The Resurrected Compendium (21 page)

“Drinks!”
 

It was sort of like magic. The guy returned, drinks in hand. Then he turned around and left. Molly caught Kathleen’s eye and shrugged, and they laughed again. They drank and danced, at least as best they could. The crowd in front of them shifted, groups merging and splitting. The cowboy and the bridesmaid had disappeared, though Kathleen caught a glimpse of the bride — no, it was a different bride, this one in a veil and sucking on a giant ring pop. The DJ kept the music going, one song blending into another, so there was no room between them. No time to stop, not that she wanted to.
 

The small space on the stairs that had seemed unencroachable just a few minutes before had gotten smaller and smaller, until at last she was reduced to simply shifting her feet. Bounce, bounce. It was ridiculous, silly, no room to move and she was still dancing, and everything was right in this world and this place, nothing to think about but the pulse of the music and crush of people all around her.
 

There was a guy in front of her, leaning on the counter. He was smiling. Probably because she looked like an idiot.

“You’re looking at my sweet dance moves, aren’t you?” Kathleen said, and demonstrated a few more stupid shimmies. Then a few more, just to see what he’d do. “Admit it, you’ve never seen anything like this.”

“Oh, I know you have some good moves,” he said. “I saw you doing the Running Man earlier.”

This gave her pause, just a second or two, because she had to remember when and where she’d been doing the Running Man — though there was no denying that she probably had been. On this dance floor? Or in one of the other places in the vast club? Either way, it meant he’d seen her before she saw him, and that was something interesting.
 

“Oh, I’m sure you did,” she said. “I’m sure I was
totally
doing the Running Man. And it was probably sort of awesome, am I right?”

He didn’t say anything to that, but he laughed, and she laughed, and then a space cleared out and she and Molly were dancing again. It would be great if the night never ended, though of course it always had to, but at least she didn’t have to wake up early in the morning and take care of anyone but herself. The thought of that alone…stretching out in a big bed by herself, waking when her body told her it was time instead of to an alarm, maybe not taking a shower for an hour after she got out of bed, those were the simple pleasures of a woman with a good life who sometimes felt like she still might like to run away from it all.
 

Molly’s attention had been taken up by two men who’d been standing where Kathleen had been a few minutes ago, but that was okay. All at once in front of her was that guy from above. He’d come down to stand in front of her with another of those smiles she couldn’t stop herself from returning. He spread his arms and gave her a look.

“Teach me some of those sweet moves,” he said. “I’m ready.”

Well, well, well. This
was
interesting, indeed, and despite the fact that lots of dudes had been circling her and Molly tonight, this was…different. Kathleen jerked her chin, just a little.

“Show me what you’ve got, so I see what I have to work with.”

He danced kind of like she did.

And it was awesome.

There was conversation, though later if you’d asked her she wouldn’t quite have been able to remember everything they talked about. Of course later when the world was ending, she wouldn’t have time to remember. Now, though, even as the night was edging on toward last call and the desperation level was rising as the time to hook-up was running out, all Kathleen cared about was dancing. Laughing. Holding onto something she didn’t get very often but never forgot she missed.

His name was Doug. He wore a black hooded sweatshirt with the word Princeton on the front of it, and though she kept meaning to ask him why, she never quite got around to it. They’d left the riser to force a spot closer to the back of the dance floor, Molly not abandoned or forgotten but dancing with Doug’s friend whose name Kathleen hadn’t caught.

Behind her, the bridesmaids were back. This time, the cowboy’d also brought some friends. Maybe they were the same as the ones from earlier, maybe different. By this point most everyone was so drunk and drenched with sweat, hair plastered across foreheads and cheeks, clothes askew from too much grinding, that it would’ve been hard for her to pick out someone she knew pretty well, much less a group of strangers.

Kathleen had long ago worked the minimal alcohol she’d consumed out of her with the exertion of constant movement; her dress clung to her and her neck begged for her to lift her hair off it, just for a second or two, to find some relief from the inferno-level temperatures in the club. Doug had finally abandoned the sweatshirt, a foolish choice in club-wear they’d both agreed during one of the times when the music had slowed and they stood, mouth to ear, ostensibly all the better to hear each other when the reality was that it was just a reason to stand so close. He had to take off his glasses for a minute to pull it off over his head. He had blue eyes, dark though, a kind of strange color. Maybe green. She had to look away so he wouldn’t catch her staring. He wore a t-shirt underneath, and when he turned around, Kathleen admired the back of his neck where the hair was short and slick with sweat.

Someone shoved her hard enough to force her to take a few unsteady steps forward. Doug caught her, his hands on her upper arms, but she went a little too far. Front to front, belly to belly, thigh to thigh. It was where she’d wanted to end up for the past ten songs but hadn’t managed to work up the nerve to go.

It wasn’t that she’d set out tonight to find this, but here it was. Heat and sweat and the constant, steady bass thumping, the press and crush of a crowd, the flash and swirl of colored lights and confetti that filtered from the ceiling like multi-colored snow every hour or so and made everyone look up and reach to grab the floating paper strips. She hadn’t been looking for it, but it was what she’d found.

The crowd surged again. The song eased into something slower, and it seemed natural enough for him to pull her even closer. Slide a thigh between hers. Do that slow, smooth grind that was nothing like the herky jerky ass-riding she’d been making fun of earlier. His hands on her hips, her fingers poised to curl at the back of his neck, so close she could already feel the brush and tickle of his hair on her knuckles — except she didn’t do it. She found a place on his back, fingers splayed on his shoulder blade, a spot that felt noncommittal and neutral and was anything but. She knew she was too stiff, muscles too tight. The woman who’d bounced and jumped and shuffled with abandon had become a wooden doll.
 

And then she melted.

Just for a second or two, not long at all, but it felt like an eternity. Heat centered inside her. She closed her eyes and breathed in deep, the scent of cotton and sweat and liquor, the smell of her own perfume. She closed her eyes and the world fell away for that minute, and if she could’ve been anyone else but herself for just that sixty seconds she thought she’d probably have sold her soul for the chance.

The music changed, someone bumped into them again. She opened her eyes and took a step back, laughing and self-conscious, hoping he didn’t notice. She knew it was artificial. Maybe he’d had a couple too many gin-and-tonics. Or he was in the habit of picking up women in clubs in the way she was not in the habit of picking up men. Maybe she was just what he’d settled for when the bridesmaids hadn’t returned his smile, who knew? The laugh caught in her throat when she saw him looking past her, over her shoulder, his face creased with concern.

“What’s the matter?” Kathleen turned as Doug, hand still on her hip, pulled her back, out of the way.
 

She didn’t stumble this time, but she ended up pressed close to him anyway. His hand went to the small of her back as his other tucked up tight around her arm, shifting her. He’d have shielded her, she thought, except she was in front of him, so he instead moved her to the side. Just in time, too, because the bridesmaid - it was the same one from earlier, Katy remembered the tramp stamp tattoo showing between the girl’s too-tight t-shirt and the waistband of her jean shorts— fell over right in front of her. Right onto the floor, flat on her face, where she twitched and jerked. One sandal fell off.
 

A few people in the crowd backed up, but not enough. There wasn’t any place for them to go, so even as someone shouted for everyone to make room, the others at the outskirts pushed in harder. People stumbled against each other. Someone else fell, and at first Kathleen thought it was some drunk just off-balance, but she saw it was the cowboy. His hat was gone but his shirt was still open, and she recognized the abs. He pitched forward onto his hands and knees, shoulders heaving. She couldn’t hear him, but she recognized the motion from many nights spent holding a bucket in front of her kids’ faces as they puked from the flu or too many chocolates.
 

Kathleen made a low noise of disgust she felt in her throat but she couldn’t actually hear over the still pounding music. The rest of the night had been all dance hits, but now the DJ started spinning something harder-edged. A familiar guitar riff, drums pounding.
Enter Sandman
, she thought, distracted, as Doug pulled her back further, out of the crowd. A bigger space had opened up around the bridesmaid, who’d stopped twitching, and the cowboy, still on his hands and knees.
 

Kathleen searched for Molly, who’d been dancing with Doug’s friend not far from her, and couldn’t see her. Now the crowd had started to scatter. Someone else fell. A shout went up. The ripple effect was creating a space, but people were shoving and pushing to get away from whatever was going on in the center of the room.
 

“Let’s get out of here,” Doug said into her ear, and Kathleen nodded, letting him guide her through the dense pack of people as she looked over her shoulder until she lost sight of the mayhem.

Molly and Doug’s friend caught up with them at the club’s exit doors. Molly was flushed and grinning, the friend’s arm around her waist. Whatever was happening on the dance floor had been bad enough to call security. Three muscled men in yellow t-shirts shoved and wove through the people standing around smoking…or making out, Kathleen saw. Hands groping, mouths open and slobbering. She caught a glimpse of what should’ve been someone’s tongue but looked too long and thick, the wrong color, the flash of it disturbing in a way she couldn’t put her finger on though she craned her neck to look again as she followed Doug across the sand-covered floor toward the gates.

Two uniformed policemen pushed past them, heading into the club. A police car, lights flashing but siren silent, pulled into the parking lot. Two more cops got out. By unspoken agreement, the four of them edged away from the police and moved along a curving sidewalk imprinted with what looked like skulls-and-crossbones. Out here, the air was cooler and Doug paused to tug his sweatshirt from around his waist. He didn’t put it on though, instead eyeing her bare shoulders. He held it out.

Kathleen shook her head. “I’m ok.”

“You sure?”

Her ears were still ringing from the music, and it was strange to hear his voice at a normal level, but his smile hadn’t changed. She shook her head again, even though the truth was, the night air had raised gooseflesh on her arms and her teeth were trying to chatter. His sweatshirt would be soft and warm, and it would probably smell like him.
 

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m good.”
 

Slightly behind them, Molly and Doug’s friend, whose named turned out to be Steve, were talking and laughing, a little loud and raucous, but not as out of control as most of the people in the parking lot. Another cop car pulled into the lot, followed this time by an ambulance. It wasn’t an uncommon site in Ocean City — Saturday nights were rife with alcohol poisoning and bar fights. But it did seem a little ominous that the lights were on, while the sirens were not.
 

“Doesn’t that mean something?” Kathleen asked, pointing, and looked at Doug. “I mean, when just the lights are on? That someone’s dead?”

He gave her a funny look and she realized she sounded like a dork, but what else was new? He’d already seen her Running Man. She laughed. Shrugged.

Doug laughed too, but he sounded a little strange. He looked back at the club. “I hope not.”

She hoped not too, but as they watched the EMTs
 
and more police enter the club, all she really wanted to do was get out of there. Two a.m. wasn’t her hour any longer, even though she wasn’t tired. Not one bit.

“Maybe it’s true, what they were saying on the TV,” Molly said.

Kathleen had seen the stories, watched her tweetstream fill up with jokes about the evangelical preacher who’d been claiming he’d come back from the dead. She hadn’t paid much attention — there was too much of that stuff, too much access to the stupidity of men who thought texting pictures of their junk was a good idea or women who were pregnant by another woman’s husband bemoaning how the world thought they were whores. If you’d poked her hard enough with something sharp, she’d have admitted she consumed this sort of trashy news because the other kind about children dying, natural disasters, the national debt, made her too anxious. There was nothing she could do about any of it except get through her life as best she could, and sure, that made her an ostrich with her head in the sand. She could own it.

“What was on the TV?” Steve’s toe caught the edge of a concrete curb and he stumbled, but caught himself. Grinned at Molly, his hands up. “I’m good!”

He wasn’t that good, he was pretty drunk. What hadn’t mattered much on the dance floor was less charming now that the night was working its way toward morning and the four of them were wandering somewhat aimlessly toward the beach. Kathleen didn’t think Molly’d told him where they were staying…but she couldn’t be sure.

“The guy says he was dead for three days, and then he came back.” Molly grabbed at Steve’s arm to steady him, and the pair hopped another curb, this time more successfully.