The Unexpected Waltz (13 page)

So Daniel is struggling in his marriage. Possibly separated. I look down. My glass is still half-full, so at some point in the search I must have poured more wine without thinking. I have to be more careful. Nik is teaching group class tonight so I don’t want to miss it, and I have a sweet spot of my own when it comes to wine, a place where the anxiety blurs but I’m still in control of my senses. I glance over at the pile of mail on the desk. Catalogs, bills, a statement from the lawyer. I should open it, but I don’t.

Does Daniel look the same? I squint at the gallery of pictures but it’s hard to say. More than two decades have passed since I’ve seen him and whenever I’ve allowed myself to think about what happened between us, I’ve never had much luck conjuring up his face.

The only thing that surprises me is that he’s returned to the South. He always said he hated the South, that it was backward and slow, that people always tried to act like they were nicer than they were. But here he is, living in Charleston.

And that’s entirely too close.

CHAPTER
NINE

E
VERYONE'S THERE WHEN
I arrive at group. As I walk by Nik to take my place in line he says, “You have had good day?”

“No,” I say, “horrible.”

He nods. “Me also.”

He has come to the front of the room without turning on the music. This is a bad sign, an indication that he intends to torture us tonight with technique. The students are lined up before the mirror and Nik walks up and down the row like a sergeant, frowning, displeased in some way none of us can understand or fix. Valentina timidly asks if we can have music and Nik snaps back at her in Russian, then thinks better of it and translates. Apparently there’s an old adage in their language: “When you learn how to swim better, then we will put water in the pool.”

So, no water in the pool tonight. No music. Just Nik standing before us, slowly shifting from one leg to the other. The rumba can be fluid and sensual but when you break it down, it can also become a nightmarish sequence of micromovements, which are much harder to do slow than fast. You slide your weight to the left side of your body, then let it settle. As the weight settles, the hip releases. Shift, settle, release. And then you start all over again on the right.

We stare at our reflections, we bite our lips. It shouldn’t be so hard. Shift on the first beat and then, on the half beat, release—just a little, just enough to allow the hip a slight swing to the side. It is subtle and when Nik does it, we can all see that it’s beautiful. “It took me million tries to get right,” he says. “Maybe a million one. Again. You are all too fast.” The men are having more trouble than the women. They swing unevenly back and forth like a line of worn-out windshield wipers and Nik goes behind the group, putting his hands on each man’s hips, trying to guide him into the rhythm of the dance. “Shift,” he says. “Shift and then release. Is two separate moves. Again.”

My mind wanders. In the mirror I can see that three men wearing business suits have come into the studio and are talking to Quinn. After a second, Quinn goes to get Anatoly, who emerges from the back room with a spring in his step and his hand already outstretched. Evidently the men are here to spend some major money. Because Nik has refused to put on music, I can overhear snatches of the conversation, enough to gather that they are with a French Canadian company. Come to talk about group lessons or some sort of incentive for their employees or maybe renting the studio out for a company party. Anatoly needs these sorts of people, the kind who can write big checks because the studio is barely breaking even. I know all this because of Isabel, who fills me full of dancing gossip that I can’t understand, and who seems nearly as smitten with Anatoly as with Nik. She says she danced once with Anatoly at a Christmas party and it was the best experience of her life. Not just the best dance experience. The best experience, period. Better than sex.

“Kelly,” Nik says sharply, and I snap my attention back to the rumba. He is either satisfied with the group’s mastery of the shift and release or he’s given up—hard to tell by his facial expression—and we’re now moving on to the forward step. The key is to keep your knee locked, your toe pointed slightly out, and to shift all your weight onto the front foot in the instant that you step. Very crisp. Very clean. Can we manage to do that?

It’s a forward step. Surely we can all make a forward step. The very fact that we’re here, in the studio, should be evidence that we are in fact capable of taking a sequence of forward steps—otherwise, we’d still be in the parking lot, trapped in our cars. But the skill seems to have deserted us all. Stepping onto a locked knee proves surprisingly difficult and to compensate I tend to turn my toe in. All wrong. Valentina’s toe is beautifully turned out but Nik immediately sees that she’s dividing her weight equally between both feet, another rumba no-no. Lucas has nice form, but he’s moving too fast. Jane is so wobbly that she’s flapping her hands to keep her balance. Steve refuses to try at all and checks his phone, and Harry steps forward confidently and then sways wildly to his left, almost falling off his feet and taking the whole domino line down with him.

“Again,” Nik says. “A million more times. Which foot are you on? You say right? Prove it. Lift your left.”

I’m so preoccupied with the intricacies of the forward step that I don’t notice Anatoly walking across the room.

I don’t notice him at all until I feel his hand on the small of my back. When I look up he is standing behind me with his ramrod-straight posture.

And he says, “Kelly, will you help me demonstrate the waltz?”

I am balanced on one foot as it is, and for a second, I nearly buckle. I’ve never danced with Anatoly. Lessons with him cost more than those with Nik. His own students are afraid of him. Why doesn’t he demonstrate with Pamela? She’s right there in the corner and everyone knows she waltzes like an angel. But perhaps he’s trying to show the French Canadians what an amateur can do, what they could hope to achieve in a few weeks.

Anatoly is waiting.

“I’d be delighted,” I hear myself say.

Anatoly holds my hand high as he leads me to the center of the floor. We stand still for a second while he gives me the chance to settle in. To get used to the fact that he is much taller than Nik, that he holds his shoulders even farther back. That he gives a woman such a big frame that I will have to stretch to my maximum size if I even hope to fill it. Quinn goes over to the sound system and pushes a button. Too loud, too loud, the whole room is overwhelmed with music, but Anatoly remains perfectly still. He gives me another second to breathe, to get the rhythm of the rumba out of my mind and begin to hear the waltz. The one-two-three, one-two-three, the rise and fall of a different sort of world. Although he does not watch my face, although he is in fact looking in the opposite direction, he seems to sense the exact moment when the rumba fades. Or, more accurately, the moment when everything else in the room is pulled from me fast, like when you hit the little picture of a garbage can on an iPhone and whatever you were looking at crumples and is sucked away. He gives me just enough time to settle, but not enough time to think, because he knows that if I think, I’ll panic.

Later, when it’s all over, this is what I’ll remember. It was early fall. Just starting to get dark outside the door. I will remember the group class pausing, the students turning toward me, their faces serious and full of doubt. Nik’s lips were pursed together as if he was mad at Anatoly for interrupting class, but of course he wouldn’t be mad. Anatoly is his boss. He’s probably just wondering, like everyone else in the room, why Anatoly had chosen me to demonstrate instead of Pamela. The teenagers lean against the back wall, shoulder to shoulder, as if they were expecting some sort of show. The French Canadians consult among themselves. Anatoly is trying to make a sale, possibly one that could bring a significant amount of money to the studio, so why would he choose to dance with Kelly Wilder, a beginner? Someone likely to stumble or hesitate, someone likely to mar the stately and unforgiving rhythm of the waltz?

I’ll remember all this but not the dance itself.

I will just sort of come to on the other side of the room. I’ll have no actual recall of waltzing and yet apparently I did, because here I am, in a different place on the dance floor. It was like I passed out for a few minutes—perhaps because I’m scared of Anatoly, who is so tall and stern and expansive and grander than Nik. Nik tried to explain it to me once—he’d said Anatoly is a white Russian and he is a black Russian, a description that makes them sound like drinks. Which, in a way, they are.

But he must have taken me and we must have waltzed. Or rather Anatoly must have waltzed and my mind must have clicked off and allowed me to follow, and furthermore he must have led me into steps I don’t know, because it’s coming to me that there was a fall-away, possibly three, and that Anatoly had spun me—repeatedly and with more force than I’m used to. Not one turn like I’ve practiced with Nik, but multiple turns, and I still ended up the correct way. Facing the French Canadians, with enough presence of mind to curtsy.

Anatoly says “Thank you” and makes his little half bow. As if we are in Vienna or Prague or somewhere, as if it were 1826. Maybe I thank him too. He leads me back to the rumba line and the other students fold around me. Valentina says “You were great” and Isabel nods, although, being Isabel, she feels compelled to add, “Of course, Anatoly could lead anyone.” When I look into the mirror, I’m flushed. Nik puts his arm around me, leans in to kiss my cheek, as if in congratulations. But when he gets close to my ear he whispers, “What the hell was that?”

THIRTY MINUTES LATER I'M
sitting in the dark parking lot. I’ve called Elyse but she didn’t answer and I remember it’s the night she teaches a pottery class at the university. I need to check on Carolina anyway and when I call the front desk number the nurse says, “She’s out here in the TV room, wanna talk to her?”

“She’s sitting up?”

“Yes, and she ate a full dinner. Doing just a whole lot better.” There’s a pause and I can hear her carrying the phone across the lobby and the sounds of
Jeopardy!
in the background. Then Carolina’s voice.

“What’s up?”

“I wanted you to be the first to know I danced with Anatoly tonight.”

She exhales with a fast “Whoa.” She knows what it means. But of course she doesn’t know how it happened, so I tell her, with every detail. And when I get to the end of the story, including what Nik whispered in my ear, she laughs and says, “So what was it like? Was that lady right when she said it was better than sex?”

“Promise me you won’t laugh.”

“You know I can’t promise you that.”

“Okay, well, it was magic. He had me doing things I don’t know how to do. I’ve heard the other women in the studio talk about ‘soaring,’ but I never knew what they meant until tonight. It was like I simultaneously left my body and was hyperaware of my body. You know, looking down on myself from the ceiling but at the same time feeling every nerve and muscle. Like magic.”

She digests this bit in silence, then says, “Sometime I want to see you dance.”

“Sure,” I say. I can hardly refuse her this small request. “My lessons are Tuesday and I’m going to start going on Fridays too. I could come by and pick you up.”

“I don’t want to watch a lesson,” she says. “I want to see you in a contest, wearing one of those dresses covered in crystals with your hair all up.”

“It’ll be months or maybe years before I’m ready to compete.”

“Why?”

I pause. Look out across the rain-washed parking lot. The studio is closing. The front light has gone out. Someone is finishing up with the sweeping, then will go out the back door. The grocery is still open, and the Starbucks, but the pharmacy and dry cleaner are locking up too. The clock on my dashboard says 9:03. How can I tell a woman with cancer that I don’t feel like I have enough time? How can I tell her that I am afraid of how I will look or what people will think?

“Here’s the thing,” I finally say. “I’m never going to be really good. I started too late.”

“You said everybody clapped tonight.”

“Yeah, but that’s just in the studio. I’m not one of those people who are going to compete and win trophies. Nobody is ever going to see my name on a heat sheet and be scared to death. I just don’t arch like the young girls arch anymore. I’m not flexible. I wake up in the middle of the night with cramps in my butt.”

“Your teacher thinks you’re good.”

“They say that to everybody. They have to. If they tell you the truth, you’ll stop writing them checks. Look, I know how this must sound to you, like I’m not grateful for the chance I have, and I’ll be the first to tell you that there was a time . . . if I had walked through those doors when I was thirty or even forty and a young man like Nik would have told me I had potential, I would have sucked all that praise straight down like vodka.”

“I’m not saying you have to be some sort of world champion. I’m just saying I want to see you dance. In one of those dresses with the shimmers on it.”