by Hugh Breakey
‘Surprise!’ Julie’s eyes shone, catching the reflection of the coloured lights.
I soaked in the sight. The perfect set of a man’s shoulders. The smooth snap of a spinning heel. The locked eyes of a twirling couple.
‘It’s not ideal.’ Julie was talking, but I hardly heard her words, lost in the sounds and sights. ‘But it’s the best I could do with a limited budget. At short notice, in a new city.’
‘I was a dancer.’
Julie’s smile filled her face.
‘A dancer.’ I repeated. The dancers stepped and spun around each other with a hypnotic grace. Excitement built up inside me, to think I’d once been part of something so beautiful. It felt like I was free-falling into another world, tumbling within a child’s kaleidoscope.
Somewhere in the back of my brain, a voice screamed against that giddy excitement, yelling that this was it: Julie’s plan. Right here and right now. Her final strategy to sink her claws into my soul—the source of her optimism since we made our deal yesterday morning. I couldn’t afford to get swept away and distracted from the decision at hand.
But that voice dissolved in the din of sound and light reverberating through every nerve in my body. ‘This is crazy.’ It jarred with everything I knew about myself, as unbelievable as if Julie had told me I used to be a fighter pilot or a treasure hunter.
Unbelievable—except for what my eyes and ears and heart told me. They recognised this place. It lay within me, in my mind’s eye. I could see it all, the neat, quick steps of the young man in the yellow shirt, the cocked wrist position of his partner.
‘Crazy?’ Julie echoed. She surveyed the room. There were people whizzing about its centre, and a few couples loitering along the margins. ‘There isn’t a person in the room who couldn’t find something crazy hidden in their history. Something beautiful. Something terrible.’ She paused, and her smile dimmed.
‘Was I…’ I fumbled for the word. ‘Famous?’
‘Steady on, Baryshnikov.’ She laughed. ‘You earned a living doing what you love. That’s success enough.’ She cocked her head to one side, as if measuring her words. ‘Occasionally you got in a major show. Mostly you got by on teaching, the local dance studio. And always working on your next performance.’
‘I would have been as good as the dancers here?’ I looked at the floaty way they glided across the floor.
‘These dancers?’ Julie snorted. ‘You are so cute.’ She leaned across the table, lowering her voice. ‘Robbie, these are all amateurs.’ She surveyed the dance floor with a clinical eye. ‘A few of them are pretty good. I’m going to get us a drink. When I get back, you’re going to tell me which is the best couple on the floor.’
‘Me?’ They all looked amazing. ‘I wouldn’t know what to look for.’
‘Remember after the fire brigade showed up and we lifted that cabinet with Mrs Davis?’ Her eyes drilled into mine. ‘Do you remember what you said?’
Of course I did. The first time I’d ever snapped at anyone. ‘Drop your weight. Widen your stance.’
‘You taught me to dance with those very words.’ She stood up. ‘The memories are in there somewhere.’
‘I thought you were upset because I’d been bossy.’
‘No.’ Julie shook her head. ‘I mean, I was upset. But what got to me that day was the realisation you were still there. You. My Robbie. Your voice. Your words. All still there.’
Wow. I’d so totally misread that. I wondered what it would have been like for Julie, in the midst of all that noise and activity, to hear the language of my lost self tumbling out. The words of a ghost spilling from the mouth of a child.
‘You play judge.’ Julie redirected my attention to the dancers. ‘I’ll find us some juice.’ With a quick pirouette, she set off towards the counter at the back of the hall.
A quick pirouette. How often had I seen her do just that? Noticing the dance move without knowing why it registered.
I turned my attention back to the movement and colour. The song finished, and for a moment the dancers held their position. Then they relaxed, and were just so many ordinary people. Music started again, and again they were transformed.
Time must have passed. Julie broke me from my trance, arriving back with two tall glasses of orange juice. She slid one across the table to me and raised her eyebrows expectantly.
‘The couple in red.’ I could hardly explain my reasons. Just the way they held themselves, delving in and out of each other’s space, every movement polished to the point where each dancer looked an extension of the other.
‘Right.’ She nodded.
‘The guy especially.’ The two of us said it together.
‘Ha!’ cried Julie. ‘See? You still have it. Perception.’ She pointed her chin at the two. ‘They’re at competition level.’ She leaned back in her seat, her eyes measuring, evaluating. ‘Probably in training now. Three or four times a week they’d be going along to classes and getting taught.’ She smiled. ‘By someone like you.’
The couple flowed across the floor like liquid poetry.
‘Point being,’ she continued, ‘you could wipe the floor with anyone out there.’
‘Imagine that.’
Julie put her elbows on the table. ‘I don’t think we have to imagine.’
I shook my head. ‘Just because I can see things doesn’t mean I can still do them.’
‘Two words. Muscle memory. You don’t lose everything when you forget, you only lose specific ideas: people, places, events.’
‘Yeah. The doctor had a word for it…’
‘Episodic memory.’ She nodded. ‘You don’t lose all the other types of memory. You don’t forget what words mean. And you don’t forget how to do things like eat, or speak, or walk—’
‘Or dance,’ I finished her thought.
‘You won’t remember where you first learned the dance, and maybe not the names of the positions and moves. But the muscles will remember.’
‘Dancing is complicated, though. It’s not like walking or talking.’
‘It’s actually the complex things you have the best hope of remembering. The ones where you’ve had to drum the movements into your muscles. They are the ones you’ll still have in you.’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘Potentially,’ she added. ‘In theory.’
My hands shook with excitement. What if it were true—the body remembering when the mind could not? After all, how else had I teased out all of my morning exercises? The push-ups and crunches and planks and stretching had all been inside me, just waiting to be teased out. Maybe dance would be like that, just waiting for a connection to the music in my ears and the polished floor under my feet.
‘Let’s do it.’
‘Right now?’ Julie laughed and put down her juice. ‘This is a rumba. I was thinking we should wait for something a bit easier, but sure. Let’s go.’
She stood and offered her hand to me, palm up. I took it. ‘You dance too, right?’
‘I get by. This guy I dated once gave me a lesson or two.’
We weaved our way over to an uncrowded corner of the dance floor. It was good to have a little space to work in. At least I wouldn’t stumble into anybody. My free hand clenched and unclenched. Excitement gave way to nervousness. It had taken days to work out the exercises. It hadn’t happened all at once. Under pressure. In front of strangers.
Julie turned to face me, eyes radiant with hope.
Great. No expectations or anything. I gritted my teeth against the nerves.
‘Right.’ Julie began assembling me into a starting position, bumping and nudging my limbs and shoulders to her satisfaction. Fortunately, I was anxious enough that the touch of her hand didn’t deliver its normal electricity. Eventually she stepped back and nodded. ‘Wait for it.’ She positioned herself beside me. ‘We’re going to step forward with the right. Let’s see if anything comes back.’ I could see the count going in her eyes, as she waited for the pattern to begin.
I fought the urge to grip her hand too hard,
trying to leave my fingers loose and free. The way my nerves were jangling, I could have been standing on a precipice, preparing to jump off the edge.
‘Now,’ she said.
And off we stepped.
Memory fluttered, the beat of its wings brushing against the mind’s edge. My foot landed and I glided forward. My back foot arched onto its toes, followed me forward, and then stopped.
Perfect.
I felt rather than saw Julie mirroring me. She turned to me as I swept towards her. In unison our feet swung through the air, turning in mid-stride to…
Clunk against one another. Julie stumbled and we bumped side-on, bouncing off each other like dodgem cars. She laughed, her eyes gleaming. There had been something in my movement she’d seen immediately.
‘Let’s go again.’ She started setting me up again, arms and hips and wrists all in order. The process moved quicker. This time I counted down to the first step myself, feeling into the moment to join the music.
I repeated the step forward, the pause, the turn. My foot slid alongside hers, my tatty sneaker next to her slender black shoe.
Yes. I had this.
We turned away, as if folding ourselves outward to the world. Reflecting each other, we returned to facing forward. I skimmed my left foot forward, but my sneaker squeaked and gripped the floor.
No. Wrong.
I stumbled slightly and pulled myself to a halt.
‘Again,’ I said, and set about manoeuvring myself into position. But the song finished, leaving me standing like an oddly fashioned shop dummy.
Julie looked up at me, biting her lip in excitement. ‘You see? It’s still there.’
I buzzed with the same excitement. There was memory here, within me, bursting to be used. An overpowering urge to take the forgotten and to see it made real in the world once more. She had been right, after all. Julie knew me better than I knew myself. There was something unnerving in that. When every sure-footed step pushed me further into a world I didn’t know.
The next song started. ‘Not sure I know this,’ Julie said.
‘Let’s sit this one out.’ I wanted a moment to breathe and get my head around this. My body seemed to be screaming at me: This changes everything. But my mind wanted to pause, to think, to work out what it changed and what it didn’t. We retreated to our table and I slumped into my seat as if my legs had given out. Julie perched on the edge of her seat.
No words were spoken. We both knew what had happened. I just didn’t know what it meant.
‘I wonder why I never left myself any music,’ I said. ‘Not even a radio. Something to trigger these memories.’
Julie sipped her juice, watching me. ‘It’s not only about music. Haven’t you ever found yourself standing in the centre of an empty room, and feeling all that space all around you, just waiting for you to take it and fill it with something new?’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever found myself in the centre of an empty room. Full stop.’ Not with that mountain of dominoes standing in the middle of my apartment. I reached for my drink, thirsty more from nerves than from exertion. Even now, I couldn’t take my eyes off the dancers. What would it be like to belong out there, to be part of what they did?
Soon enough, the song finished and the opening bars of another began. Julie bounced to her feet. ‘A waltz. You could do it in your sleep. It’s the first dance you ever taught me. It’s as simple as one, two, three.’
We headed back to our corner of the floor. Again, she arranged me, her hands professional as they moved me this way and that. I suppose I’d once done the same to her.
‘This arm wraps around my back.’ She demonstrated, moving in and letting my right arm close around her. ‘And we hold these hands.’ Our palms pressed snugly together, our fingers curling to hold them in place. The tips of my fingers tingled where they touched her.
My body felt more awkward and mechanical than the first time. Perhaps it was the greater expectation I had now. Or Julie being so close.
‘You can pull me in quite tight if you like. A waltz can work either—oh!’
My arm knew what it was doing better than I did. It scooped her in with effortless authority. All at once, I could feel the crush of her hips and the press of her hand against the small of my back. Her face came in close to mine, far too close for comfort. Wide eyes looked up at me, eager and gleaming, filling my field of vision. Her perfume assaulted my senses, blending with the scent of her hair and skin.
Sensory overload: my jangled nerves overwhelmed by her hips, her lips, her scent. Sweat prickled at the back of my neck. A sense of panic gripped my stomach.
‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘Now up on your toes.’ She raised herself up, and I followed her movement exactly, as if I’d known the command before she spoke it. Everything snapped into place. The music. My arms, shoulders, hips, feet. And Julie, fitting into my space, shaping around my body like a silhouette. Her words tumbled into the sound of the music and the swish of couples spinning past. ‘So you start by stepping forward with your right foot, almost as if you’re stepping into me. When you do, I’ll…’
I barely heard her words. Some alien force had taken control, listening only to the music, feeling its lift and glide. Thought was gone; arms and legs held themselves poised, waiting for the moment, ready to pounce on the opening provided in the one-two-three, one-two-three—
Go.
My right leg swept forward, and Julie moved back, steps locked, legs melded in their synchronised sweep. As my foot touched the floor, it spun and elevated. Julie turned in my arms as I pulled her around. There was no effort, only momentum. I spun us forward, towards the centre, into the maelstrom of spinning, gliding dancers, Julie’s face the only fixed object in the world. The room whirled behind her, lights and colours whizzing past: only her eyes and her smile held steady.
Everything was a rush with Julie at its centre. Her smile shone: this was what she’d been waiting for.
Muscle memory had given way to something deeper. A tumult of desire, will, perception. It felt like a drug racing through my blood, an intensity outside my control, as if the excitement and sensation were someone else’s. Someone more important, more powerful; more alive.
This wasn’t like the exercises, all muscle twitches and the resurrection of a few buried habits. This was intention and emotion programmed into the depths of the mind. The same sense of possession had gripped me the first time Julie played her music, but this time there wasn’t that nauseous sense of moving-not-moving.
This time I could only follow its direction, the space spread open before me, Julie, the sound, the group, the lights, all pushing me on the same trajectory as that internal force. Our every step, our instinctual flow into a new space, all seemed stepped out by someone else. An unseen puppeteer, perfecting every part of me through a thousand tiny strings. It felt like drowning, disappearing under the tide of a forgotten, alien will. This was what she’d wanted all along. This spell.
I pushed back at it; against its strange knowledge.
I pushed back at her.
Julie stumbled. There had been no force in my movement—more wrenching myself out of her arms than pushing her away. But it brought us to a shuddering halt, and relief flooded my body.
‘Oops.’ Julie still smiled. ‘We got that one wrong. Let’s blame the footwear.’
She thought my action had been a mistake. Unintentional. But it felt like the first intentional thing I’d done since stepping onto the dance floor.
Her arms opened in welcome again. ‘You really had it there for a moment.’
‘No. It wasn’t me. I didn’t know what I was doing.’
Around us, people stared.
Her smile faded. ‘That’s okay. It’s not all going to come back in a rush.’
But that was exactly how it was coming back. This was the opposite of control. The opposite of choice.
‘I can’t do it.’ I raised my hands like stop signs. ‘I just…no. We shouldn’t have come here.’
I stumbled off the dance floor, the waltzing couples veering out of my way.
Back at the table, I sank into the chair and cowered over my drink. Julie arrived, but I kept my eyes down. I didn’t want to see the expression on her face. Whatever she was feeling—disappointed, upset, betrayed, embarrassed—I didn’t want to know.
‘We’ve got all night,’ she said at last, her voice so tentative it sounded like a question.
I flinched and shook my head. ‘No.’ There were no other words.
The sound of the waltz was still going in the background, mixing with the buzz of chatter from those at the nearby tables, but the two of us were trapped in our own world of awkwardness. I could feel her staring at me.
‘I might just go to the ladies for a moment.’ Her voice sounded broken.
The black dress swished as she turned away. I looked up and watched her weave through the tables, her movements hasty and jerky. She almost stumbled into someone. I’d done that to her.
But what was the alternative? I’d promised I would try, and I had tried. To go another step further would be not to choose but to abandon myself.
Julie couldn’t know all that: what it was like to feel a stranger taking control. It made me sick to the stomach. I stood up. I would go after her; apologise. Try to explain. But she had disappeared around the tables at the back of the hall.
I slumped down in the chair, wishing I was somewhere, anywhere else. I didn’t know why the dancing wasn’t like the morning exercises: a neat skill to be unearthed, then turned off or on as needed. But it wasn’t. It was as if emotion and authority were hidden in every movement, urging me to just let go. To surrender.
Well, to hell with that.
I nursed my drink until Julie returned from the bathroom. She didn’t sit down.
‘This one’s a waltz, too.’ A forlorn hope sounded in her voice. ‘Just a bit slower.’
