Last Dance

  Maybe I do love her, he thought. All I can think about is Kip getting hurt. I don’t care about forest fires, and I know if Kip said Beth Rose is all right, then Beth Rose is all right.

  Mike said, “Please move back, Kip.” He was terribly worried about her getting burned.

  Kip muttered, “I don’t know anything about fires, that’s the thing, Mike. I can’t tell what I’m doing right and what I’m doing wrong. I don’t know what to press on with and what to quit.”

  “Quit risking your life,” Mike said.

  She paid no attention to him.

  Mike did not notice one of the waiters paying a lot of attention. He didn’t see the waiter at all. He just took Kip’s waist and dragged her back anyhow. Being bigger and stronger was an asset now and then. Kip resisted him. “This time,” Mike said in her ear, “I know I’m the one who’s right.”

  The heat from the fire hurt.

  They all had to move back.

  The waiter Mike had not noticed said, “Mike, keep moving. You’re not safe, yet.” He took Kip’s other arm and both boys stepped backward with her.

  And below them on the mountain road, strong and reassuring, came the welcome sound of sirens.

  “No, I didn’t fall off the cliff,” Beth Rose said, while Emily used paper towels to clean up her skinned elbow. “I just fell down. I thought I was falling off the cliff. It was pretty scary. But I hit bottom pretty fast.”

  She tried to giggle, but nothing came out.

  Anne said, “I just can’t believe this dance. I get shoved in the pool and have to be blow-dried, and you fall down a mountain and have to be dry-cleaned.”

  Beth Rose began to cry. “I was such a dope,” she said. “I went along with Gary because I’m so afraid of losing him that I just agree with anything he suggests. Even if I hate what he wants to do, even if there’s no reason for me to do it—I still do it!”

  “Well, you lived to tell the tale,” Emily said practically. “Although your dress didn’t. Your dress is finished.”

  “What will my parents say?” Beth Rose moaned. She tried to see all of herself in the mirrors over the sinks. “At least the blood is just from my elbow. Who would have thought elbows bled so much? And I have no idea how I got elbow blood on my cheek. It is humanly impossible to touch your cheek with your elbow.”

  Emily had no purse with her. She could not get out her comb and brush and fix Beth’s hair. She could only stand there mopping away with her wet paper towel.

  I want somebody to comfort me! Emily thought.

  I don’t want to comfort other people!

  I’m the one who needs help here!

  Beth Rose went and got dramatic and now everybody will gather round her!

  I want them to gather round me!

  Emily was ashamed of her own selfishness. She tried to choke it back. She tried to worry that Gary would be irritated at Beth Rose for walking away without telling him. It took earthquakes to impress Gary Anthony. If Gary even knew by now that Beth Rose wasn’t with him, Emily would be impressed. And if Gary cared, Emily would really be impressed.

  There isn’t a boy in the world who really cares, Emily thought, down as low as she had been all night.

  Now it seemed to her that she had not abandoned Matt in order to sit in here weeping with Anne, but that Matt had abandoned her, and she had been forced to sit in here.

  The fire department took charge with such speed that Kip felt like a slow-motion film. Suddenly there were real hoses, and men wearing suitable uniforms that resisted fire, talking to each other on hand radios and bringing out the special jeeps and engines that were used to fight brush fires.

  The firemen escorted the kids back to the ballroom where they would be out of the way, and all talk turned to clothes: whose dress was ruined, whose suit was destroyed, whose shoes were ready for the dump.

  The kids were laughing and excited and having an absolutely wonderful time.

  Kip thought, in some strange way, everybody loves a disaster. They get to sacrifice. They get to do their best. They get to fling themselves into it.

  She walked away from the fire with Mike at her side.

  She was looking for Lee, though.

  He was right there, and he was grinning at her.

  Lee had never had to make a decision regarding a girl before in his life. Simply by avoiding girls, he had managed to be sure the problem never arose. Now here was Kip, with whom he had fallen totally, irretrievably in love, and her so-called boyfriend was back again. Next to her. Arm at her waist. Obviously impressed with her.

  Kip deserved admiration. Lee agreed with that.

  But Lee didn’t want the so-called boyfriend admiring Kip!

  Hey, buddy, it’s my turn, Lee thought. Move out.

  But of course the so-called boyfriend did not move out: he moved in closer.

  Lee thought about this, and he decided that he didn’t like it, and he wasn’t going to stand for it. When Kip turned and smiled at him, he grinned back. She looked terrible. Her hair was clotted to her head. If she had started the evening with any makeup, she certainly had none left now. A huge soot mark on her cheek obviously annoyed her and she had rubbed it with her hand and spread it over most of her face. The lovely lace blouse Lee had admired an hour before was no longer white and no longer in one piece. And the wild, crazy skirt was filthy.

  Lee said, “You were wonderful, Kip.” He gave her a hug, which involved inserting his right arm between Mike and Kip’s waist, and elbowing Mike away literally. Mike let it happen only because he didn’t know what was happening, and when Mike said, “Hey, what—?” Lee simply kept on hugging. Then he moved into kissing.

  Kip said, “I’m too dirty, don’t kiss me.”

  Lee said, “Lady, when you find out how dirty you are, you’re really going to be in for a shock, so I want to get all my kissing in now before you decide to go home for a bath.”

  “Home for a bath!” Kip cried. “It’s that bad? I look that awful?”

  “You look perfect,” Lee said. “Just dirty.”

  Lee chose to pretend that Mike was not there at all. When Kip stopped hugging him, and started to look down at her clothes and put a hand to her hair, Lee pulled her back to his chest and kissed her again. He still didn’t look at Mike, and said, “Come on. We’ll rent a guest room, and you can have a shower.”

  “Hey!” said Mike. “Hey, what do you mean by that? Hey!”

  He sounded like a jerk, saying “hey” so often, but Lee knew that Mike couldn’t think of anything else under the circumstances. Lee intended to be sure that Mike didn’t come up with anything else, either.

  Mike got in Lee’s path, and said, “Who the hell are you?”

  Lee smiled at him. “I’m her new boyfriend. A guy decides to hike up the mountain to see Two Cliffs, he’s taking a much bigger risk than just falling off the mountain, see. He risks losing his girl.”

  Molly swung into the bathroom. Nervous, strung-out, she was already reaching for a cigarette to calm herself down again when she practically tripped over Anne, Emily, and Beth Rose.

  What a trio, Molly thought. I can’t stand any of them.

  But then, Molly was not particularly fond of any collection of girls.

  She lit the cigarette and blew smoke at them just to be sure they didn’t give her a hard time back.

  “You look a little worse for wear, Beth,” Molly said, laughing. “Didn’t Gary tell you you’re supposed to climb the mountain, not sled down in your new dress?”

  Anne debated what penalty she would pay if she just shoved Molly through the wall. Beth Rose thought an excellent final chapter for her ruined dress would be to strangle Molly with it.

  As for Emily, she had reached her limit.

  For the second time at Rushing River Inn, Emily burst into agonized sobs, flinging herself down on the daybed and burying her head in the one lone pillow.

  “What’s with her?” Molly asked, waving her cigarette at Emily.

  “Sh
e has no home,” Anne said. “Her parents threw her out. She doesn’t know where to live.”

  Beth Rose gasped. “How horrible! Oh, Anne, what’s wrong with our town that so many people have family problems!”

  Molly snorted. “It’s nationwide, Beth Rose. You’re just insulated if you think the rest of us don’t have problems.”

  “At least the rest of us aren’t out starting problems,” Anne said. Perhaps Two Cliffs had a use after all. Perhaps she could get together a happy-go-lucky group to lose Molly on one of those cliffs.

  Anne and Beth sat on the daybed on either side of Emily and tried to hug her. Molly rolled her eyes and smoked on. Molly said, “What’s the point in having a boyfriend if you don’t use him now and then? That Matt is a cute kid, Emily. Just move in.”

  “It isn’t that simple,” Anne said.

  Molly raised eyebrows at Anne. “Simple?” she said. “Why, Anne Stephens, you’re the most simple-minded of us all. Getting pregnant! Anybody with a room temperature I.Q. knows how to avoid that. Who are you to say what’s simple?”

  Emily sat up. “I say we kill her,” she said to Anne and Beth Rose.

  Beth Rose said, “No, if I go to prison I want it to be for something that matters.”

  Anne, Emily, and Beth Rose laughed together and blew pretend cigarette smoke at Molly, and tapped pretend ends of nonexistent cigarettes into invisible ashtrays and then blew more pretend smoke in Molly’s face.

  The door to the girls’ room was flung open with tremendous force.

  Molly, standing with her back to it, was caught by the door and thrown into Emily’s lap.

  “It had to be my lap,” Emily said.

  “At least she dropped her cigarette first,” Beth Rose said, giggling. “Molly has such good manners.”

  The girls looked up to see who had to use the bathroom so urgently, and it was Gary.

  Chapter 12

  KIP TOUCHED THE WHITE lace of her lovely filmy blouse. In a maidenly way it was the sexiest thing she had ever owned. Sweet but sensual, covering all, yet hinting of what was beneath. And it was ruined. Where it wasn’t torn, it was smoke-stained. She swallowed. Her mother had let her spend much more than budgeted because the blouse was perfect, and because, as her mother said, Kip could wear it for years, to all sorts of things: her cousin’s wedding, the summer theater series, the evening in the city. All coming up within the month.

  And the skirt, too—the swishing exciting skirt in its wonderful hot splashes of color—it, too, was dead.

  Kip’s chin began to tremble. Partly for the lovely clothes that had made her feel so special, that were supposed to turn this last dance into one where Mike would love her once more—and partly for what her mother would say to her when she got home. Actually her mother did not ever yell at Kip: she would look at Kip with intense deep disappointment, so that Kip would feel she had just let down generations of family by ruining her blouse.

  “Don’t cry,” Mike said.

  Kip reserved crying for when she was home alone. But she was exhausted, and wet, and shivering, and filthy…and now the fire didn’t seem half as important as the shredded white lace sleeve.

  She bit her lip hard, but the tears welled up anyway.

  And then the unbelievable happened. The sort of thing that happened to sweet romantic-type girls, like Beth Rose, or Anne.

  Two boys (count them, Kip, she thought, count them, two!) hugged her to make her feel better.

  Believe me, Kip thought, I feel better. What is a mere forest fire and a little smoke compared to having two boys worried about me?

  Lee was in the best position, as he had his arm around her anyway. He tightened his arm, and pulled her in against his chest and said, “Half the problem is you’re soaked. And the wind is blowing and you’re freezing.”

  “You’re not exactly dry yourself,” Kip said.

  “I know. The sprinklers sprinkled my legs instead of the croquet court.”

  “I’m dry,” Mike said. “Come on inside with me, Kip, and we’ll find a blanket or something.”

  “I know where the blankets are,” Lee said, not letting go of Kip at all.

  Kip’s teeth began to chatter. Both the boys demanded the privilege of finding a blanket to wrap around her.

  This is the life, Kip thought. Boys wanting to coddle you. Where have I been for sixteen years? She began laughing. She put a kiss on Lee’s cheek and Mike said, “Hey!” so she also kissed Mike, and now Lee said, “Hey!”

  “If I could only be dishonest,” Kip said, “I’d be so much better at flirting.”

  “You aren’t flirting, you’re freezing,” Lee said.

  “I am flirting,” Kip said, “this is called flirting. Normally a person wants at least to be clean while flirting. And probably she wants to have brushed her hair in the last century, and maybe eaten sometime in the last decade. Then she can flirt. But I, because I am tough, I can flirt even in this condition.”

  Lee and Mike looked at each other while Kip giggled.

  Lee—who had never considered love at all until tonight—knew now that he was the kind of guy who was going to fall in love once and stay in love forever. He knew that for sure, and he knew Kip was the girl. He knew it the way he knew few things: it was just a matter of explaining it to Kip, and they would both know.

  Mike, however, was remembering what fun Kip had been in the beginning. All winter long, it seemed to him now, they had laughed together just like this and tickled each other with silly remarks and silly fingers. He remembered how he had always felt so darn good when he left her house. So good that he just had to telephone Kip once he got home to hear her voice again. Her lovely authoritative voice: the one that didn’t fool around, and didn’t play games, but just spoke up, and made him feel terrific.

  I made a mistake, Mike thought.

  She annoyed me, and I decided to throw her away.

  What, did I think she was garbage or something? This terrific funny great person who can lead an army or a dance, who can laugh off ruined clothes, and hug me till I think I’m the god of love?

  Kip was so dirty that he shuddered to think how she would react once she saw herself in a mirror. He wanted to protect her from that, because in some way she was also beautiful to him. She who had saved the evening, saved the forest, and by doing that, saved their love.

  Mike thought, it’s just a matter of getting her away from this waiter guy, and she’ll remember how it was between us. He resented fiercely the way Lee’s arm was centered on Kip’s body, and the way she was leaning in Lee’s direction instead of his.

  He thought, I could tell her I love her. She likes that word. Her L word. I could use it. Not in front of this guy Lee, of course. But later. When I’ve got her alone.

  So Mike turned Lee into the errand boy—the waiter—that Lee really was. He said, “Lee, I’ll run ahead and get blankets, you bring her inside to meet me.”

  The fire chief said, “Mr. Martin, you are a lucky man. Those kids did a great job. If they hadn’t gone to work on this fire as efficiently as they did, you’d have lost a mountain here.” They stared at the site of the fire, lit now by the searchlights from the fire trucks: blackened, steaming, ugly proof that disaster had touched gentle Rushing River Inn.

  Mr. Martin said, “Those kids probably also started the fire. What could have started a fire there except a cigarette? And who would be wandering around out here but kids?”

  Gary picked himself up, pulled Molly to her feet, mumbled an apology to her for knocking her over, and sat down next to Beth Rose. By now the daybed was getting very crowded. Gary said, “You’re all right.” He wanted to run his hands over her, feeling for broken bones and bruises, but being in the women’s room, supervised by Anne and Emily and Molly, made it very difficult to act normally. Not that there had been anything normal about this terrible night. Gary suppressed a desire to look around. He had never been in a women’s bathroom before. His first thought was that it didn’t appear to be a bathroom at a
ll, but a bedroom. Complete with bed. He didn’t know what to think about that at all.

  Beth Rose started to apologize for letting him worry about her, but Emily jabbed Beth in the ribs.

  “I felt that jab all the way through Beth Rose,” Gary said. “What are you telling her, Em? Tell me, too.”

  He was so exhausted he could hardly move his lips, and the words came out thick and slow. “I guess mountain climbing is pretty strenuous, huh?” Emily said. “You sound as if you’ve been mountain climbing for years now, Gary, not just an hour or so.”

  “It feels like I’ve been searching for Beth for years now, not just an hour or so.” He sat up. “I’m sorry,” he said to Beth Rose. “I really am sorry. It just sounded like fun, and so I wanted to do it. Walk up Two Cliffs, I mean. I knew you didn’t want to, but you’re easy to drag along, you know, Bethie.” And as always in their conversations, Gary managed, however gently, to put the blame right back on Beth. “A person should stand up for herself and not let herself be dragged along,” he said reprovingly.

  What Beth Rose really wanted to do was kiss Gary, but she restrained herself. If she did, once again Gary would have dragged her along. She said, “I realized that halfway up the mountain, Gary. So I simply left. I came back to the dance because dancing is what I came here for.”

  Dancing was what they had all come for, on this hot June Saturday night. It was hard to remember that this even was a dance. To Emily it was a family disaster, and a scary ride, and a moment with Matt, and some weeping with Anne. A problem not straightened out at all because there hadn’t been time. To Beth Rose it had been a ridiculous hike at the wrong time in the wrong clothes. For Anne it had been a very unexpected swim in a cold pool.

  “Do you realize,” Anne said, “that not one of us has danced a single dance yet? And Saturday night is half over.” She began thinking of Con again. Why do I always go back to him in my thoughts? Anne asked herself. He doesn’t appear to be worth it. And yet if my thoughts came in neat little indented paragraphs, there wouldn’t be a single paragraph without a mention of Con,

  Anne looked down at her own dress. Bought by her grandmother, soaked by Con, dried by Kip, and untouched since. She wanted to dance in it. She wanted to dance with Con. She wanted the warmth of Con’s body against her, and the heat from his hands, and the look in his eyes, and touch of his lips. You’re pitiful, she said to herself. Always looking for romance. What did you find last time you looked for romance, huh, lady? Ask yourself that!