After the Dance

"I mean, look at this," Samuel gestured at the empty parking lot with his burger.  There wasn't much to see: just cracked asphalt interspersed with bare trees ranging to the darkness.  The muggy air smelled of dust and exhaust.

"At what?"

"All this!"  This time, the arc of his burger spanned the entire lot.  "Our ancestors would be proud."

I gave the lot a second pass, trying to work out which one of us was too drunk to understand.  A few soda cups loitered by the handicapped parking. The bare trees stretched their skeletal shadows into the gloom.  Past the veil of night, a raccoon's eyes flared green before it scurried about its business.  Noting nothing pride worthy, I settled on a more pertinent question

"Yo, is there any wine left?"

"Lemme check," Samuel took a swig, grimaced, and spat on the curb.  "Yeah, plenty."

"Give it here."  I accepted the bottle and took a long pull.

"Like, we've got as much food as we want, as much alcohol as we want, can stay up as late as we want.  Brother, if this isn't winning, I don't know what is."

"Huh. Yeah, well, what about the things we've lost?"  It came out as "whaddabout" which meant I was somewhere between drunk and right smashed.

"What, dysentery? Dying from a toothache?  Feudalism?" He guffawed.  "No thank you."

"Like, I dunno, wonder?  Adventure?  Community?"

"I'll take a three-dollar Big Mac over the opportunity to plod about in the jungle in search of El-fucking-Dorado, thank you very much."

"Whatever, man.  I think you don't know what you're missing.  I think you just pretend that things are nice and simple 'cause that's easier than being a human like the rest of us."

The silence hung while I contemplated whether an apology was in order.  

"You think I'm not human, huh?"  He grinned at me wolfishly, drawing his lips back into a snarl.  His teeth and the whites of his eyes gleamed golden in the halogen light.  I goggled; he snapped his teeth at me and laughed at my flinch.

"Go home, you're drunk," I said, half reproachful, half relieved.

"Takes one to know one."

"Amen to that," I said, and drunk deep, acrid intoxication twisting my gut, spinning my mind.  I passed over the bottle with a twinge of regret.  "You hear that one about the turtles?"  The tension gone, my mind catalyzed with the 13-proof on the words to a real gut buster. I felt giddy laughter welling up in me like a geyser.

Before I could let loose my joke, he'd already said, "Let's dance."

And I was like, "Literally or metaphorically?"  But when I looked over, his lips were pursed and his brows were knit.  He was as serious as an empty bottle of booze.

So what the hell, isn't dancing the sort of thing you do when you're drunk in the AMs?  There's a first for everything. I stumbled out into the parking lot and gave an elaborate bow.  "After your lead, my good sir."

He ambled out, haloed from behind by the light from McDonalds.  I couldn't make out his face.  The scrape of his shoes echoed into the cavernous night. 

"I do trust that you'll be able to keep up." We sniggered at his awful English accent.

The wind gusted through the parking lot, carrying the spicy-sweet smell of eucalyptus and mildew.  In the distance, the tall pines, august shadows against the light of the city, heralded our arrival with a solemn sway. The night stood poised, and in its center, us.

Samuel begins slowly, taking long languid steps, barely even holding my hand. I follow with a clumsy drunk shuffle, slow, but not too slow, anxious to keep the connection. His eyes are focused on something distant in the darkness.

Dead leaves skitter across the parking lot, our stage of tar and dust, and we dance.  

Samuel moves faster, wild hair and whip-lithe body.  Gripping my hand so hard it hurts, he jolts my arm to maneuver me closer and closer, until I can smell the alcohol on his breath.  Then, with a shove, we're flying free again.  Our feet beat an uneven tattoo.  Tire screech violins play in the distance; the electric buzz of the lights thrums counterpoint.

An audience gathers: ten, twenty, a hundred pairs of flat green eyes watch us from the shadows, as vigilant and impassive as the stars in the clear sky.  In a rush of wings and claws, more arrive from the primeval gloom beyond the parking lot. Sharp pain brings me back to the dance: Samuel wrenches my arm up for a spin.  And I spin, crazy corkscrew of abandon, weightless astronaut in space.

The stars wheel overhead.  Their pale blue trails trace our twirling in the heavens.

Faster and faster, round and round.  I begin to see the greater harmony in his erratic movements.  His sudden lurch honors the swaying pines, and instinctually, I fling out my arm, not only to steady myself, but to signal the next screech of rubber on road. A crescendo builds, and then -- 

My foot catches in a plastic shopping bag that must have been carried in by the wind.  I slip, scramble for purchase, and tumble into Samuel.  We collapse to the ground with an impact that drives the wind from my lungs.  Samuel grunts in pain. The thousand watching orbs wink out, the stars halt in their orbits, and the night is abruptly still and quiet.

Wordlessly, painfully, we separated as the gossamer shreds of our fledgling dream fell soundlessly about us.  We avoided each other's eyes. Samuel crawled over to the storm drain to retch.  My legs were on fire and my head throbbed as though struck.

"I'm never drinking again," Samuel rasped. A line of saliva trailed from his mouth into the metal grate.

"Amen to that, brother," I croaked. 

---

My alarm dragged me awake, dizzy and bleary-eyed. I cursed, threw the covers off, and cursed again.  My reflection's reproachful gaze met me in the bathroom mirror.  

"What happened last night?"  it asked. Catching my sallow complexion and drooping eyes it continued, "And why you gotta do that to me, man?"

"I don't know. I don't know," I said, voice low and hoarse.  I looked down to wash my face before it asked any more uncomfortable questions.

---

My office was down the hallway from my bedroom.  In absolute terms, the distance was short, maybe fifteen feet of oak flooring and white spackle walls, but I always had the sense of making a descent, as if I were climbing down into some subterranean cellar removed from the rest of the world. As I walked down, the morning light dimmed and the smell of hot electronics grew stronger. I opened the door to my world for the next eight hours: an office chair, desk, and laptop at the end of the bare room.  A case of water bottles sat in the corner next to a box of protein bars.  A perfect, hermetically sealed capsule to survive the day. 

Whenever anyone asked what I did for my job, I'd laugh and tell them, "I move data around. You know." They probably didn't know, but from experience, that was as much as anyone wanted to hear.  It was as much as I wanted to say, too. 

The click-clack of keys as the black cursor ran to the right and jumped back to the left.  My vacant reflection superimposed on the computer screen.  Nagging impatience, clenched teeth.  Time passed, viscous as resin, a lifetime encased in amber.

I idly wondered what Samuel hid behind his mask of contentment.  Did his doubts swarm up the elevators of his San Francisco high-rise to ambush him in his cubicle?  And if not, what had led him to dance with such frantic abandon? 

There's a trite saying about saving yourself by saving others. Dramatic, and possibly true. I resolved to press the issue next time we met.

---

I signed up for a dance class after work. I knew nothing about dance, and after last night, I felt the lack. 

The website banner declared "It's never too late to waltz!" next to a stock photo of a smiling grandmother. My luck: a beginners class was happening that night in a nearby high school gymnasium.  When I stepped in and took in the bleachers, basketball courts, and sour smell of dried sweat, I could almost hear the pound of basketballs and see the blur of PE uniforms.

That's where I met Mel.  At the tail-end of middle age, she wore an elaborate, faded blue ballroom dress and stood apart from the rest of the group. We exchanged hellos. She smelled of mothballs and must, and sounded of quiet resignation.  I wanted to follow and she wanted to lead. That was good enough for two hours of awkward intimacy, as arm in arm, we stared at our feet and counted time.

Mel liked to talk.  So while I tried to keep my feet and remember how it felt to dance with Samuel, she told me about her life. 

She'd spent five weeks learning to tango, and switched to waltz because the music had kept her from sleeping, she said.  Later that night, while we one-two-three'd back and forth over the three-point line, she told me that she wanted to lead because she didn't like the feeling of being dragged around the dance floor by some man. I think she was embarrassed, because she stared up at the ceiling while she spoke.

"That makes sense," I said blandly. "I prefer to follow."  She met my eye and nodded, one norm-breaker to another.  Then, she told me about the trouble her son had with his science teacher.

There was something hypnotic about swaying side to side, listening to Mel murmur stories of her quiet suburban strife.  It reminded me of sitting beneath the eaves while a rainstorm depressed the world around me and the afternoon slowly shifted into evening.  I almost found myself divulging my alcohol and work-related woes.  Human connection, it turned out, was a helluva drug. 

When the music stopped, we said our goodbyes and became strangers again. 

---

I met Samuel for dinner two days later.

Round Table Pizza had cut a slice from the 90s and preserved it for thirty years in pizza grease and Coca-cola syrup.  Walking in from the adult world of gray concrete and rushing cars, I felt like I had stepped back into a neon-colored birthday party from my childhood.  Cool air washed over me, yeasty and sweet.  Old arcade cabinets lined the end of the store, hawking screens of pixelated explosions with voices that buzzed with compression. I spotted the top of Samuel's head from a stall by the "Metal Slug 4" machine. 

He fixed me with a smug grin as I scootched onto the plastic cushions across from him.

"I knew you'd see the light.  Pizza is the superior food, after all."  He had built a small fort of straws and Parmesan packets and carefully lowered a hot-pepper packet ceiling into the construction.  

"You've been begging that we get pizza for weeks. Maybe I'm being a good friend."

"Hey, don't shake the table!"

"Oh, sorry," I said, and set my hands in my lap.

"Yeah, numba one friend.  Thanks to you, I've finally been able to achieve my lifelong dream of getting dinner at Round Table."  He dropped the affectation and flicked the stack to the table. "Nah."

"You missing some cheese from your life, then?"

"Pizza is cheap and tasty. It's clearly the most logical food option.  Oh, here they come.  I ordered already."

And lo, the pepperoni pizza descended from on high, a shimmering idol to sugar and fat cast in white, red, and brown, laid before us so that we might partake in holy communion. Samuel pulled a piece onto his plate and broke the trailing strings of cheese with his finger.

"How was your week?" I said.

"Monday was some brutal shit.  Three hours of meetings while hungover..."  He wiped his fingers clean and made a chopping motion on his neck.

"Yeah, oof. I almost used a sick day. That McDonald's parking lot was strange, huh?"  I asked, casual as can be.

"Seemed like a normal parking lot to me."

"Sure, the parking lot itself -- what about the animals watching us?"

"I mean, yeah, it's a fast food parking lot.  I bet there are entire families of squirrels that live off french fries."

"Hundreds of them?"  

"Hundreds of what?"

"Eyes watching us from the dark.  All the little green lights."

"Go home, you're drunk," Samuel mimicked.  "Hey, have you watched-"

I cut him off.  "And the stars?  And, you know, the weird music?"

"What about them?  Did someone drive by playing Taylor Swift?"  He smirked at his own joke.  By the light of day, it sounded absurd.  The stars spinning too fast?  The screech of car tires in rhythm with our footsteps like some real life remix?

"So nothing seemed strange to you that night?  About our dance?"  

"Usually it's waltz that makes me puke. It's old people cologne that gets me."

"Why'd you dance so crazy?"

"Dude, fusion is fun.  If you think that's crazy, you should see the people who have done it for ten years. You should come to Tuesday nights. The people there are chill to beginners."

I searched his face for a crack in the facade, any indication that we weren't just two drunk fools bumbling around in the dark.  For a moment, his good-natured smile strained his lips and his eyes crinkled into the barest wince.  And it was gone, and he'd moved on.

"Anyway, I saw the new Marvel movie.  Kinda sucked, they need to let the franchise die," he said.

Surely, I almost said, there is more to you than Marvel movies and Taylor Swift jokes.  Surely something happened that night.  But I didn't.  Instead, I said,  

"I think you just go to the movie theater to have something to bitch about."  There was a hint of petulance in my voice and I hated it. Samuel didn't seem to notice, or at least he decided it would be easier not to notice.

"Yeah, probably," he laughed. "Fuckin' Marvel."

---

In a final act of pettiness, I paid the bill and handed him the box of leftovers.  

"You take the rest," I said, "I don't like pepperoni very much."

---

From afar, the McDonald's gleamed like a beacon beside the dark highway.  As I entered the lot, an SUV pulled out in front of me -- I caught a glimpse of a kid elbow deep in a brown paper bag -- and I idled in the spot they vacated.  Save for a few cars lazily drifting through the drive-through, the place was empty.

The trees were there, sad and bare, and so was the yellow halogen light spilling into the parking lot. The grate was in the same place as it was when Samuel kneeled over it retching, covered in a plastic bag that might have been a cousin of the one that caught my foot and brought an end to that brief dream.  Physically, nothing had changed.

I rolled down the window, breathed in the dust and exhaust, and watched the line of cars sluggishly trail past the drive through.  I imagined they were a string of turds queuing in someone's colon before dropping into the sewage system of a highway.  Samuel would laugh at that.

He was right, though; it was a normal parking lot.  Just another asphalt abscess full of turds.  That didn't even make sense. I snorted and pulled onto the highway.

---

Monday found me hesitating on the threshold to the gym, listening to the Blue Danube warble through the door.  I caught a glimpse of Mel in an elaborate, faded turquoise gown. 

I imagined her standing in an impossibly long closet lined with faded ballroom dresses.  Solemn in concentration, she walked down the long aisle, stopping here and there to brush off a piece of lint or examine a sleeve.  The dance starts in two hours, she knew, but that wasn't enough time because there are so many dresses to choose from and she must pick the right one.

Her limp hands held no answers for me.  Her careful, proscribed steps would only carry us through brightly lit gymnasiums and halls; she would only ever murmur of PTA meetings and manicured lawns.

I turned, and walked away.  Someone might have called my name.

---