The Frog Prince (4 page)

"Wow,” he says, as the hostess steps away, “now I know your opinion on dietary ethics and human biological anthropology…what the hell are we going to talk about for the rest of the meal?”

My smile is tight, not because I’m angry at his response, but because if I don’t force my mouth into a position incompatible with speech I’m liable to say something even more cringe-inducing.

He turns his attention back to the menu. "Anyway, I was just going to recommend the rack of lamb in the event you weren’t a vegetarian. Everything they serve here is organic, hormone-free, that sort of thing, and you don’t even have to kill anything yourself—as far as I know the animals arrive already dead. But if your conscience is steering you away from mammals, the rainbow trout is delicious. Personally, I wouldn't go for the bean burrito on a first date."

I do not allow my brain to fixate on the word “date.”

When you have the conversational abilities of a sea anemone, you spend most of your time trying to respond coherently to another person's question. I've been told in the past by friends that this makes it appear that I am self-centered, and not interested in the other person’s life. Which, when you're on a first date with the Crown Prince of Austria, is probably not the best way to a second date. Now that I've answered a few of Romans questions in a more or less comprehensible way, it's time to launch a counteroffensive.

"How did you ever find this place?” I say

"I dance here," says Roman.

Oh god
, I think to myself,
this is going from bad to worse
. I've met guys like this before, guys who always got jilted at the dances in middle and high school, and spend the rest of their lives trying to boost their self-esteem by dragging blue-haired old ladies around the dance floor in the foxtrot. Somehow though, I can't imagine Roman as the jilted high school dance partner. Also, the people in the restaurant don't really seem the foxtrot type. In fact, I am willing to bet that there would be open hostility towards anyone who started any foxtrotting funny business here. The place is just too hip.

“Dancing is such great exercise,” I say vaguely, not because I'm not interested in his hobby, but because it's too soon in our potential relationship to find out that he is some sort of waltzing aficionado. It doesn't take much to kill interest in the early stages. I take a few deep breaths while I pretend to peruse the menu, and try to shift the conversation to a different topic. “Kat told me that you went to law school at DU, but that you’re not an attorney. What do you do?”

I know before he answers that he isn't going to say “Crown Prince of Austria,” a winning hand I would throw down every day and twice on Sundays.

“I build tree houses,” says Roman.

I find that I have no response to this response. What can you say about a person who spends four years on a degree at one of the most prestigious law schools in the country, only to toss it in a drawer somewhere so they can go out and slap together swing sets? I think I'm supposed to be intrigued by his answer, but I actually feel sort of embarrassed for him.

“Christine says you’re some kind of researcher?" he says, casually tossing the laminated menu to the edge of the table, “As in human research? Animal research?”

Uh-oh. Now I have to be careful. “Actually, I'm a PRA—a professional research assistant,” I say. “I work for a company that does human biological and psychological research.”

“Like finding out if people prefer Coke over Pepsi?”

I smile. “No, that’s marketing research.”

“Any new, exciting discoveries made of late?” he says.

Luckily our server appears, so I am spared from telling him that the research we do is all related to human sexuality, and that our latest study found that women with clitorises an inch or more away from their vaginal openings did not desire or enjoy sex like their close-proximity peers. The findings had every female employee squatting on their bathroom floor with a Stanley tape measure in one hand and a compact mirror in the other. It turns out that collecting this type of biometric data on yourself is surprisingly difficult.

According to what I’ve been told.

“Hey, Roman,” says the tattooed and pierced server before us. A port wine stain birthmark covers a portion of her right cheek, but she has cleverly deflected attention from it by loading up the rest of her face–eyebrows, lips, nose, chin–with silver, gold, and diamond piercings. Also, there are O-shaped earrings in her earlobes that have stretched out a hole large enough for a circus lion to jump through. I resist the urge to reach out and poke my finger through one of the holes. “Shea wants you,” she says.

Roman groans. “I'm having lunch! Tell her I’m on a date.”

“Doug didn’t show up,” she says. “She's got about twenty-five couples up there and says she's going to be forced to do the ‘dancing with myself’ routine again if you don’t help. She says there’s two hundred dollars in it for you... one hour of your time, and she’ll let you personally castrate Doug yourself.”

Roman sighs and looks across the table at me. “Leigh, do you mind if we eat upstairs? I’ll help Shea really quick and then we can eat our food at the bar up there and pick up where we left off.”

Since I am bewildered about who Shea is, why she needs help, or how Roman intends to provide this help, I say, “Sure, no problem.”

“Great!” He turns to the server. “Can you pop upstairs in about five minutes to see what Leigh wants to order? I’ll have the rack of lamb and a Fat Tire.”

“Sure thing.”

I follow as Roman gets up and walks past the door we came in, and through the opening of another set of red velvet curtains. This brings us into an open area with café-sized tables, and a small stage. He turns left at the far corner of the room, and then up a flight of painted concrete stairs. As we climb, I can hear the soft chatter of people, and the voice of a woman louder than the rest.

“If you can hear me, say ‘shhhh’!” she says.

We round the corner just in time to hear the dutiful group hiss at each other. This has the effect of silencing the entire crowd, which is made up of about thirty or forty women and men in an elongated circle that is pushed to the outer edges of the rectangular room.

Red and white Christmas tree lights are strung from one end of the ceiling to the other and oversized ornaments—the ones I’ve seen hanging in trees outside during the holidays—dangle here and there from the light strands. The wood floor is worn, and appears to buckle slightly in places.

“Roman!” says a woman. She walks towards us, and a few of the assembled break ranks to make way for her.

“Hey, Shea,” says Roman, gathering her in a friendly hug.

Shea is a lovely, petite woman–younger than me–with big blue eyes who appears not to have gotten the memo that it is no longer 1930. Her hair is piled on top of her head in pin curls, with the back being held in place by a sparkling, black-knitted snood. From the neck down she’s dressed more contemporarily in jeans and layered camisoles underneath a tight-fitting, short-sleeved, blue sweater. I look her up and down a few times and decide that she has the buffest body I have ever seen. I wonder if she runs or lifts weights.

She looks over at me. "I am so sorry I ruined your date!” she says with a big, pretty smile. “Feel free to stay for lessons–no charge.”

“Thank you,” I say, without knowing what I’m thanking her for exactly. Maybe she gives the hula lessons.

Roman gives my hand a squeeze. “This won't take long,” he whispers. “I'll make it up to you.”

My heart does a back dive with a half twist as Shea pulls him to the middle of the floor. “This is Roman Lorraine,” she announces to the group, still loosely holding his hand. This makes me absurdly jealous. “My regular partner wasn’t able to make it today, so Roman was nice enough to offer to help me out.

“Okay,” she says, circling around to face Roman, “so what you’re here to learn is called Lindy Hop. Depending on which part of the country you're from it may be called East Coast swing or jitterbug. Lindy Hop is essentially 1920s and 1930s African American street dancing which was a mish-mash of tap dancing, jazz, breakaway and the Charleston. It is technically classified as a ballroom dance, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end.”

Suddenly Roman grabs Shea in a very stiff-armed embrace, his left hand holding her right hand high in the air, and sort of marches and spins her around in a circle in one of those waltzy dances I dislike. “This is traditional ballroom dancing,” Roman says as they twirl, “which is done with this very upright and rigid frame.”

I’m relieved when they move apart from each other, connected by only one hand with at least two feet between them. They’re much looser now, slightly bent at the waist and bouncier in the knees. Shea makes a pointing gesture at someone beyond the circle of onlookers. I turn in unison with some of the others to see a short, curly-haired guy at the helm of a sound system next to the deserted bar. Catching her signal, he nods before tapping away on some buttons. The room booms with the jazzy, trumpet-filled sounds of Big Band Swing.

Roman pushes Shea away from him, allowing her to do some very sexy swiveling of her legs and hips before pulling her back for a full-circle spin. He does this three times in quick succession, so fast that I can barely see their feet moving. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he pulls her backwards beside him, and suddenly they are doing a step I recognize from eighth grade PE class, the Charleston. I am congratulating myself for recognizing anything in this bewildering dance when the crazy stuff starts.

Roman moves Shea an arms-length away from him, only to snap her back towards him like a rubber band. Just when I think she’s going to run him down, she sort of leaps into his right arm. He lifts her and–I swear to god–
spins her around on his right shoulder
. With one arm. Like, three times.

The onlookers burst into spontaneous applause and cheers. I would clap too, but my right hand is busy covering my mouth. I am simultaneously amazed at their abilities, and terrified that someone is going to fall and break their skull on the hardwood floor. This looks like stuff that people dream up after they’ve had a cocktail and a few bong hits.
This move will look really, really incredible
, they think. In reality it will probably end up killing them, leaving their family glumly holding their posthumous Darwin Award.

Shea somehow makes it back to the floor in one piece, only to be grabbed by both hands, spun around, and pushed forward. Now they’re doing the Charleston again, but this time she’s in front of him, like a car in a train, their legs kicking forwards and backwards. They face each other again, and there is blur of kicking feet and some more spins and twirls before Shea does a forward flip through Roman’s hands, and lands on the floor in the splits just as the last trumpet note of the song sputters out.

The room explodes. Shea and Roman do a hasty simultaneous bow, and then she leans close to his ear and says something. He nods and makes a beeline for the bar where I am standing near a stack of plastic cups and pitchers of ice water. There’s a big grin on his face, which fades somewhat when he sees my expression. I decide to cut right to the chase, just in case he’s nursing some sort of Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire fantasy that involves me.

“I am
not
doing that,” I say, pointing my finger in the general direction of where Shea should now, by all laws of physics and common sense, be an irreversible quadriplegic. “I can’t even line dance.”

Roman just laughs, and wipes his sweaty face with a napkin. His dark hair is plastered to his skin in spots, and damned if he doesn’t look even more adorable like this. “Don’t worry, Leigh, I’m not going to throw you into the air in the first class,” he says, filling a cup with water and drinking it down in a few gulps. He wipes his mouth with the napkin before balling it up and chucking it into a trashcan behind the bar.

Behind us I hear Shea directing the men and women to separate and line up on opposite sides of the long room.

“C’mon,” says Roman, holding his hand out to me. “Give it a try. Then we’ll have something to do when I take you out again.”

When I take you out again…
I’m so flustered I can’t work up a suitable reply, so I let him haul me to the women’s side of the room. Before I know it I’m practicing
step-step-triple step
along with the rest of the class, all of us sounding like a disorganized herd of stampeding cattle.

Every few minutes Roman looks my way and melts me with a smile or a wink. I smile and wink back, and continue
step-step-triple step
-ing my way to a second date.

Chapter Four

I made it
, I think with disbelief. I stare at the cell phone in my right hand for a few seconds before finally disconnecting the call.
I made the cut
.

“What?” says Kat from somewhere behind me. I turn to answer and hear the crash of glass. I look down and see a jar of mango salsa shattered into glass fractals all around my feet. Kat’s black Labrador, Onyx, bounces around me and barks at the broken glass.

“I can’t believe you’ve been able to pass yourself off as a normal, functioning human being all these years,” says Kat with a roll of her eyes. She smacks her leg a few times with her hand and Onyx returns to her side.

I sidestep the mess to retrieve the dust pan and sweeper from the cleaning closet next to the kitchen, not answering. Kat is simply stating a fact: multi-tasking is a difficult feat for me. I can’t for example, talk on a cell phone while driving, or walk and chew bubblegum.

Or hold a jar of mango salsa and accept Roman’s invitation for a second date. Some sort of disconnect occurred in my neural pathways towards the end of my conversation with him, causing the mango salsa jar to blink out of existence in my hand and reappear on the floor.

“Roman wants me to go hiking with him today,” I say, easing myself down to the floor and using long strokes to sweep the mango-covered glass into the dust pan. I clench my teeth together to keep from whimpering in pain at the residual lactic acid dissolving my quads. “I’m going to need Onyx.”