by Skye Warren
Joshua’s smirk falters, but he doesn’t look in my direction. “Me?”
“You.” Mamere’s lips form the word and settle back into a placid expression.
Josh hovers a hand over the deck. I read his palm once. Now I read the rough skin on the backs of his knuckles. The scar where his index finger meets his hand, so faded it’s almost invisible. Guys like that—they always self-destruct. I wonder how quickly it can happen. Josh’s hesitation is the barest moment, and then his finger comes down on a card. He tugs it out from the line. Mamere darts out a hand and turns it faceup.
We all stare down at it.
“Your granddaughter read my palm,” Josh says into the silence, sounding almost cocky. “Does this card say the same thing?” The question is half addressed to me, half addressed to no one.
But I don’t say a word. The backs of my hands tingle with a strange energy.
Mamere frowns at the card. The illustration is of a tower standing tall against a black, starless sky. A yellow bolt of lightning crashes into the top of the structure, sparks flying away from the point of impact. The Tower means danger. It means upheaval. It means destruction. My heart beats faster than the lightning strike depicted on the card, hitting its mark again and again in rapid succession. Mamere shifts in her seat. The doctors have said her vision is as good as gone, but she meets Josh’s eyes anyway. “You’ve been living in this space a long time, haven’t you?” She raps a knuckle on the center of the card. “Very much alone.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Dancer Raven Wilkinson was one of the first African American ballerinas permitted to join a ballet company. During the 1950s, she danced with the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo under the condition that she pose as a white woman by painting her face.
Josh, present time
“No, no, no, Mamere. Let me make the tea.” Bethany disengages the older woman’s hand from the worn handle of the teapot with extreme gentleness and a laugh in her voice. “I came to visit you. I’ll make the tea.” In her grandmother’s kitchen the rusty edge of her voice falls away. Afternoon sunlight spills over tea towels embroidered with the outline of a crystal ball. I can still smell the spices of dinners past. On any other day, it would make me want to take a seat at the table and eat until I was sated. I can’t remember the last time I felt satisfied like that. Maybe never.
But today I want to get the hell out of here. That old woman’s knuckle on the tarot card stopped my heart between beats. I’m not the kind of man who holds with cards and crystal balls, but she didn’t need to tell me what that tower means. I felt the cold whisper at the pit of my gut. Same as when our dear old dad used to come home. You develop superhuman hearing when you live with a monster. A quarter-turn of the front doorknob was all it ever took to fill my veins with ice. One knock against that card, splayed on the table, had my defenses up. Bethany saw it—I know she did. Her eyebrows drew together. Her hand twitched as if to take mine. Unbelievable, that she would try to hold my hand when the truth was so evident, spoken aloud by Mamere.
Very much alone. Very much alone, crouched in the corner of my own closet. I give Liam shit about the baby bird. I use it as my own shield between me and what happened all those years ago. What’s still happening inside my head. It didn’t surprise me when Bethany’s grandmother named her dreams. Bethany is an open book, with all her defiance and sadness and fight right there under the surface. But when she flipped that tower card to the table—Jesus. Gives me chills. And the only thing I hate more than being at the mercy of some old woman with a deck of cards is being at the mercy of surprises.
But leaning against the doorway in the kitchen, watching Bethany, I can’t tear myself away.
I’ve never seen her in precisely this situation before. Her dark eyes are open, relaxed. She knows this choreography. It’s worn into her very bones by years and years of focused practice. The set pieces, I can tell at a glance, always remain in the same position. It was like this when I’d come throw pebbles at the window. Mamere must have been losing her vision even then. Keeping the house this way let her hide it for longer. She never seems to hesitate. Even now she throws her hands up and laughs. “Why not let me make the tea? You’re the one with places to go and the weight of the world on your shoulders, child.”
Bethany shrugs off that metaphorical weight with a toss of her head. “I’m light as a bird.”
A wizened hand drops onto her shoulder. “For a person so light, you’re holding tight to that teapot. Is it keeping you on the ground?”
Bethany stops filling it in the sink and holds it daintily by her fingertips, raising her left hand to give the movement a playful flourish. “Better?” Her teasing is an arrow through the heart. A shock. A lightning bolt. Her laugh is a familiar soprano that fits in with the melody of this house. With her grandmother’s low, echoing rumble of pleasure. It’s so fucking domestic I could die.
This is what she’d be like as a wife. As a mother.
My throat constricts.
Someone else’s wife.
I leave her in the kitchen and wander through the house, to the very back. This space started out as a porch. Somewhere along the life of the house it became a back room, closed in with panes of glass. The original wooden posts have become part of the wall. The floor feels less substantial under my feet. It’s a step down from the rest of the house. But the floor isn’t what captures my attention. The swing does.
It’s a rickety, falling-down jumble of what used to be called play equipment. The swing still hangs from its chains. Someone as featherlight as Bethany might be able to sit on it still, but it would be a risk. The thing looks like the slightest breeze could bring it down. I used to plant my feet next to it and take aim at Bethany’s window. A far fucking cry from taking aim at a shadow overseas, but the same adrenaline rush. Her silhouette started out the same way every other enemy’s did. A barely visible outline against pitch darkness. Damn, did she become something different in the light. My dick goes hard at the memory of her muscles working in the climb. In the dance. I know what you need, Josh.
Her voice wraps around me like a rope and pulls me back to the kitchen. The teapot whistles on the stove. Bethany’s set out three mismatched mugs on the countertop. She bows her head, a slight smile on her face. “—my own choreography.” Mamere watches with rapt attention. It should be some Cinderella shit—the ever-suffering servant laying the teabags over the edges of the mugs. Balancing the strings just so. But I’m struck again, like a two-by-four to the back of the head, by the deep knowledge that she could be on her knees at the foot of my bed, naked and panting and begging, and still be a queen.
I’m one filthy motherfucker.
And for the next several moments, while Bethany goes on about studio space and a hundred other hopeful plans for the future that are like knives thrown into the hidden parts of me, I remain the filthiest motherfucker in this old house.
A knock at the door.
Bethany and her mamere lift their heads like a pair of birds, but it’s me who goes to answer it. Automatically. Like this is my house.
“Why would you want to do that?” Mamere says with a faint scoff. “It’s as good as taking your clothes off for all those men.”
A beat of silence. “I would have the final say.” Bethany’s voice is fierce but still gentle. Love suffuses every word. Forgiveness, even though each syllable is also ringed with pain. “Nobody would be telling me what to do. I would be in charge of the piece. I only need one chance to prove it.”
I’m under no illusion that I could belong here. I don’t entertain that ridiculous fantasy for a second. A man like me, part of something like this? Never.
Maybe I was entertaining that daydream, because something falls to the floor and shatters when I reach the door. Or perhaps that was only my complacency. Every nerve jumps into action. Why didn’t I see this coming? Did I let her distract me? I fucking did. I was so busy watching her ass sway in her black leggings and imagining pulling them off with
my teeth to take in the necessary details. Like the photos of Caleb Lewis that grace the walls in the entryway. Mamere keeps recent photos. Recent enough that what I did to Caleb shows on his face in one of them. But I don’t need a photo to know what he looks like now.
Because he’s standing on the porch, his hands in his pockets.
There’s a single heartbeat left where he doesn’t see me. Caleb’s not expecting me here, the fucker. I can’t believe it. He should be on the lookout for me everywhere he goes. Then he lifts his head. Narrows his eyes. Scowls.
I fling the door open wide. “Welcome home, buddy.”
He steps in and crushes my hand in his. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
I pound his back hard, pulling him close. I want him off-balance. “I’m at work,” I tell him jovially. “Protecting a client.”
“What client?” He backs up, putting some space between us, eyes ablaze. “What fucking client?”
“Caleb, come in here and have some tea.” Mamere’s voice floats out from the kitchen, knocking us apart as surely as if she’d stood between us and put her hands on our chests. Caleb still bristles, his shoulders set. What the hell does he think he’s going to do, tackle me in front of his grandmother? No. He won’t do that. “Bring your friend with you.”
I snort back a laugh. “Yes, Caleb. Let’s have some tea and catch up.” I fix him with a wide grin that feels like a feral dog baring its teeth.
“I’m short on time.” He turns on his heel and goes into the kitchen. I follow him in time to see him wrapping up Mamere in his big arms. After all the things I’ve seen him do, it’s jarring to see him hug her so carefully. We’re all such fucking contradictions, aren’t we? “I can’t stay,” he tells her, though he was clearly planning to stay when he got here. He was wearing that half-relieved, half-contemplative expression we all wear when we’re thirty seconds from kicking our feet up and closing our eyes somewhere safe. Caleb should know better. Nowhere is safe.
“Bethy’s put out the tea,” Mamere protests. She runs her hands over the front of his shirt. “It won’t take you a minute to drink it.”
Caleb keeps his body angled away from Bethany as much as he can. She presses herself against the counter. I can tell she’s trying to make it look like a casual lean. It’s not working. I keep my posture relaxed. It’s no reflection of how I feel, which is like a mean German shepherd at the end of its chain. I want to throw myself between them. Caleb straightens up and heads back toward the door, caught between the two of us. The air in the room crackles. His right hand balls into a fist. I track every twitch of his muscles. I let my guard down walking in here like a fucking idiot. It won’t happen again.
“Stay,” says the old woman. Bethany’s face is blank. She’s focused on some spot in the middle distance, far from here. She holds herself tight as if she’s trapped between wanting to run and wanting to stand tall. Like there’s some part of her that still, after all this time and all this bullshit, wants to lean into Caleb and face the world with him. It turns my stomach.
“I’ve got some things to take care of,” Caleb insists. “I’ll come back another time.” For the first time since he walked in, he swings his gaze from me to Bethany and back. Caleb Lewis doesn’t dare sneer at me in front of his grandmother, cataracts in her eyes or not. “As for you two.” The threat rings like a bell in the center of this cocoon of a kitchen. Mamere blinks, her near-blind eyes tracking Caleb’s voice. “I’ll be seeing you both very soon. Consider that a promise.”
Bethany, present time
Sleeping in Josh’s bed is killing me.
It’s only been a week, and it’s a good bed. Joshua North wouldn’t buy a piece of shit for a bed. It’s not some secondhand thing dragged in off the curb or even an IKEA piece that looked good in the showroom but deteriorates by the day under the fitted sheet. It’s somehow both plush and firm—probably the nicest mattress I’ve ever slept on in my life. And it’s making me feel like a broken doll.
I add a bit of extra stretch into my third position, and then my fourth. My shoulders are tight knots that won’t release. I can feel others knots in my hamstrings. My body is a mass of scar tissue and tension.
I’m not sleeping next to him every night, feeling the security of his even breath next to me. I’m sleeping alone, but his scent is everywhere. My nose should be used to it by now. I shouldn’t be drowning in desire every time I suck in a breath.
Folding down the sheets doesn’t do anything to stop it.
Kicking off the blankets only forces me to pull them back up.
And all night, every night, I can feel him sitting out there.
Guarding. Watching. And for what? Nothing has happened since he pushed his way back into my life and set up camp. Not so much as a threatening sticky note.
Landon claps his hands, and I wrench my thoughts away from that damned bed and move into position at the center of the floor.
Rehearsal should take my mind off him. It doesn’t.
Every single morning, I come here hoping to lose myself in the steps and turns and bends. And every single morning, I spend all of practice fighting with my own brain. It wants to follow Josh out to where he sits in the hallway. It wants to study his shadow through the frosted glass of the studio door.
It wants, it wants, it wants.
It would help if I actually liked what I’m practicing. We do a few run throughs of Olivia Twist each morning to stay fresh for our performances at night, but the challenging work is on the new piece. Next season we’ll be debuting a show called Duckling, a modern, abstract retelling of the Ugly Duckling.
Landon cast me in the lead role. Even in a small troupe such as this, it isn’t something I should take for granted. There are a few reasons why I’m uncomfortable…
1) Landon keeps interrupting to change the choreography, making it more and more elaborate, more and more unnatural for the human body. Dance should expand what we’re capable of, not contort us to prove we can.
2) He also keeps standing in for Marlena, who’s playing the mother duck, supposedly to show us the steps correctly, which means I’ve had his hands all over my body, in places a mama duck’s hand would never need to be.
3) The dark-toned duckling who turns into a beautiful white swan has unfortunate racial overtones when played by a person, especially in light of the costuming he plans. He’s even asked for my makeup to be darker in the opening, lighter in the reveal.
The music starts, leaping into the first movement of the piece, and I jump in exactly on point, making my arms flutter in dramatic, duck-like fashion that feels uncomfortable and looks even worse. I will not let the struggle show on my face.
Marlena moves by in a blur, her worried eyes the only feature that stands out.
I lengthen my neck. I buckle down. And I whirl straight into Landon, who’s planted himself in the center of the practice floor, hands on his slender hips.
He grabs my elbow at the same time his shout to stop the music registers. It’s a cymbal crash to the side of my head, loud and reverberating. His fingers squeeze the flesh of my arm and on instinct I shake him off. “Landon, what the—”
He mutters low and close to my ear. “It looks ridiculous.”
Shock coats me in a thick layer of embarrassment. What the hell is he thinking, grabbing me like this? They’re his steps, his beats. “I’m sorry. I’ll try it again.”
“Don’t apologize,” Marlena says, her voice sharp. “You haven’t done anything wrong. That’s how it’s written in the notes.”
His face looks redder than I’ve seen it, and it occurs to me that he’s humiliated by his own choreography. “You’re not doing it the way I want. We’ve been working on this for weeks and you’re acting like a first-year student in a state college.”
The blows land one after the other. I want to put a hand over my gut to protect myself. It’s too late. The pain is already there, blooming through my stomach. It’s a not-so-subtle reminder that he went to Tisch, even
if he didn’t graduate. I don’t have a single college credit to my name. I went directly to work an acrobatic show in Vegas, where I was recruited by Cirque du Monde. It’s not a bad pedigree, as dancing goes. There are plenty of dancers who would want that opportunity, but it’s not the same as the professors and the degrees.
This is a portion of the dance I’ve been meaning to talk to Landon about. A simple adjustment to the steps could make them flow so much better. Not just for me, for everybody. My breath comes fast and harsh. The words in my mind are a jumble.
“Listen.” I find myself leaning in, trying to put on a smile, like Landon and I are on the same team. We should be on the same team, damn it. “I’ve been thinking about that eighth beat. There’s this transition that keeps popping into my head, and I thought maybe it would look great.” I show the new transition to illustrate my words. It gets rid of this awkward, unintentional jostle we have to do, trying to make a theoretical idea into something that real bodies do. It’s athletic and graceful, but also real.
Landon cocks his head to the side, a pretend expression of exasperation on his face, though it doesn’t hide his meanness. “Do you have a question about how it’s supposed to look, Bethany? All you had to do was ask.”
My cheeks heat. He’s making it sound like I don’t understand the steps. I could do them in my sleep. That’s not the issue. “No… I’m sorry. Maybe I’m overstepping.”
“Overstepping?” He gives a short, hard laugh. “You are the dancer, right? I’m the choreographer. How about you focus on your feet.”
Marlena looks pale, her lips tight with anger or shock.
Anger. Shame. Anger. Shame. My feelings circle them both, unable to land. “No, you’re right. It’s not my job. I just thought that maybe the flow would—”
“The flow does what, exactly? You think you can make it better with your cute little changes to the steps?” He sounds incredulous. Mortified heat burns me from the top of my head to the tips of my shoes.
