The Cubicle Next Door (25 page)

Joe saw me shiver and came back to me. He put an arm around my shoulder and said, “Let’s get inside.”

There was nothing I could do but put my arm around his waist. I needed all the warmth I could get.

Once inside we followed the sound of music, checked my capelet and muff into the cloakroom, and then made our way toward the ballroom. There were two sets of wide spiral stairs at either end of the room that led down to the dance floor below. Joe led me toward the railing. Looking over it provided a view of the lower floor.

Tables were set up on the left side of the room, leaving the right side free for dancing. Music pulsated from speakers on a stage. A DJ, ears encased in headphones, was planted beside the windows along the outer wall of the room. There were several 20-foot-high Christmas trees. The food tables were decorated with ice sculptures and burbling fountains of punch.

“Shall we?” Joe crooked his elbow toward me. I wrapped a hand around his arm.

He walked me toward the stairs and then suddenly stopped, detached my hand, and drew me around in front of him, refixing my other hand to his other arm. He winked at me. “So you have smaller steps.”

The stairway spiraled down to the ballroom. Joe was correct. His long legs could handle the wider steps along the outside of the spiral. Mine didn’t need the challenge.

“Cadet training. Mrs. Merchant pounded stuff like that into our heads.”

“Who was Mrs. Merchant?”

“The Cadet Wing Hostess and go-to gal on all sorts of things, from how to eat escargot to how to address the general’s wife.”

At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and called out to another officer. “Hey, Todd! What are you doing here?”

A tall, stocky man in mess dress turned toward us. A grin lit his face. He came over and clapped Joe on the back. “Hey, bud! How’re you doing?”

“I didn’t know you were here. Are you instructing?”

“Nope. AOC. Someone’s got to keep an eye on all those fine young cadets. How ’bout you? Instructing?”

“Yep. History.”

“So why are you here?”

“I was hungry. There’s free food, right? Anyway, Todd, this is Jackie.”

I held out my hand to shake his.

“Todd and I were in the same squadron at Elmendorf, up in Alaska.” He glanced at his friend. “Jackie and I work together.”

“Nice to meet you. I was thinking I could do a touch and go, but it looks like I’m here for the night. Anyway, nice to see you.” He punched Joe in the arm and took off toward the dance floor.

Joe led me over to one of the food tables.

“Would you like to translate?”

“What part?”

“Is Todd supposed to be flying tonight?”

“I don’t think so.”

“He was talking about touching and going somewhere.”

“A touch and go. It’s a maneuver. When you’re flying, you power off, touch down on a runway, and then reignite the engines and go up again. At the start of things like this, there’s always a receiving line. So as a cadet, if you were required to be at one of these but didn’t want to stay, you could come down that staircase,” he pointed toward the one we’d just come down, “shake all the hands, keep moving, go up the other one, and be on your way. A touch and go.”

“Is that why he didn’t expect you to be here?”

“No.” He picked up a cracker and popped it into his mouth.

“Would you care to elaborate?”

“Not really. Want something to eat?” He was holding out a plate toward me. “Aren’t you hungry?”

Now that he’d mentioned it, I was. I hadn’t really eaten since…dinner the night before. How had that happened? I took the plate from him and watched him pick up one for himself. I waited for him to start piling it high with food.

But he had decided to wait for me. “Ladies first.”

“No. Please, go ahead.”

“If I go first, I guarantee Mrs. Merchant will materialize before us and bean me over the head with a candle snuffer.”

“Really. Please.”

“You first.”

“I’m not hungry.” Of course, that wasn’t true. But all the food was booby-trapped with toothpicks and sauces and dips. And I wasn’t good at…parties. Was I supposed to use the same toothpick for fruit that I used for olives? Or was I supposed to take a separate toothpick for each piece of food? Was the spoon in the dip for putting it directly on top of the cherry tomatoes and baby carrots, or was it for putting the dip onto my plate? Was I supposed to slather cheese spread directly onto my crackers?

Joe sent a glance in my direction, took my plate from me, and saved me from starvation. “Tell me what you want and I’ll just put it on the plate for you. That way, you won’t get those gloves dirty.”

That sounded good. Great, in fact, but were you really supposed to eat at events like this?

When I failed to answer, Joe just started taking one of everything. “How about this—just tell me if you
don’t
want something.”

I nodded.

“Or better yet, why don’t you get some punch and then find a table?”

Punch was something I could be good at.

At least I thought it was.

Several minutes later, Joe joined me at the table. By that time I’d managed to get two glasses of punch to the table, but not without spilling them over my gloves. So I’d taken them off and was trying to figure out what to do with them. If it hadn’t been Betty who loaned them to me, I might have just thrown them away.

Joe set one of the plates in front of me. He picked up a cherry tomato that had rolled off the edge and popped it into his mouth. Apparently he assumed I had the appetite of a horse.

For this night, at least, he was right.

I’m glad I hadn’t taken “Buffet Dining” as a graded course. I would have failed. At least by Mrs. Merchant’s standards. There was a forest of toothpicks covering my plate. And a lake of dip and a puddle of cheese spread. Among which stood several islands of mini-quiches and chicken wings. “Thanks.”

Joe was in the middle of a mouthful of food, so he just smiled.

After he’d finished his food he excused himself.

I watched him wind through the tables, stopping to talk to cadets. Clap several officers on the back. Eventually, he ended up talking to the DJ. I saw him glance at his watch. Shake the DJ’s hand. Then he returned to me.

Joe cleared his throat. Then he picked up my gloves and stuffed them into the inside pockets of his jacket, one on each side. “Would you like to dance?”

“Um…the honest truth is I don’t know how. Not really. Oliver tried to teach me last week, but…”

“That’s okay. I don’t know how, either. But that shouldn’t stop us from trying.”

“Mrs. Merchant didn’t teach you?”

“There was a limit to what even the sainted Mrs. Merchant could accomplish.”

He was holding out his hand, so I took it.

A doo-doo doo-doo ’70s underbeat started. The crooning words were about some girl who had no money and dressed funny. Wild and free. Someone named Rosemary who had love growing all over the place.

Joe sang right along, doing some Egyptian walking, throwing his arms out and shouting “Hey!” along with the music, dancing circles around me. Catching my hand to pull me in close and dance several steps. Letting it go to dance around me again. Clearly he had no problem finding rhythm. Or finding a sub-beat. He was a one-person floor show.

Then the song segued into something slightly slower. Something lighter.

He grabbed my hand. Keeping it in his, he repositioned us so we could face each other. He put a hand to my back, underneath my shoulder blades. Began dancing, a sort of quickstep version of the dance. Oliver had done. He was more limber than Oliver had been. He looped us crazily around the dance floor in a series of three quick steps and then a pause for a double-long beat. Warbled words into my ear. They were lyrics about “never finding another you.”

I had put my hand on his upper arm, the way Oliver had showed me. I didn’t have any problem with tension. Or interpreting signals. For just that one song, just that one night, I figured I could handle it.

So when Joe pulled me close, I followed his lead.

When he pushed me out and then spun me, I went along. But he didn’t spin me back. He kept me close, my back against his chest, his arm across my waist, singing into my ear.

Then when he finally spun me back, his arm tightened, pulling me to his chest, and I laid my head on his shoulder.

When his cheek grazed my head, I closed my eyes.

But when the song ended, I wasn’t quite sure what to do. What was the right thing to do? He’d asked me to dance, but was the offer only good for a few dances or for all of them? Were we supposed to go sit down now? Or were we supposed to stay and dance the next?

Before I could decide what to do, the music started up with a tropical tempo. Joe began dancing again. And so did everyone else. I mean
everyone
. The song started with a bunch of “Ole’s.” The tables emptied and everyone bounced out onto the dance floor. The main theme of the song seemed to be about feeling hot-hot-hot.

And I was not-not-not.

Everyone else seemed to know you were supposed to shout hot-hot-hot with your arms up in the air. And that you were supposed to rumba around like the Chiquita banana girl. Fortunately, the floor was so crowded, I don’t think anyone noticed I wasn’t dancing.

Except for Joe.

He slid an arm around my waist. Had me swaying with him to the beat, letting me go only to chant the hot-hot-hots.

When the next song began, it was clear it was going to be another fast one. Joe grabbed my hand and drew me toward the closest set of stairs. We climbed them and found a span of unoccupied railing. We braced our forearms on it and leaned forward, watching the pulsating crowd below.

It provided a chance to recover from the dancing.

A chance to get a grip on my heart.

Twenty-Five

T
hanks, Joe.”

He turned his head toward me. “For what?”

“Dancing with me.”

“Ah. Well, technically, I should be thanking you for wasting your dance time on a guy with limited moves and even less talent.”

“I’ve never danced with anyone before. Except Oliver.”

“Why not?”

“No one ever asked me.”

“What else haven’t you ever done?”

“I’ve never…” held hands with anyone, kissed anyone, slept in anyone else’s bed but my own.
Stop it!
“I’ve never been downhill skiing.”

“Ever? And you grew up in Colorado?”

“It was against Grandmother’s policy.”

“So you guys never went up to the mountains on vacation?”

“We never went anywhere on vacation. Except one time when I was little. We went to the beach. Have you ever been before?”

Joe nodded, his eyes roaming my face.

“I’ve always wanted to go back.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Somewhere in Oregon. We drove. But I’d go anywhere. Did you know every seventh wave is a big one? I’d read it somewhere, so when we reached the ocean, I sat down in the sand and I counted. It’s true.”

“Why didn’t you go back?”

“I don’t know. I guess I could have visited the Atlantic while I was at MIT, but there was never enough time. And then Grandmother had her accident.”

“The one with her hip? She seems to get around fine.”

“She does. But I wouldn’t feel right about leaving her alone.”

We stood there for a while, watching the cadets dancing below. And then I got a call I couldn’t ignore. “Do you know where the restroom is?”

He turned around and offered his arm. “It’s just down the hall.”

A cadet from one of Joe’s classes saw him and stopped us to ask if we could take a picture. There were four couples, the girls fresh and dewy-eyed in glittery eye shadow, glossy lips, and upswept hair. They lined up for the picture. Smiled. Smiled again for the backup picture.

Then their little party broke up so the girls could go to the restroom.

I trailed them.

The restroom was filled with girls, but the stalls were empty. Lots of giggles. Lots of laughter. No flushing of toilets.

They were all facing the mirrors, but observation revealed they were actually talking to each other in the course of reapplying lip gloss or rearranging pins in their hair.

I did what I needed to.

They were all still there when I was done.

I gave myself an extra glance in the mirror. My hair looked fine. It hadn’t moved. Neither had my eye shadow or lipstick.

I smiled at myself like I had seen the other girls do. Ended up feeling silly.

Left.

Joe was loitering in the hall outside. We walked back the way we’d come, but instead of returning to the dance floor, we went the opposite direction, into an alcove in the wall, opposite the railing.

“How would you feel about a game of foosball?”

“How would you feel about getting your butt kicked?”

Joe was digging the ball out of the slot, but he glanced up at me from underneath his brows. “I don’t think I’ll have to worry about that.”

I grabbed two handles and leaned over the table. “Bring it on.”

As it turned out, Joe did have to worry about being beaten.

Three times.

Merry Christmas, Lt. Col. Gallagher!

After the third game, we took a break and stepped away from the table, only to find ourselves surrounded by cadets.

We ended up playing doubles. And we beat every couple willing to challenge us.

“Just call us the King and Queen of Foos.” Joe and I high-fived after the last game. Joe glanced at his watch. Looked around the room and out into the hall.

I realized the music had stopped. And so had the buzz of voices.

“The dances ends at midnight. We’re about to turn into pumpkins.” He spun a handle. “Let’s go.”

I didn’t know what to say on the ride home, so I settled on asking him about Christmas.

“I’m going home. I mean, back to Idaho. My mom really gets into the holidays.”

“And you’ll have a sweater waiting for you.”

“Probably.”

“When do you leave?”

“In a week and half. Day after the cadets go on break. What are your plans?”