Lee looked down at his smartphone — 100% charged. Not used much that evening.
He swiped the screen to unlock.
Checking his multiple email inboxes, he paused his thoughts, holding a memory of a single touch, the person out of view behind him.
His thoughts restarted, rewinded, recalling high-heeled dancing shoes — the shoes merely straps, the wearer’s toenails painted blue, the calves brown, muscular, tight. The wearer’s face unpainted, brown, Filipina, smooth, thin lines hiding on her forehead until emotions displayed with an instructor’s tone of professional voice.
“Toe, toe, toe, heel, Karen. Head turned left, not tilted. Heel! Don’t be afraid or timid to step forward, Lee. Elbow up!”
A hand reached from behind and pushed Lee’s right elbow up, holding it in place for his dance partner’s arm to rest upon. Another hand smacked the back of his leg.
Bai laughed. “That was fun. I liked that!” She smacked Lee’s leg again until he got his step right.
Lee’s dance partner, his wife, Karen, smiled. “‘Heel.’ Like a dog. Like the way they pronounce Hill around here.”
Lee concentrated on his waltz steps while also trying to let go and enjoy the music.
Bai nodded at Guinevere nearby, as if to say, “See, they are trainable. You just have to know how to train them.”
To Lee, the reward for getting the dance steps right or getting them wrong was a corrective dance with Bai, or just the slightest hint of a promise of the chance to dance with Guin.
Karen stood and watched while Bai made Lee trace the same waltz steps she made, forward, then turned slightly left or right but still forward, tracing an imaginary straight line on the dance floor, less than the zig-zag of a grapevine move.
Lee looked at Bai’s legs, wishing they were his, remembering his marathon training days and his almost-sinewy legs of a runner.
Standing in a clubhouse lobby checking email was not going to get him those legs.
Wishing was not going to make him have athletic legs like Bai’s.
Still, Lee wished his wife desired athleticism over sleep and looked forward to them getting closer medical attention come October when their family practice physicians moved to a concierge system. Perhaps Karen would finally get the diagnosis of sleep apnea that Lee believed she had.
Solve her sleep problems and Karen might have more energy to exercise. More exercise, more dancing, lower weight and more like the lithe figures with whom Lee enjoyed spinning around the dance floor like angels.
Lithe did not mean size zero clothing.
Lee had danced with a woman whose size matched his wife’s but who had mastered the art of spinning a larger body size, thanks to her years of ballet training.
Training means practice.
In two days, Lee and Karen would start renting a dance studio on a monthly basis, dedicating themselves to their new hobby, the art of dance — waltz, rumba and West Coast Swing — their goal to be better students than Bai expected.
Lee lived from moment to moment, enjoying the sensation of change. How much more he valued the change of holding the hand of a different dance partner as songs ended and began?
Warm hands, cold hands, perspiring hands, dry hands, single fingers, two or three fingers held at once, fingers covered with rings, bare fingers, painted nails, chipped nails, chewed nails, filed nails.
Strong grip, weak grip, shaky grip, light grip.
The electrifying first touch of hands told a lot.
The dance unrolled the plot.
The dancers’ bodies and the way they matched their steps leader to follower revealed the storyline, sweeping move by sweeping move.
What messages do static charges send?
What about preconceptions and assumptions?
Expectations and dreams?
Are thoughts conveyed at the impact point of two fingers about to touch?
Lee dropped the smartphone in his shirt pocket and poured himself a quarter cup of coffee, filling the rest of the cup with half-and-half cream, hoping to dilute the caffeine effect so late at night.
Else his memories would drag him to a keyboard and away from bed with his wife and cats.
treetrunkdings 