can’t get over those dance pictures of you on your website. Do you have more? We should do a whole slide show of them, and maybe another slide show of your trophies. And I want to post some on your Facebook page as well. Facebook people love photos.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” my brother said from the other end of the table. “Is your wife coming, too, Ilya?” He gestured at me with one hand. “Maybe my sister should go help out in the kitchen.”
It wasn’t Tag’s biggest laugh, but Ilya waited until it was over. “My wife’s home with the kids,” he said. “We don’t mix our business and personal lives.”
“Good to know,” Tag said.
A waiter came over. “Two margaritas, please,” Ilya said. “On the rocks. No salt.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
He smiled at me. “Absolutely. You’ve earned one.”
The margarita was frosty and delicious. I drank it slowly and tried to taste each sip, to savor it. I scanned the menu and finally decided on the barbequed chicken sandwich on a whole wheat roll with steamed broccoli on the side. It seemed like a smarter choice than ordering a salad only to go back to the apartment and dream of barbeque all night.
Tag snapped out of overprotective brother mode and turned back into his charming self. The former wrestler told a story about a famous fight I’d never heard of. The singer talked about her most recent European tour. I noticed that the professional dancers stayed in the background and let their celebrity partners shine. If we’d all been asked to line up on opposite sides of the restaurant, queen bees on one side and worker bees on the other, I had no doubt that I’d head over to stand with the dancers. Except that I couldn’t really dance. So maybe I’d be left in the center of the room, all by myself, like Little Sally Water from the playground game of my childhood.
Our food came and I ate mine slowly, paying attention to each bite. It was really good, but after about half of it, I wasn’t even tasting it anymore, so I finished the broccoli and drank my entire glass of water. When the waiter collected our plates, I asked him to wrap it up. If I didn’t eat it for breakfast, I knew Tag would.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Ilya peeking at his watch.
“I agree,” I said. “Time for me to get some sleep.”
We pushed back our chairs.
“Come on,” Tag said from the other end of the table. “The night’s still young.”
“Some of us have to try to dance in the morning,” I said.
“I don’t need much sleep,” Ashleyjanedobbs said.
I walked the length of the table and held out my hand. “Keys,” I said.
For a minute I thought he might fight me.
Ashleyjanedobbs smiled up at my brother. “I have a car,” she said.
Tag took the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to me.
Ilya walked me out to the parking lot and helped me find the Land Rover. He waited till I was safely inside the car.
I lowered my window.
“Good job today,” he said.
I tried to raise one eyebrow but had to settle for two. “But was it outstanding?”
He grinned. “You’re getting there.”
If I’d been heading home at this hour on a weeknight in Marshbury, everything would be closed by now. The only hope for any action would have been Marshbury Tavern. But here in Los Angeles, lights sparkled and glowed from almost every building, and the streets teemed with people—tourists and stars and wannabes mingling as they decided whether their next stop might be more shopping or a bar or even a tattoo parlor.
For more years than I cared to count, I’d thought that if I could only get out of Marshbury, get out of the sheep shed, get out of my brother’s life, then I’d finally be happy. But it turned out the place I’d really needed to get out of was inside my head, a much harder task. I remembered that old quote: Wherever you go, there you are.
When I let myself into my little white apartment, Ginger and Fred were circling their bowl, waiting to be fed.
I sprinkled their dinner into the bowl and watched them nibble it off the surface of the water. Then I carried them into the little living room.
I sat on the little couch and watched Fred and Ginger meander around their bowl for a while. It was incredibly relaxing. I wondered what it would be like to get to swim around all day without a care in the world. Probably really boring. But maybe it was all perspective. At this very moment, my fish friends could be staring out through their wall of glass wondering how bored they’d be if they had to spend all their time just sitting like a lump on the sofa.
“Life,” I said, “is so damn complicated.”
My cell phone began to play its tinny instrumental version of “She Works Hard for the Money.”
I didn’t even check the caller ID first. I just said hello.
“Hey, it’s Steve. Moretti. Remember? We’ll always have Austin?”
I had an almost overwhelming urge to say, “Hi, I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message I’ll get back to you.”
And maybe I would get back to him. Someday. Or maybe not.
I was trying to learn to dance. I was trying to get my act together. I was trying to get my brother to go away. I had a lot on my metaphorical plate and I was trying not to put so much on my actual plate. All at the same time. I was exhausted. I was emotionally overloaded. I couldn’t handle one more thing right now. I was really bad at relationships, and I’d already messed this one up, not that it was technically a relationship. It was only a kiss. A kiss-and-run. Which was basically nothing. And now I couldn’t even remember how many first kisses I still had left. What was Dentyne thinking with that stupid commercial? Like life wasn’t tough enough without that to worry about.
I opened the Styrofoam take-out container that I hadn’t gotten around to putting in the little refriger
ator. I reached for the rest of my sandwich, my truffles bloat a distant memory. What I really wanted was chocolate. Not Skinny Cow chocolate but something rich and decadent. A dessert menu of possibilities flashed before me in an instant: Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream, peanut butter cookies still warm from the oven, Dove bars, fresh-baked gingerbread topped with homemade whipped cream, Ring Dings. I really wanted a Ring Ding. Did they still make Ring Dings?
A drop of barbeque sauce landed on the coffee table. Bits of congealed fat dotted the leftover sandwich in my hand. I didn’t even want it.
“Hello?” Steve said.
I looked at my phone. The man inside it would probably break my heart. Or he’d turn out to be a loser. Or he’d have unresolved issues with his ex-wife, or his ex-girlfriend. Or maybe we’d just be incompatible. I didn’t even know where he actually lived. Or anything about him. And I mean, face it, anyone who was still kicking around single at his age probably had some serious baggage by now. Wait, maybe he wasn’t even single. His unresolved issues could be with his current wife. He could be a polygamist for all I knew. The chances of this working out were a gazillion to one. But so was the chance of winning the mirror ball trophy.
I put my leftover sandwich back in the take-out container and closed the cover.
“Hello,” I said.
Learn to fail or fail to learn.
So where were we?” Steve Moretti said.
“Ha,” I said. “Maybe we shouldn’t go there. Maybe I should just apologize for being a total idiot and then we could talk about current events or something.”
“Your call.”
I was actually blushing. Who still blushed at my age, especially when the other person wasn’t even there to see it? I took a deep breath. “Sorry. And how about those Red Sox?”
I’d half forgotten what a great laugh he had, rich and unselfconscious.
I took a slow, calming breath, in through my nose and out through my mouth. “I probably should add that my brother has a tendency to push my buttons. In case you didn’t notice.”
