Grease Monkey Jive (24 page)

The open was a no-points knockout event worth five thousand dollars prize money. Even though Dan and Alex’s event was into its third heat, this was the kick-off for the open competition. Tonight fifty couples could compete with eliminations occurring over the next five rounds until the last couple standing walked with the cash.

As the dancers took to the floor, Dan could see both Cooper Perry and Collin Davis. No doubt Collin’s choreography would get an airing. He was partnered with a young girl in a nude coloured costume that made Dan look twice.

“She looks like his butt naked granddaughter,” said Scott.

“They’re good,” said Trevor. “Cooper too.”

Cooper’s partner was a cute blonde with big baby-doll blue eyes and a short red jewelled dress that showed off endless tanned legs. Cooper sure had nothing to complain about.

In less than five minutes, six couples had been eliminated. In the next five, another four were tapped on the shoulder by judges and asked to leave the floor. Both Collin and Cooper and their partners made it through.

Dan watched the eliminations with a growing lump of dread fermenting in his gut. Apart from one couple who’d made an obvious stumble, he couldn’t see why any of the others had been voted off the island.

“Should you be watching this?” said Mitch.

Dan felt Mitch’s hand on his knee and realised he’d been bouncing it nervously. He stopped. “Maybe not. Shit, how did I get here?”

“Major brain fart if you ask me,” said Fluke.

“Yeah, I’d have that checked out,” said Mitch.

“Have you tapped that yet?” asked Ant, leaning forward to look at Alex who was deep in discussion with Scott and Trevor, safely out of earshot.

Dan followed Ant’s line of vision. “No. She’s got a bloke.”

“Why isn’t he here?” said Mitch, scanning the group for someone they didn’t know already.

“Good question.”

“So, you’re going to?” said Fluke.

“Nope.”

“Are you sick, Dan?”

“Nope. Except for right now, I’m great.”

“You look fucking gay,” Fluke exploded.

“You mean like Scott?”

The four of them leaned forward to look at Scott. Everything about him said masculine from the square cut of his jaw and his carefully crafted stubble to the width of his shoulders and the muscles across his chest and in his arms. Even the broken foot said he-man, so Fluke’s comment wasn’t about Scott, it was meant to be a dig at Dan. He dropped a hand on Fluke’s shoulder. “Are you ever going to give this up?”

Fluke played it ignorant. “What?”

“It’s been weeks and instead of getting over it, you’re just getting meaner. It doesn’t suit you.”

Fluke snorted and Dan dropped his hand. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to eat shit, Dan.”

“Lay off, Fluke,” said Mitch.

Fluke didn’t. “I want some kind of proof that you’re the friend I thought you were and the thing with Katie was a bit of madness and you’re going to do something about changing like you said.”

“Not the time, mate,” said Mitch, glaring across Dan at Fluke.

“If you haven’t already done it with Alex, I’ll be a friggin’ ballerina. I saw you dance with her. You don’t get to look at each other like that, just from dancing with a girl. You’ve got to be fucking her, which means you haven’t done anything about changing, and you’re not sorry about Katie.”

“Shut up, Fluke,” said Mitch, but he’d missed his moment. Fluke had said his piece, the whole time sitting forward and watching the dancers, his elbows on his knees, hands gripped tightly, knuckles white, suspended between his legs.

Mitch rocked forward to look at Dan who was sitting in the same position as Fluke, legs apart, elbows on knees, hands clasped, but he had his head down, studying the stadium floor and his own shoe laces, determinedly not watching the first couple compete in his own event heat. If there really was a Twilight Zone, he was deep in it.

“Earth to Dan,” said Ant. “Is that what you’ll be doing?”

Dan looked up. A single couple danced in a bright white spotlight. It looked like their feet never touched the floor. “Yep, eating shit,” he said and then excused himself and stepped across Mitch and Ant to get to the aisle. He wanted out of the arena. He didn’t want to watch anymore, or even hear the music. He heard Mitch say, “That was fucked, Fluke,” and then he was in the corridor behind the seating and it was mercifully separate and quiet.

He leaned up against the cool besser brick wall and tried to collect himself. There was nothing he could do about Fluke’s rage. He’d hoped time would sort it out, but now it looked like time wouldn’t be enough. He hadn’t made a start on the Charger and maybe Fluke would reject the gesture anyway given the rusted, sour mood he was in.

Away from the bright lights and in the comparative silence he tried to set the distractions aside and focus, to run the dance in his head one more time. But his brain was so fried by the strangeness of everything that he wasn’t able to visualise anything beyond a few scattered images of Alex. He couldn’t remember how the routine started, how he was supposed to move, how they finished, or anything that happened in between. He could feel anxiety getting ready to flip into panic and was about to go grab Scott when Alex’s voice cut though the thick fog of forgetfulness in his head.

“Are you ok?”

A lie seemed the more masculine response. No point her knowing he was Aeroplane Jelly brain. “Yeah. I just needed to get away from that,” he jerked his thumb towards the bricks to indicate the outside world where everything glittered and didn’t hold still.

She came closer. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” He was getting good at this lying business.

She nodded. “I’ll see you back out there in fifteen,” and in a flash of thigh and shoulder, turned to leave.

He grabbed for her hand. Was that in or out of the lines? She came into his arms easily, softly, with a flicker of her skirt against his legs and her arms around his neck. “You’ll be fine.”

“You might need to keep saying that.” He rested his forehead on hers, smelled the perfume of her makeup and hair products.

“You’ll be fine,” she repeated obediently.

“Not hearing you.” He should kiss her. The pleasure instinct side of his brain was functioning well enough to know if there was any time to stray over the lines and get away with a kiss, this was it. It would be easy to shift slightly, angle his face, nudge her cheek.

He hesitated and she said, “Don’t,” but gently, more a suggestion than a warning. He wasn’t sorry she knew what he wanted. Let it stand. It was the truth, but not the note to end on, too wimpy, too defeated. He lifted a hard from the curve of her waist and slapped her butt, not hard, but the sound of his hand connecting with her body, fast and sharp, reverberated in the low ceilinged corridor and her gasp of protest as she pushed back from him was the right note, a fighting note, its blood heated and raring to go, just as the way his hand tingling was a call to arms.

This was as ready as he was ever going to get for this particular fight.

He might as well have been abducted by aliens. Dan remembered nothing about their four minutes and thirteen seconds in the spotlight. Nada. Zilch. Zip. His brain was a blank white void, with all the live action sucked out.

He could tell from the fuss being made that they’d made it through without him tripping Alex, dropping her, tearing her dress off, or falling over. Alex’s hug and her whispered ‘thank you’, Scott’s thump on the back, the look of expectation on Trevor’s face, and Gwen’s big smile told him that.

He’d wanted to hold onto Alex longer when she wrapped him in that hug, because he had no memory of holding her on the dance floor, but she was gone too quick, over the aisle separating their seats, laughing excitedly with Scott and Trevor, hugging Gwen.

Then the boys were there, talking at once, jostling him, pulling at his shirt, messing with his hair, even Fluke was all teeth and rounded cheek bones, high colour, and loud-voiced.

“So we did ok?” Dan sat, trying to work his memory muscles for recall of anything beyond the heat of the spotlighting.

“You were fucking awesome,” said Fluke and Dan had to look at him to check for sarcasm. Nope, even Fluke’s freckles looked heartfelt, so it must’ve gone ok.

“Not as good as this lot,” said Ant, gesturing to the couple now on the floor.

“But not as crap as we thought you’d be,” said Mitch.

Ant leaned across Mitch and poked Dan in the arm. “You need to sort it with Alex, mate. Get rid of the boyfriend. She’s a friggin’ goddess. Can you imagine how good the sex would be?”

Now Dan was thinking alien abduction might have been preferable. The huge drafts of adrenaline that coursed through his body started to dissipate. His limbs felt heavy, he was aware of a roaring hunger, and mostly he wanted a swim in the sea, a good cup of tea, and a mattress to go flake out on. How pathetic was that? But he had to say something about Alex and he had to say something to Fluke. If he could get both of those things accomplished together, maybe he could survive the Martian brain probe and go home unharmed.

“Alex is off limits.”

“Off limits for what?” said Ant.

“We drew a line.”

“Dan’s fried,” Mitch laughed.

“Alex is the girl I’m not allowed to have. Anyway she made it pretty fricking clear she’s not interested in me that way. She’s the one I might get to have as a friend if I get lucky.”

“What?” said Mitch.

“Shit really? How’d that feel?” said Ant.

“Better than this.”

“That’s total bull, Dan,” said Fluke. “And you know it. She’s into you.”

“I’m not saying I don’t want her, Fluke. I’m saying I won’t do anything about it. She’s the one that gets away, because that’s what I’m supposed to be learning. How to relate to women differently. Half the sky, remember? If I take Alex to bed, how is that any different to what I always do? We’ve drawn a line. We get to sex it up out on the dance floor, but that’s where it ends.”

“Unbelievable,” said Fluke. “Only you could come up with something like that. You get to maul the girl of your dreams in front of hundreds of people, but you don’t get to take her to bed.”

“And you think that’s good, Fluke?” said Dan, swinging around to look at him.

“I think that takes the cake.”

“Yeah, I did too,” he said softly. “But now I’m thinking the sugar overdose might just kill me.”

There was a moment where he and Fluke just looked at each other, then Fluke tipped his head back and laughed and Dan knew he’d reset the line with Fluke too.

If she hadn’t known people where watching, Alex would have been biting her nails – at least on one hand. Gran held the other one. But when it had gotten around that Scott was benched and she had a new partner, one nobody had any history on, she was suddenly the centre of attention. And that was before she and Dan took to the floor. Now that they were waiting for the scores to be announced, it was almost like she could hear the whispered speculation in tight little conversations around the camp fires of the various couples in the heat.

She and Scott had arrived late, had Dan arrive later still, as a tactic to avoid getting caught up in pre-event gossip and conjecture, but there was no hiding from it now. The star couple, the ones most likely to win with the highest score to date and the shortest odds, were in trouble.

Massive trouble.

They’d fielded an amateur, a good looking one, who’d done a decent job, but an amateur all the same, and there was no place for amateurs in this competition.

Not for the first time, Alex asked Trevor if he thought they’d done enough to get the four points needed to keep their place and get the chance to compete again. Not for the first time, Trevor gave her a nervous smile and a hug and the whole time Scott looked ready to vomit. His mobile had been vibrating and flashing with messages from other dancers around the arena, wanting to know the story, but he’d ignored them all and focused on running his own score sheet on the couples on the floor.

He’d given Ferdy and Gina an eight and Brad and Anna a nine. That would put both couples level with their own points tally, assuming she and Dan got their four points.

Alex scooted forward to look across at Dan. He was ensconced with the boys, sprawling back in the orange plastic seat. He looked washed out, like he could do with a hot meal and an early night. He’d done so well out there; only his unsteady breathing had given his nervousness away. His eyes had never left hers, never wavering, never faltering, as though only by tracking her could he manage to stay on his feet and functioning, but it would all be for nothing, the nights, the weekends, the tension with Phil, if they didn’t get their four points.

When the exhibition disco dancers finished their routine and the Scissor Sisters stopped singing about how they didn’t feel like dancing, the head judge Barry Barton coughed into his microphone and there was no more time for speculation. Barry thanked the Disco Divas, talked about the standard of the competition, told a groan-making dad joke, and then got down to business.

He invited all the couples back onto the floor and Mitch had to elbow Dan hard to get him to his feet. When he stood, Alex was in the aisle between their seats waiting for him, her hand held out.

“I forgot to tell you about this bit,” she said. She reached up to brush his hair back, but decided it could stay ruffled and ended up just running her hand through it, while Dan closed his eyes and lost that strung out look he’d had while they were waiting. “They’ll call the names of the couples to be eliminated first and then they’ll read the scores of the couples remaining.”

“That’s us, right?”

“Yeah, we have enough points even if we don’t score anything tonight to stay in the competition, but we’ll be eliminated immediately next round, so it’s as good as being eliminated now. If that happens we’ll forfeit.”

Dan nodded and took Alex’s hand, let her lead him onto the dance floor. Now that he didn’t have to do anything but stand around, he was more relaxed. He took in the other couples. They looked like they belonged here, planted on the sprung floor with straight spines, proud carriage, and an indefinable quality that told you they were used to being watched, judged, and admired.