The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel

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The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel Page 8

by Mira Jacob


  “Yes.”

  “Did you say you’re coming?” It was Kamala.

  “My plane comes in Monday afternoon.”

  “Hey!” Thomas said, delighted. “You’re coming?”

  “She got some time off from work, so she decided to come see us,” Kamala said quickly. “Not like some people’s daughters.”

  “How long?” Thomas asked.

  “Just five days. I’m coming Monday.”

  “Fantastic.”

  Amina bit her cuticle. She imagined her father in a pool of unfamiliar cars, windshields blank as shark eyes. Alzheimer’s? Was this how it started? Thomas’s beeper went off, and she heard him fumbling for it.

  “Hey, koche, I need—”

  “I know, I know, I hear it. Talk to you later.” Amina listened for a few seconds after he hung up. “Is he off?”

  “Mm-hm.” Her mother sounded distracted. “My pen’s not working; hold on. What time do you come in?”

  “He lost the car?”

  Kamala laughed. “I know! Can you believe it?”

  “And you’re sure he’s safe working?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s seeing Ammachy and then he loses the car?”

  “What? No! Not at the same time, dummy. He lost the car this morning,” Kamala said, as though that explained everything. “This other thing happens at night.”

  “But you don’t think they have any connection to each other?”

  “Of course not. Pish, this girl! Always overreacting to simple-simple things!”

  “I’m not overreacting! I’m just saying that if he—”

  “Your father loses everything twice every month for the last twenty-five years. It’s funny, that’s why we told you. Everyone loses the car in the mall!”

  Amina pulled at the phone cord. A knock at the door jerked her head, and Jose’s half-lidded, reptilian eyes slanted her way.

  “I have to go,” Amina told her mother.

  “You didn’t tell me your flight information,” Kamala said as Jose ducked through the doorway, a flat yellow envelope in his hands, AMINA ONLY written on the front.

  “I’ll call you later.”

  Kamala banged the phone down. Amina stared at the receiver. Jose cleared his throat.

  “Right.” She looked up at him. “Sorry.”

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t look okay.”

  “I’m fine.” She glanced at the envelope. “What’s that?”

  “A beauty. Not that you deserve it.” Jose slid the picture onto her desk. They stared down at a white-haired woman laid across a dark tabletop, her arms extending from her sides. The view was from her feet up, her scuffed shoe bottoms giving way to the twisted root of her body. Empty chairs lined either side of her like an invisible audience, and her mouth hung open. The halo around her was barely perceptible, a lightness that made her body rise from the table. A man crouched next to her, his lips pursed.

  “Jesus,” Amina said.

  “That’s exactly what I thought!” Jose said, his voice betraying his excitement. “I put in a little bit of light just around her head and body. I brought out the detail of the shoes, you know, like that. And I can go heavier on the man’s face in the corner if you want. I just sort of liked it, you know, with her as more of the focus.”

  “No, I like him soft.” Amina looked at the woman’s hands, her curled fingers. “The hands are nice, too. This is one of your best.”

  “Your best. Man, I don’t know what I’d do around here if you didn’t keep me rolling in a steady supply of nasty. She didn’t die, did she?”

  “No, just passed out from excitement. She was fine when I left.” Amina carefully picked up the picture and slid it back into the envelope, then into her bag. “Okay, what kind of filling do you want?”

  “Veggie. Also, I need more of the green stuff.”

  “Chutney.”

  “Whatever.”

  Amina wrote the order in her notebook. “My cousin and I are meeting someone in your neighborhood on Sunday, so I can drop them by if that works.”

  Two years before, when Jose had gone out of his way to print one of Amina’s shots in an 18 × 20, he had almost gotten her fired. With just the right amount of light and shadow to enhance just-married Janine Trepolo getting cake pummeled into her face by a slightly too forceful groom, Amina had been sure that it was Jane’s version of a pink slip when it arrived in a manila envelope on her desk, AMINA ONLY on the front. She was on her way to her employer’s office when Jose asked if she liked it. Only after confirming that no one else had seen the picture could Amina confess that she loved it, and then, not having anything else to offer, had given him half her lunch. When the next print was ready, Jose asked for more samosas. “Trade for trade,” he had said, a notion that so clearly pleased him that Amina saw no reason to disabuse him of it, never mind that she bought the food from a well-hidden restaurant in Magnolia.

  “You and Dimple are going out in my ’hood? And I’m not invited?”

  “Yes, actually.”

  “Man, when you going to introduce us? Five years you’ve been here, and I still don’t know that girl.”

  “You’re married,” Amina reminded him.

  “We have an agreement.”

  “So you say.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I believe you’d tell me a lot of things to get to Dimple.”

  “Dimple,” Jose said, licking his bottom lip, “is a human samosa.”

  “Stop.”

  He smiled wide, his short, flat teeth making him look like a gremlin. “Go on, gimme that lecture on sexism-racism-ismism now, you know you’re dying to.”

  The phone rang, and Amina shooed him toward the door with a hand. “Give yourself that lecture. I have work to do.”

  CHAPTER 3

  There are small blessings, tiny ones that come unbidden and make a hard day one sigh lighter. The weather that greeted Amina on the ride up to the Highlands neighborhood for the Beale wedding on Saturday afternoon was just that kind of blessing. Yes, it was a bit cooler than it should have been in June, but the sky was scattered with a few pale clouds—perfect for everlasting union. The Commodores sang “Easy” on the radio, and she sang with them, Why would anybody put chains on me sounding existentially good. She was easy. She could make Lesley Beale happy. At ten minutes before two, she pulled into the Seattle Golf Club parking lot, where one of the many green-clad groundskeepers waved her around to the back entrance.

  “She had some trees rushed in this morning for the long hall,” Dick, the bean-shaped grounds manager, explained, pressing a linen handkerchief to his upper lip as Amina passed through the doorway. “No one can go in for the next hour or so.”

  “Is she here yet?”

  “She’s been setting up the women’s lounge for the girls since ten. Eunice is back there, too.”

  “What happened to the library?”

  “Changed her mind, changed her mind,” Dick said, then turned abruptly to answer the question of a woman holding an armload of lilies.

  Of course she had changed her mind. Changing her mind was a kind of sport for Lesley, whose clipped charm, equine good looks, and marriage to the heir of the Beale department store fortune had long ago turned her into the exact kind of person whose mind did not worry over how much each change changed. A fleet of handsome catering staff passed Amina as she made her way down the hall.

  “Hello?” Amina walked into the lounge.

  “Oh, good, I was just starting to wonder about you.” Lesley, in a crisp and flawless origami of white linen, watched as an older woman placed a crystal vase in front of each mirror. “To the left, Rosa. More. A little more. Good.”

  Amina set her bag down, quickly glancing around. The room was a riot of competing pinks. Rose curtains, walls, and carpet glowed under chandeliers. Eight mirrors were ringed with baby-pink Hollywood lights, a peachy wingback chair sitting in
front of each like a misplaced cockatoo.

  “You’ll need to put your stuff in the coat check,” Lesley said.

  “No problem. Just let me get set up.”

  “Good idea.” Eunice, the perpetually startled-looking wedding planner, stood up from where she’d been squatting on the floor, one hand clutching a spool of white ribbon. “The girls finished at the salon early and are on their way.”

  Amina nodded calmly, pulled out a light meter, and started taking readings from around the room.

  “Where are the lilies, Eunice?” Lesley asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “For the vases. They need to be in place before the girls come.”

  “Right. I just don’t, ah, I think because we were going to be in the library and you decided the textures would compete?”

  “But we’re in the women’s lounge.”

  “Of course! Let me …” Eunice’s fast walk out the door was a blur in the corner of Amina’s increasingly worried eye. Low, pink light. She needed to fix low, pink light before everyone came out looking like fried chicken under a heat lamp.

  “Amina, can you put your things down the hall at the coat check? They’re cluttering up the room.”

  “Yup, one sec.”

  “More to the left, Rosa.”

  Amina walked to the wall and flipped the few remaining switches up until the place blazed like a flaming tutu. Good God, the mirrors. She might as well be shooting in a funhouse.

  “Mom?” The whoosh of the dressing room door revealed the bride-to-be, cutely diminutive in an oversized man’s shirt and capri pants.

  “Jessica!” Lesley smiled carnivorously. “You’re early!”

  “Yeah. The other bride was half an hour late, so they took our party first. I felt bad for her, but I mean, whatev, right?”

  “Whatev,” Lesley echoed with a goofy grin. “So let’s see.”

  Jessica twirled around and Amina ran for her camera just as the door opened again and in came the rest of the girls—tan-limbed, smooth-haired, piled high with bags upon bags, plastic-wrapped dresses, several shoe boxes, a portable CD player. Accessories spread out over countertops. Jackie, the maid of honor, announced that she’d burned a special “love”-themed compilation for the occasion. Amina stepped frantically onto a chair to get a bird’s-eye view of the commotion as Madonna filled the air.

  “Did anyone bring an extra razor?”

  “I did.” Jackie held it up like a trophy, which would have been a great shot, but taking the picture sent a blaze of flash through all the mirrors, and Amina’s pulse went rabbity.

  “Amina, your bag?”

  There was a loud knock at the door, accompanied by a deep “Is everybody decent?” Brock Beale shoved through it half a second later, steel-haired and pug-nosed, his buttery gaze falling over the girls. “And how are my favorite ladies today?”

  Lesley and Jessica, busy with the clasp of a pearl bracelet, barely looked up, but Jackie turned around with a sweet smile. “Wow, Brock. You look great in a tux.”

  “You think?” He looked at his profile in the mirror, patting a toned midsection. “I can never quite get comfortable.”

  This was a lie, a charming one, as there was absolutely no doubt in Amina’s mind that Brock Beale was just as comfortable in his tux as he was in pajamas, but it served the purpose of making Jackie all the more adamant in her reassurances, which in turn made him look all the more comfortable. The flash, when it went off this time, made both of them wince.

  “Amina, the coat check,” Lesley repeated.

  “I just need to get a few more shots.”

  Lesley stepped in front of her camera. “Now would be great.”

  Amina swallowed a flash of irritation, intently panning across the room, but all the girls had grown too aware of her suddenly, their limbs stiff with the nothing noise of smoothing on deodorants and hairspray.

  “Go,” Lesley said. “You could use a break.”

  Cooler air hit Amina’s face as she walked out of the women’s lounge and back down the hallway. She shivered a little as she turned the corner and headed toward the ballroom, cluttering bags in tow. Lesley’s trees stood sentry on either side of her, mummified in plastic. A few men measured the space between them.

  “Coatrack?” Amina asked them, not stopping.

  “Keep going back,” one of them said, and Amina walked faster, past the ballroom, past the kitchen, to the back of the greeting hall. She found the coat check—a few open racks just to the side of a back door—and snatched the first hanger she could.

  “Can I help you, miss?” A teenage boy with a blond buzz cut and a face like a ferret seemed to materialize out of nowhere, tugging on the shirt cuffs that peeked out from a short burgundy jacket.

  “I’m just hanging my suit.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “I already did it.”

  “Get your number?”

  Amina stared at him, not comprehending until the kid reached for the ticket hanging from the neck of the hanger, tearing it off and giving it to her.

  “Thanks.”

  The kid smiled a funny smile at her, like they were on the inside of someone else’s joke. “I’m Evan.”

  “Amina.”

  He looked past her to the reception hall. “This one is going to be a pain in the ass, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Good luck.”

  “You too.”

  Lesley had been right. It both chafed and relieved Amina to admit this to herself, but somehow, the walk to the coat check had reset her. When she returned to the women’s lounge, she had found the right perspective, which ended up being right next to any of the mirrors, cheating slightly away from the center of the room.

  Now, four hours later, she swayed in the middle of the dance floor. Couples shuffled around her in huddled pairs, smiling at her through the lens. The room was thick with the smell of celebration—lilies, men’s cologne, wine, and warm skin.

  With the ceremony over and dinner under way, the bride had relaxed into the groom’s body, her small frame folded in his tuxedoed arms like a dove between palms. Jessica looked younger and softer than she had during the ceremony, and when she turned her face up to her new husband’s for a kiss, Amina knew she had gotten the picture they wanted more than any other.

  The shots from the day would be to Lesley’s liking, showcasing the Beale style, taste, extravagance. Lesley really had thought of every last detail, from the fruit and champagne and truffle bar to the silkribboned seating cards to special games for the kids and the tiny silver Space Needle favors. And while Brock had thrown a stiff arm around his wife for the family photos, holding her as though she were a minifridge, the rest of the bridal party was carelessly, casually pretty, the guys tall and just beginning to put on the weight that would make them spread into their fathers, the girls toned and groomed and glossy.

  On the dance floor, Amina turned to find Lesley and an older man waltzing slowly beside her, and she moved in step beside them to get a better angle. They bent their heads together.

  “We’ll be cutting the cake in about fifteen minutes,” Lesley said through her teeth. “If you want to take a break or eat something, do it now, okay?”

  She was not hungry for anything but air and space. Out in the hallway, caterers walked by with trays full of stacked plates and empty glasses. It was brighter and cooler in the hall, golden light bouncing from cream walls down to burgundy carpet. Amina passed the kitchen with its muted clatterings, its smell of gravy and dishwater.

  Lesley had also been right about bringing in the trees. Unwrapped, they proved to be very tall shrubs, pruned to perfect cones as if they’d been uprooted from a gnome’s forest. The effect was strangely magical. Amina ran her palm against the bristles of one, then stepped behind it and peeked out to take a picture of the whole row, slant after slant after slant after slant.

  The band in the ballroom announced the cover of a special request, and after a pause, the
woman’s voice sang out the breathy first line of Etta James’s “At Last.” Chairs barked as guests rose to greet the champion of all wedding songs, the one that always brought indifferent or fighting or estranged couples to the dance floor for momentary reconciliation. If she hadn’t already taken too many dance shots, Amina would have headed back, but instead she kept walking, My lonely days are over following her down the hall like a forlorn ghost.

  The coatracks were filled now, Amina saw as she walked toward them. The arm of her jacket stuck out from the mostly black coats like a drowning victim, and she looked at it longingly. How nice it would be to walk the twenty feet across the carpet, to pull it out and put it on and leave. She nearly screamed when it moved.

  The rack moaned. Amina’s gut bunched up into her chest as a head rose up from the middle of the coatrack and sank down again.

  “Fuck,” she heard someone say. She ducked behind the tree to her left.

  The rack was moving now, the coats shivering as if cold. The head rose up again, and Amina pulled the camera up to her face, her heart beating staccatos into her fingers. The head bobbed lower, then turned suddenly, roughly, facing her. Amina froze, waiting to be spotted, but the maid of honor’s eyes were closed, and stayed closed as Amina zoomed in. Her pink mouth hung in an O, lips wet. The girl’s head moved in beats, rising and lowering, and Amina focused in tight on Jackie’s face, holding her breath to press the shutter. She pressed the shutter again as the girl reached out to steady herself, one manicured hand wrapping around the wire neck of the hangers, her head dipping to the side. When she moaned again, a man’s hand covered her mouth. She leaned forward into it. The coatrack disappeared in a thunder.

  Through Amina’s lens, they were beautiful—pinned like sea creatures on a tide of black coats, limbs flailing against each other in fantastic spasm, white against the dark. The girl lay facedown, the flowers in her hair smashed to pulp. Under her, two ankles bound by pants ran in place, trying to find some footing in the mounds of material. Amina was swallowed by a clean calmness, fingers and eyes and lens suspended in the air twitching, twitching. She watched as two large hands grasped Jackie by the waist, throwing her roughly to the side. Underneath, Mr. Beale clutched his thigh, the whites of his eyes shining as Amina pressed the shutter again.

 

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