I was silent.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Let’s not bring up one sad thing tonight. I’m not going to ask you one other thing about your past. I know you had a painful time with your father and his new girlfriend—who I understand is now his wife?”
“Yes. But I agree, let’s not dwell on the past. You have your burden, too.”
She beamed a smile with her eyes wide with excitement, the sort of smile that can be contagious. “Exactly. Let’s just let loose a bit and enjoy ourselves. Moving into a new town must be like getting into a hot bath. You’ve got to do it very slowly.”
I laughed. “It is, especially for me,” I said, and left it at that, even though I could see that she was dying to know why.
The Underground, the dance club and restaurant Julia took me to, was larger than any I had ever seen, not that I had seen many. It had a huge horseshoe-shaped bar composed of some translucent material. Multi-colored lights thumped and rotated beneath it. In fact, the entire place seemed to move in sync with the rhythm of the disco music. Against one side of the club were tables and booths for those who wanted to eat farther away from the frenzied activity at the bar, and on the other side of it was a floor made of the same material as the bar and with its same rainbow of colors thumping and rotating beneath the feet of those dancing, if you could call it dancing. Some of them looked as if they were in some sort of convulsion, trying to toss their arms and hands off their torsos. Waitresses in abbreviated rainbow-colored uniforms glided somehow gracefully through the crowd and around the tables, carrying trays of drinks and plates of food. We stood inside the entrance, taking it all in.
“What do you think?” Julia asked, shouting to be heard over the music. I could see that after a few drinks, most people didn’t notice or care about the volume.
“I could make a fortune selling cough drops at the exit,” I shouted back, holding my hand over my throat, and she laughed. “It’s fine.”
“I have a table booked.”
“Great,” I said.
We were led to a booth at the far end just before the bar started to curve. Julia opened the drink menu first.
“This is pretty good and potent,” she said, pointing at a drink called the Volcano. “I’ll order it, and you can taste it. If you like it, I’ll order another. No problem, as long as we order something to eat, too.”
“Fine with me,” I said. Alcohol never bothered any of us, not that I was much of a drinker anyway. “I think I’m just going to have an appetizer. I’m not that hungry.”
“Really? They have great burgers and sweet potato fries. It comes with a small dinner salad.”
“I’ll get the shrimp cocktail.”
“Okay,” she said, and ordered for us.
I looked around. It was hard to tell who were couples and who were not. Everyone at the bar and mingling around it looked more like groups of friends. It occurred to me that maybe this was the sort of place where you would hope to meet someone and start a relationship, rather than a place that established couples might frequent. I wondered if that made any sense, but I was afraid to ask Julia, because she might realize just how inexperienced I was when it came to the dating scene.
“Are you very serious with your boyfriend?” I asked instead.
“Clifford? It’s getting there,” she admitted. “I’ve been seeing him longer than I’ve seen anyone else. He came to Quincy about a year and a half ago, and we started dating about six months later. What about you? Any long romances before you left home?”
“One,” I said. “It became impossible, however.”
“Impossible? Why?”
“It was complicated. We were from two different worlds.”
She just looked at me with her soft smile. Some people can’t subdue their personalities, I thought. No matter what they wear, what they hear, where they are, their inner self shows itself. Julia was what Daddy would call “a sweetheart, someone who almost always saw the glass half full and never half empty.” She didn’t look at the world through rose-colored glasses so much as she avoided looking at anything or hearing anything that would diminish her optimism. How she could do that and work in a hospital ER was a puzzle to me.
“Care to explain? I mean, was he very wealthy or something?”
“Something like that. He comes from one of those families who think they are tied to royalty. I didn’t fit the picture for his parents. Of course, he assured me that it wouldn’t matter, but it always matters. In the end, no matter what they say, blood is too strong to ignore.”
I thought that was a good mix of what was true and what was not.
She pursed her lips and nodded, impressed. “Daddy keeps telling me you seem like a woman twice, if not three times, your age. He keeps looking at your application form to see if that one in front of the eight isn’t really a three.”
“Events have a way of aging you prematurely,” I said.
“Yes. Oh, damn.”
“What?”
“I said nothing sad, and here I went and made you talk about a sad love affair.”
Our waiter brought her the Volcano. She seized it and gulped half of it in defiance. “Here, try it,” she said. I laughed and emptied the remainder. She immediately signaled the waiter and ordered another. “Tell you what,” she told him. “Save yourself a trip. Bring me two.”
He looked at her with a smirk, looked at me, and went off to get the drinks.
“I hope you don’t get yourself in trouble or anything. I know this is a small town and—”
“Don’t worry about it. If you don’t flaunt it, no one makes a big deal, and don’t worry about my drinking too much. This place provides a taxi if needed,” she told me. “Something tells me we’re going to need it.”
The waiter brought us the two drinks. This time, she sipped hers and started moving with the rhythm of the music.
I drank from my glass and looked out at the crowd on the dance floor, who acted as if we were at the last ten seconds of a New Year’s Eve celebration. We could hear their cheers and cries as they delighted in abandon and bathed in the passion and lust that seemed to settle over the whole dancing mix of young men and women like an invisible cloud of pure sex. They danced as if each was on his or her own private stage, but every chance they got, they rubbed bodies, caressed, and even kissed.
Suddenly, I thought that a young woman who had her back to us resembled Ava. My heart stopped and started. I sat up straighter and shifted so I could get a better view. The young woman moved behind two other couples, one quite plump.
“Something wrong?” Julia said.
“I thought I saw someone I knew,” I said, and continued to shift in my seat to get a better view. The young woman seemed to have literally disappeared. I looked everywhere I could.
“You want to go out there?” Julia asked, mistaking my interest in the dancers as envy.
“To dance?”
“It’s what people do here.”
“Yes,” I said, realizing that I might be able to see the young woman more easily from the dance floor.
We stepped away from the booth, me more slowly than her, and then she laughed, took my hand, and tugged me onto a clear spot on the dance floor. The music seemed to come up from the floor, through my legs and torso, driving me to move faster whether I wanted to or not. She was a good dancer. In moments, we seemed to be challenging each other with dramatic steps and moves. I was so into it that I forgot to look for the young woman, but soon I did.
There were a few who could have been the woman who had caught my attention. They were about Ava’s size, with similar hair. That had to be it, I thought. Relieved, I let myself go even more. We were attracting the attention of young men nearby, who tried to insert themselves between us. For a few minutes, we let two of them do so, but then Julia looked at me, laughed, and nodded toward the bar, where our food was waiting on us.
To the disappointment of the young men, we hurried off. They kept beckoning for our return, but we went back
to our booth. Julia finished her drink, and I finished mine. She ordered two more and began to eat. I was really only nibbling on my shrimp cocktail.
“Did you eat some of my great-aunt’s food before coming out?”
“No. I think I’m just a little nervous,” I said.
She nodded with understanding and held up her burger. “Delicious. You can always order one later.”
I smiled and looked around. The place continued to fill up.
“I guess this is the big hot spot here,” I said.
“I don’t come here that much. Clifford isn’t that fond of it. He likes it to be mellow when he eats, and he’s not into the club scene. Talk about your upper-crust people, he’s from one of those aristocratic Boston families, but he can let his hair down, too. When I inspire him,” she added with a wide smile. “And I do.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
“Forget me. You were inspiring quite a few young men out there.”
“So were you.”
“Not as much,” she said.
Was she right? Was that something obvious?
“It was like flies to honey,” I said, and she laughed.
“Look,” she said, leaning toward me. “I’m not trying to push you on anyone. I’m no one qualified to give anyone advice about romance. I had two or three disappointments in college, and until I met Clifford, I wasn’t what you would call the belle of the ball. In fact, I think I was beginning to worry my father.”
“Why?”
“He’s never come right out and said anything, but I know he’s afraid that our growing up under the circumstances of his failed marriage, my mother running off, that sort of thing, would pollute any relationships we had. I know he’s been disappointed in Liam. They had a few bouts over Liam’s behavior, as you probably know by now.”
I nodded.
“Speak of the devil,” she said, and nodded in the direction of the entrance.
I turned and saw Liam Dolan enter alone.
“I didn’t tell him we were coming here,” Julia swore.
“It’s all right,” I said.
She finished eating. Liam moved to the other side of the bar. He did look a little lost and unsure of himself and not as if he knew we were there. He wasn’t looking around for us. Some women spoke to him, but he didn’t give them any encouragement. I saw him order a drink and gaze at the dancers for a few moments before turning and looking down as he cradled his glass in his hands. If anything, he looked sad and lost. Finally, he spotted Julia and me across the way in our booth. I saw his face brighten. I wanted to look away, pretend I hadn’t noticed him, but I couldn’t do it. Despite myself, I smiled back at him, and he immediately started in our direction.
“What’s this?” he asked his sister.
“What’s it look like, genius?”
“Two young women out on the town,” he said, smiling at me. He turned to Julia. “You never said you were going out with our newest employee.”
“Sorry, Dad.”
He smirked. “You know, my sister can be a pain in the rear, and not only when she gives someone a shot there, either,” he added.
Julia laughed. “No hot date tonight?” she teased.
“No. I’ve cooled down.”
“The feminine world breathes a sigh of relief,” she said.
I was truly enjoying the banter between them. It was loving, I thought. That was something I had never had with Ava. I could remember only tension, challenge, and a sense of competition.
“You guys dance?” he asked me.
“We went at it for a while,” I said, looking at Julia.
“She’s being modest. I had to swipe them away,” she told him.
“I believe it. Any interest in going back out there?” he asked me.
I looked at Julia.
“I’m fine just watching. Have to digest my food,” she said.
Was this a little brother-sister conspiracy? Did I care?
When you were with someone, there was that moment when you knew that if you said yes to something, a whole series of events would follow, cascading down through you to take a hold on your future.
You could certainly regret it.
Would I?
“Okay,” I said, and got up to dance with Liam Dolan.
13
Being so close to him, our bodies moving slowly in synchronization, I felt whatever resistance I had mounted since the first time we had met begin to defrost and melt away. He was a very good dancer, and unlike most of the other young men around us, who seemed so incapable of controlling their female partners that they looked as if they were dancing alone, Liam slipped his arm around my waist and kept us close, turning me and then moving around me, holding my eyes on his and keeping us so tightly connected that I felt we had instantly become two halves of the same newly created dancing body.
Whenever he could, he brought his face to mine, brushing his lips against my hair, my cheeks, and my forehead. My imagination exploded. I saw us naked together in a shower, embracing, drinking the water from each other’s face, caressing and kissing until it became impossible to keep standing. Soaked, we retreated to a bed and began making the most passionate love, lovemaking that resembled our dancing, slow at first and then building and building until we buried each other’s scream of deep sexual satisfaction in a long kiss that threatened to draw the breath from our bodies.
When I looked back at Julia in our booth, I saw her gazing at us with a smile of delight. She looked more like an older sister taking pride in her younger brother. It was as if he was finally doing something right. I’m only dancing, I told myself. It doesn’t mean anything. But one look at Liam’s face, a face that was reflecting the way I was looking at him, told me I was lying to myself.
Finally, we both had enough and, holding hands, fled the music and the lights. Julia clapped for us when we joined her.
“If they were giving prizes tonight, you’d be the winning couple. You must have done quite a bit of dancing in California,” she told me.
“Some,” I said. “Mostly in my bedroom,” I added, and they both laughed.
“Another drink?” Liam asked.
“I already had another while you two were out there, but maybe one more.”
He ordered one for me, too, pretending that it was for himself. “Don’t tell my father I’m corrupting a minor,” he quipped.
“Minor,” Julia said. “She’s more mature than every legal drinker here. Anyway, why this Lone Ranger act tonight?” She looked as if her first three Volcanoes were already overflowing in her blood and her brain. Her smile was a little twisted, and her eyes were glassy.
Liam shrugged. “I want to take my time.” He glanced at me. “Too many impulsive, wrong decisions.”
Julia laughed. “Take your time?”
“I’m serious,” he said.
The new drinks arrived.
“And to what do we owe this new sense of responsibility and caution?” she asked, throwing me a conspiratorial grin.
“See that?” Liam said. “They complain and complain about me at home, and as soon as I turn a new leaf, they ridicule it. How can I win with my family?”
How can I win with mine? I thought.
“You can’t blame anyone but yourself. You’re like some of the smokers we get in the ER. The doctors tell them they have to quit, and they say sure, they’ve done it many times.” She laughed and drank more of her Volcano.
Liam looked a little annoyed. He turned away for a moment, probably to calm himself, and then turned back, concentrating only on me. “So, how are you getting along living in my great-aunt’s rooming house?”
“It’s very comfortable,” I said, and sipped my drink.
“Aren’t there dozens and dozens of things in it that you’re not permitted to touch? When I was a little boy, she practically had me in a straitjacket whenever I was there.”
“Some items are off-limits, like her old rocking chair,” I said, smiling. “Mr. Brady thinks there’s a
ghost in the house, maybe the ghost of John Adams.”
“If there was such a thing as ghosts, I think they would find my great-aunt most accommodating,” Liam said. “Julia?”
“As kooky as she is sometimes,” Julia said, “you can’t help but love her. No matter how close she is with Mrs. McGruder and her tenants, she’s really a very lonely woman.”
“Great-aunt Amelia? Lonely? She’s surrounded by our forefathers,” Liam joked.
Julia only smiled and then turned to look at the dancers. I wondered if the alcohol was now making her more melancholy.
“Is Clifford working all night?” I asked her.
“He gets off about ten, but he won’t meet me here,” she reminded me.
“Maybe you should go out there on the dance floor and find someone you know who would,” Liam told her.
“I’m all right. I like Clifford. There are no surprises,” she added, a little sadly, I thought. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Boring,” Liam teased, and looked at me. “Back out there?”
I looked at Julia.
“Go for it,” she said, and turned around to cup her drink the way I had seen Liam first doing it. I hesitated, and she looked up at me. “I’m fine. Go on. I like to watch you dance.”
“Me, too,” Liam added, and tugged my hand.
This time, when we danced, we talked, too.
“You going out with my sister to play it safe or what?” he asked.
“To have a good time,” I replied. “I like her. She’s refreshing.”
“Why?”
“There’s nothing dishonest about her,” I replied.
“And you can tell that how?”
“I have powers,” I said.
We drew close.
“I knew that from the first time I set eyes on you.”
“Oh, how?”
“I have the power to recognize power,” he joked.
We both laughed and got into our dancing again, this time so intently that I forgot to look back at Julia. When I did, I saw that she was talking to a tall, dark-haired man whose complexion under the club’s lights looked like a luminous olive. There was something about him that made me uneasy. He was talking to her, but he looked our way periodically. I saw him sit at the booth and then talk Julia into another Volcano.