How to build an experience like this onto a blank white page? How to take one whole moment and run it through thekaleidoscope of my brain and out through my hand? How to take a pencil and scratch against the blankness of the page, and find all these elbows waiting for me just on the other side? All those knees, all those noses and right-angle feet, all those hands on other hands and lips with just a kiss of negative space between them. How to draw music, if not by drawing those hips right there, popping like that, to this beat? How to draw desire, if not by drawing the one successful lovebird with their fingertips one knuckle deep in the front of Raff’s waistband? How to draw solitude, if not for drawing my own two feet on their own little island of dance floor?
One of Raff’s old roommates appears at my shoulder; I turn my head to see what he’s up to back there. Thank goodness it’s fleeting. He’s rolling away, cologne in the wind, looking for a different butt to spider-monkey. I gratefully rotate ninety degrees and trip over someone’s big foot.
It’s Vin’s big foot and Vin’s big arm looping my front half, keeping me from falling. I straighten and my eyes meet Raff’s over Vin’s big shoulder. Raff is now the butter in a coworker sandwich and looking thrilled to be alive. His eyes land on my hand, braced against Vin’s shoulder, and he starts grinning at me. He’s always loved when Vin and I flirt in public. I mean, he’s completely misinterpreting this right now, but still, he thinks I’m intentionally in Vin’s arms.
If I push away from my husband right now, pricked and smarting, because it’s painful to be held by him…Raff will know it all, all at once. I just know it. So maybe that’s the reason, when the song changes, and the dance floor tightens and heats, that I let my other hand find Vin’s other shoulder. Maybe it’s because tonight, I’m still testing my own wingspan. Maybe it’s because my favorite Beyoncé song of all time comes on. My hands find each other at the back of Vin’s neck and my eyes ricochet off his and his eyebrows have lifted in surprise.He resituates his arms around me and it’s so familiar, such well-trodden territory, that a lump forms in my throat.
Vin’s dance moves have always been both economic and confident. No wasted movements. Total focus on you and a strong hand at your back. He dances with the same effortless swag he uses to pop open a jar no one else could untwist. LikeYes, hello, you’re welcome.
Anyways, somehow I’m in my husband’s arms on a dance floor for the first time in over a year. His spread hand on my lower back guides my hips where he’d like them to be. It’s a patient song, hopeful and somehow heartbreaking.Your love is bright as ever, even in the shadows,the lyrics insist to us. The song wraps around us. Her voice is plaintive and raw.You better kiss me, before our time has run out.My fingers involuntarily tighten against Vin’s shoulders. August fifteenth and our time will have run out.
This song is about imminent doom around the corner, about not missing your chance, but somehow her voice has every bit of hope laced through it. She’s been through something terrible and still wants to see how it’ll all end. How can she make something so beautiful out of pain?
Vin slides me closer, his forearm replacing his hand at my back. Oh, why am I dancing this close with the man who is preparing to leave me? His chin grazes the top of my head and I want to cry with relief that he’s not trying for eye contact.
My eyes prickle and my view changes from high-def to sparkly. Everyone on the dance floor is swimming, bejeweled, adorned in crowns of tears.
“Don’t cry,” he murmurs, his mouth lowered to my ear. And how did he even know?
I sniff and scowl, my face twisted away from his. “I can cry if I want to.”
“You’re right,” he amends. “Go ahead and cry.”
“I don’t want to!”
He laughs, because he’s always liked me ornery.
“I said,” I tell him, because this night might be in danger of meaning absolutely nothing if I don’t tell him. And the heat of him underneath my fingertips is so precious that it has to—has to—mean something. “I said that I’m going to keep on living my life. A full life.” I pause, because I realize that I’m not talking about choosing a new life without Vin. What I’m really talking about here is hope in the face of doom. What I’m really talking about here, ultimately, is survival. And so I finish my own sentence with the one thing I most want him to say to me: “No matter what.”
He’s gone still despite the music. He knows exactly what I’m talking about. He knows I’m telling him what I’d been mouthing across the bar earlier.
“That—” His voice is at my ear, vibrating through us where we’re pressed together. “That’s what I want the most.”
Twelve
“Roz! Hi! What’reyou doing right now?”
“Who is this?”
“Lauro.”
“Oh. Hi! How’d you get my number?”
“Raff.”
“Right. What’s up?”
“A few of us from class are going to Daniel’s art opening tonight but I forgot to invite you yesterday.”
It’s the day after the housewarming party, Vin’s voice in my ear, his desire for me to live my own, big, special, one-and-only life. (Is he there with me during all this life-living? He didn’t elaborate, the tight-lipped jerk, so now I’m determined to keep up my half of the threat. I shall have a sun-drenched existence. With fabulous people doing fabulous things. I’ll draw and smoke cigs and quote famous artists with Em. Mental note: Wikipedia famous artists and memorize some crap that they said.)
How are Vin and I, you might ask? Well, when I came out of the bedroom this morning, Vin was washing his cereal bowl. “Raff wants a ride to Morristown to pick up some Nintendo gear from some guy. I think we’ll have lunch at Mom’s on the way back. Do you want to come?”
His mother would sniff out our issues like a drug dog at the airport. She’d have me in handcuffs and a headlock,demanding answers about the state of our union. Vin would have been dispatched to change the oil in her car. He’d have no idea.
“I’m going to pass,” I’d said. Which landed like way more of a rejection than I’d planned. And he’d left and I’d thrown myself into work.
“Seriously?” I say to Lauro. I stop chopping sun-dried tomatoes. (Orange pesto. This week’s recipe is going to be fire.) “I didn’t know he was having an art show!”
