by Toby Neal
We go through it again and again, and by the time it’s time to dance the piece, I’m sure, in some deep place, that I’m living this song, this dance, because there’s some greater force at work.
Maybe the God that I walked away from, the secure, familiar God I grew up with on St. Thomas—the God who abandoned us when Dad died—maybe He’s not dead after all.
I was meant to go through this thing with Brandon, just so I could dance this piece tonight.
We’re dancing this piece under a black light, with just a diffuse spot on us. Makeup and hair do their usual magic and put Alex and me in identical white leotards and tights, covered with lines of glowing paint picked out in dark jeweled rhinestones.
“You’re an essence, not a character, for this dance,” Rhiannon tells us. “Not just you, Jade, and you, Alex. You’re everyone who’s ever loved, lost, and reconnected. You’re the spirits of that. So I want you to embody something better than human.”
Something better than human.
I don’t feel better than human. I don’t feel like a spirit of anything but heartache.
Brandon
It’s been unbelievably hard to stay away from Jade, to avoid even making eye contact with her, but I’m sticking to the resolve I made in the elevator.
I’m done— just wishing it wasn’t so hard to move on. Juggling my briefcase and a Styrofoam cup of coffee as I cross the street to the studio in the early morning, I remember her face.
The way her waist felt with my hands spanning it.
Her delicious smell.
Her lips were so soft—and the way they opened under mine in eager surrender told me what the rest of it would be like, if we ever went to bed.
Something smacks me with the force of a giant’s hand.
It hits me in the left hip, lifting me off my feet into the air so fast I can’t even scream.
Hit by a car, my brain belatedly translates as I crash onto the hood of a taxi with a breath-stealing crunch. I roll off to land in the street, briefcase flying, coffee spraying everywhere in a hot gush.
I land face down on the asphalt and manage to break the fall with my hands and knees, but immediately hear a blare of horns and screech of brakes.
I’m not done getting hit.
The second blow is just a love tap: the kiss of a bumper hitting my raised shoulder and knocking me onto my face on the asphalt.
I lie there, face planted in the blacktop, stunned, as pinwheels and tweety birds circle my head. Yeah, they really kind of do that—though maybe they’re more like stars.
But definitely, pinwheels are involved.
My lungs, forcefully emptied of air, struggle and finally kick in. I gasp and drag in gulps of air, opening my eyes.
I’m semi-beneath the second car. The bumper of the first car that hit me is about fifteen feet away, which tells me how far I flew.
“Oh my God! Are you okay?” A female voice drifts down from above. The voice sounds like it’s calling from the top of a well. More running feet arrive. I hear them as vibrations through the road.
More hollow exclaiming voices.
I slowly lever myself up onto an elbow. “I’m okay.”
And, astonishingly, I am okay. My cheek’s smarting from gravel burn, my hip hurts like a mofo and my shoulder’s wrenched, but I can already tell that nothing’s broken. I drag myself to my knees in spite of the drivers’ protests.
Onlookers fetch my briefcase and the empty coffee cup, offering both to me. That makes me crack up, and I laugh like a hyena.
The man driving the original car, a taxi, is Ethiopian: thin, tall, and so black his skin has a purple sheen. Distress makes him lose his English, and he exclaims in a language filled with liquid music. He grasps my arm, lifting it over his shoulder, and carries me to a nearby bench, where he pads my head on the Chicago Bulls sweatshirt he unzips and rolls up as a pillow.
An hour or two later, after being treated by ambulance personnel, tanked up on a fresh cup of coffee and a couple of Vicodin that the second driver slipped to me, I limp into the studio building carrying my briefcase.
Clay from UCLA meets me, cross-eyed with stress. “Where’ve you been, Boss?”
“Hit by a car.” Moving is definitely an issue, I discover, as I head for the stairs up to the film editing office. “What’s the current crisis?”
“Lot of phone calls about the final four. We’ve got a pile of agents wanting to sign them stuck in a waiting room and some calls from a music video company wanting to contract with us, and a lot of other stuff. Did you say you were hit by a car?”
“Yeah.” There are five steps up into the video booth. I wonder if I can make them. “Gimme a hand here.” One of Clay’s shoulders beneath mine, I make it into the booth and ease into my chair next to Brad. “Get me a clean shirt and another cup of coffee, will you?” I brush at my coffee-stained shirtfront.
“Why don’t I get the nurse?” Clay finally registers the road rash on my face and my generally wrecked appearance.
“Been checked out. Just some bumps and bruises. The show must go on.” I’ve always wanted to say that, and this is my first time actually being able to. “Send my assistant Kerry in here. I want to talk with her about the agents and contracts for the final four.”
Brad, beside me, has five o’clock shadow and it’s only mid-morning. “Sure you should be here, Boss? And I’d rather you did that contract shit somewhere other than the video booth.”
“It’s getting to my office that’s the problem. Get me that other intern—Tad. He can help me get up there.” My lonely aerie of an office overlooking the big open practice area is a good destination to park for the day, but there are more stairs to navigate and no elevator. Once up there, though, there’s a small seating area with a couch if I need to lie down, which I suspect will happen sooner than later.
Brad gets on the walkie and calls for Kerry and Tad from Yale to get me up to the office. “What’s going on with the final four so far?” I focus with difficulty on the rack of screens before me.
“See for yourself.” Brad points. “Selina and Ernesto are heating it up in their tango practice. My money’s on them to win.” He taps their monitor. Even this early in the day, the pair generates crisp moves and palpable heat. “Jade and Alex are struggling a bit with Rhiannon, but that doesn’t mean anything at this point—just means she’s got a challenging piece for them, which could be good.” He taps the monitor directly in front of me.
I squint and lean forward. That makes my cheek hurt, but the lighting is so dim I can hardly make out anything in the image. Rhiannon does things like that, turning off the lights in her studio and making her contestants practice in the dark, by feel alone, often without music.
I tap the audio feed, boost the sound. I can’t hear anything but the shuffle of feet, the slide of flesh against flesh, the rasp of breath, and Rhiannon talking.
“I want you to feel this,” Rhiannon says in the husky, hypnotic voice that I’m sure is a part of her success. “First, in your heart. The love, the passion! Then, the brokenness of betrayal, the agony of loss. The death of dreams. Once you can feel it in your heart, you can express it in your body.”
“We can’t pick up much footage to use in the teaser for tonight.” Brad’s loud, perky voice in the booth is a total mood killer.
“Rhiannon does this on purpose sometimes, when a piece is powerful. Means this one’s gonna be good.” I strain to see anything but two dark, moving shapes backlit by the red glow of the Emergency Exit sign. “We might not get any usable footage until one or two p.m., when she puts on the lights and music for final practice. But no worries. Cull the best bit of this, maybe that audio clip we just heard, and we’ll do a pullout piece on Rhiannon and her choreography teaching methods.”
Alex and Jade versus Selina and Ernesto.
The dancers’ final pairings, and their showdown against each other, seem like they were meant to be. These four talented, charismatic dancers were always headed toward t
his moment—and the styles they’re assigned are a perfect fit for their best skills.
Tonight will be a spectacular show.
Listening to the slide and slap of Jade’s body against her partner’s, her breathing as she dances an intense, emotional, physical piece in the dark, gets to me in a way I don’t want to think about.
I’m over Jade.
I really am.
It’s just my dick that still hasn’t gotten the memo.
At least, that’s what I tell myself. Loudly.
I cut the feed and move on to other screens.
“Oh my goodness, Brandon!” Kerry emotes as she arrives with Tad from Yale. “I heard you got hit by a car!”
“True. Help me get to my office. We have work to do.”
I hope I can do something more than crash out on the couch.
Once physically relocated, Kerry helps me draft contracts to sign all four of the finalists to my newly formed Forbes Talent Agency. This completed step then enables her, with backup from my interns, to chase off the agents who’ve descended on the studio to try to snake my dancers.
I field phone calls and sign forms, and finally succumb to a lengthy nap on the couch.
“Did you get Jade to sign the contract?” I ask Kerry, when she finally wakes me up with a big glass of water and another pain pill. I stand up. I’m a little creaky but feeling a lot better.
Kerry shakes her head. “She wouldn’t sign with your agency.”
“What?” Surely the stab of paralyzing pain in my chest, right in the middle of my chest, is related to being hit by a car this morning.
“Jade said no, thank you. Said she had an offer from another agency and she was going to take it.”
“Who?” Black spots are gathering in the edges of my vision.
“Jashon Mummings. He produces music videos.”
I bite back a curse. Mummings is an unscrupulous dickweed whose videos are one step up from porn. Never mind that they sell well and get great ratings. Jade is all wrong for his venue.
I took too long to ask to ask her to sign with my agency, and now she’s getting away. Once the show is over, she’ll be gone. And I’m the one who walked away and left her in the elevator.
I sit down suddenly, because I have to.
Chapter 17
Brandon
A shower feels good on my battered body. Hands against the wall, water running down my hanging head and over my body, I think about life.
Getting hit by a frickin’ car before your first cup of morning coffee will do that to a man.
Mom’s got cancer. She has surgery scheduled, and as soon as she heals from that, begins chemo. I’m glad the show will be in the can by then, because I’ll be flying back to Boston to be with her—and as hard as it is to face this when I’ve already lost Dad, the upside is that the crisis is bringing us closer.
I’ve called Mom every day since the diagnosis, and we talk more freely than we ever have—about everything. Not just the business.
I’m on track with my life in so many areas—the Forbes Talent Agency is getting off the ground with a bang, and Melissa’s blessing. Dance, Dance, Dance is having its breakout season. I’ve got friends—I can’t get rid of Stu even when I try. I have creative challenges that excite me, and whenever I miss engineering, I can just go backstage and work with the set designers and build something.
The thing I don’t have figured out is love.
Am I going to die alone? It could have happened this morning. Am I so scared of being hurt that I won’t take a chance again?
I don’t know the answer. That feels shitty.
Jade’s sweet face continues to haunt me.
Drying off, I take another pain pill and then dress in black slacks, a Gucci belt and loafers, a striped gray silk shirt. When you’re really hurting is the time to look your best. Melissa taught me that.
I make my way down to the pit and sit with Alan, the director, right beneath the action. It’s the last night of competition—all that’s left will be filming the results show tomorrow.
And then she’ll be gone.
“You look like shit,” Alan spares a glance at my sorry ass.
“I thought I was hiding it.”
“The clothes are all right. It’s the shiner, the scrape, and the way you’re moving like a ninety-year-old man that shows you were hit by a car today.”
“Thanks for the compassion. Who’s up first?”
“Ernesto and Selina.”
The audience has filled in and the show gets underway. We go through the talky-talk from Kate, a performance by a group of Riverdancers, and then it’s go time.
Ernesto and Selina blaze onto the stage and they literally look like they’re going up in flames, dressed as they are in matching costumes made of red-and-gold glittering sequins held together with invisible netting and good intentions.
The chemistry between them makes every crisp, showy spin seem like foreplay; every kick, twist, and dip as they heat up the stage with their tango feels like the main event. Their moves are also technically perfect. These two embody everything tango is supposed to be.
Hope sinks for Jade and Alex.
Ernesto tosses Selina onto his shoulders for the finale, and she poses like a pinup girl, one leg hooked around his neck, the other pointed. She spreads her arms like Evita blessing her people as he slowly spins her.
The auditorium erupts in applause and a standing ovation.
“Damn,” I mutter. “That was smoking hot.”
“Yeah. Good luck to the other two. Cut to commercial,” Alan says into his headset.
The curtains close. Props are moved and lights repositioned to prep for the next team while the crowd is entertained by Kate talking to the sparkling contestants.
“Smashing!” Kate says. “That was incredible. How did it feel to you?”
“Dancing with Ernesto is so amazing. We were born to tango.” Selina’s icy blue eyes flash and her blue-black hair shimmers under the lights, contrasting with her bright, glitzy costume.
“Yeah, and we do it so well, too.” Ernesto grins naughtily, making the audience laugh. “Don’t forget to call me.” He recites his call-in voting number to the camera as if asking for a date.
Yeah, Selina’s gorgeous and dances well—but it’s Ernesto, with a long, muscular arm around her shoulder, that the cameras really love. The girls are going to fall all over themselves calling in to vote for him as soon as the show closes.
At least I got both of them to sign with Forbes Talent.
The buzzer sounds and the lights dim, signaling for the next contestants: Jade and Alex are up.
I straighten to watch from my vantage point roughly a foot or so above from the edge of the stage. This makes for a weird foreshortened view, but I can’t stand to be away from where everything is happening, hiding behind a bank of monitors.
Not tonight. I want to be right in the thick of it tonight.
The curtains part. It’s still dark onstage, but I can see Alex and Jade in their positions by an occasional gleam that gives them away. A black light spot comes up, and they’re cast in an eerie, haunting glow like skeletons at a Grateful Dead concert.
Bonnie Raitt’s new song, I Can’t Make You Love Me wails out of the speakers, and the glowing dancers rise.
If Ernesto and Selina were all heat and technical perfection, Alex and Jade are all feeling. They begin with their arms hooked, back-to-back, and they roll end-over-end across the stage, playful, whirling. Then one breaks away, while the other becomes a hunched ball of weeping, kicked around by the other—and suddenly their positions reverse again.
The performance is mesmerizing. I clutch the edge of the stage, white-knuckled, as Jade, a whirl of glowing spangles marking her passage, somersaults past with Alex in pursuit. He captures her and lifts Jade high, all the way to the full of extent of his arms, holding her aloft by that tiny waist, his face a rictus of rage.
Jade’s arms are spread, her toes pointed, her mouth a bla
ck hole of scream in her glowing face as he launches her, throwing her away.
The audience gasps, and the extreme move elicits cries from the crowd even as Jade lands in a roll that brings her bouncing to her feet, running back to ‘kick’ him into a back walkover—but then he stays down, on his knees. And, tentatively, he reaches out in entreaty with an extended hand.
She takes that hand.
They slide to the ground, their feet connected, and pull forward in foot-to-foot splits. There’s a twisting, sensual reconnection, embodying reconciliation, as Raitt’s song throbs. They finish the piece standing as a perfect circle shape is created by their bent arms, legs and bodies.
I want to be half of that circle formed with Jade’s body.
I’m not over her after all.
If I ever was.
Jade speaks through the dance, and the message seems meant for me. The delight of that first connection. The pain and hurt of rejection. The longing and hope for more. The rapture of reconciliation.
Alan breathes a curse. “Unreal.”
The lights dim. The crowd goes nuts.
Jade raises her glowing face, breaking the circle shape, and looks right at me where I hover at the edge of the stage.
The curtain falls, breaking the spell between us. I am lost.
Chapter 18
Brandon
The show is finally over a couple of hours later, and I’m back at my room.
I’m pacing, even though walking still hurts my bruised body. I’m buzzing with tension, wanting Jade with a whole-body ache.
Yeah, the competition’s basically over. Tomorrow’s going to be editing and the results show—and then we’re wrapped until next season.
Jade will be gone after tomorrow night.
Jade saw my face in the footlights as she danced, and she looked right at me at the end. I can still see her face, white and glowing, her eyes caves of mysterious darkness—but she broke the circle formed with Alex to turn her head and look right at me.
