The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel (33 page)

“Kiddo!”

Amina turned to find Monica coming at her, arms pinwheeling, hair spooling out of a French braid. She spilled a little white wine down Amina’s back as they hugged.

“Shit! I got you?”

“A little.”

“Forgive me, hon. It’s been
quite
a week.” Her intonation begged for elaboration, but Amina let it pass. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Amina said. The band kicked it into high gear, banjos ringing, and out on the dance floor a circle formed, thick with clapping hands.

Monica leaned in close, dropping her voice. “Any news?”

“Not yet, but I’ve got a plan. I’m talking to Anyan George about it.”

“Dr. George?” She looked worried.

“I know, but listen, we need help. And better him than anyone else.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Smart. Man, I’m glad you’re home.” Monica threw an arm over her shoulder, covering her in the smell of flowery deodorant and white wine.

She whooped suddenly in delight. “Oh my God! Will you look at him! How long has it been since you’ve seen him look like that?”

Lunging from haunch to haunch, Thomas had moved into the center of the circle, arms crossed in front of him like a Russian folk dancer. Three kicks drew three glorious cries from the crowd, and he rose up with the last, his palms opened to the air, chin tilting toward the sky, curls bouncing. Amina found him through her viewfinder. A smile broke across her father’s face, charming it.

“He’ll be okay, you’ll see,” Monica said, taking a swig of wine, and Amina let the shutter fall over and over and over, willing her to be right.

CHAPTER 2

H
ow had she forgotten how the flat light of a desert afternoon could suck the dimension out of anything? The first of the Bukowsky wedding photos were complete tossers. Garbage. The newlyweds looked like line drawings, gashes for mouths and empty sockets for eyes. Amina flipped through them quickly, leaving the worst in a pile on Akhil’s desk. At least by the time the evening light rolled in she had found her rhythm. She lingered over the shot of Jamie Anderson, glad to be able to stare at him without having to make conversation. His features, once soft and strange, had hardened into deep crags and furrows. He had turned just as she was taking the picture, his eyes cast down, his mouth beginning to purse in a way that made her feel a little sex-starved and desperate. True, the actual conversation with Jamie hadn’t gone so well, but conversations with men almost never did, for her.

The phone was ringing.

“Ami, get that!” Her mother called from below.

She reached for it on the desk, but the cradle was empty.

Amina stood and looked around the room. The phone rang again.

“Ami!”

“Hold on!” She turned to the bed, lifting up one pillow and Thomas’s blazer before her arms understood what her brain could not, throwing open the closet door. Inside, the phone trilled at her maniacally, as though delighted to be found. Amina picked it up, brushing a film of dirt from the mouthpiece.

“Hello?”

“I think I’m choking.” Dimple did not sound like she was choking. She sounded like she was lighting a cigarette. Pioneer Square’s morning hustled around her, the drunks and the bike messengers and the ferries floating through the phone line. “I don’t think I can get this show up.”

“Of course you can.”

“No I
can’t
,” she said, sounding irritated. “And I don’t need a fucking cheerleader right now, Amina, I need a realist.”

Amina walked back to the desk, phone in hand. “What happened?”

“I still haven’t found someone to pair with Charles White. I swear, I’ve looked everywhere. Nothing fucking works.”

Amina flipped through a few more wedding shots. Red chili enchiladas did not photograph well. Guests hunched over white paper plates, looking like they were devouring piles of bloody flesh. “Isn’t it getting late?”

“That’s not helpful.”

“You asked for a realist.”

“Yeah, not an asshole.”

“Jesus, Dimple.”

“I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. Or, well, it is, but not really.”

“What did I do?”

“I want to show your work.”

Amina swallowed. “Oh.”

Dimple snorted. “
Oh
, she says.”

“What do you want me to say? I don’t have anything.”

There was a short, unsettling silence, the kind that precedes fights between family like a growing electric field precedes lightning.

Dimple cleared her throat. “Okay, listen, I found the pictures in your closet.”

“You what?”

“I found—”

“You went into my closet?”

“Yes, I did. Listen, I was at your house for the plants and then I needed a jacket, so I—”

“Bullshit.”

Dimple was quiet for a second. “Okay, fine, I was looking through your stuff. I don’t actually know why. I know that sounds weird. But I found them and I fucking love them. And listen, I know this isn’t a great time to ask, and I hope you know I wouldn’t unless I felt really, you know, desperate. Well, no, desperate and
compelled
. Because your work is compelling.” She took a breath, changing her tenor to one Amina had heard her use with others too many times to feel flattered by. The honeyed tone, the easy pump of ego. “You know, the thing is, I can’t stop thinking of how great it would be, actually. It’s a good pairing, a really spot-on counterpoint to Charles’s selection. I think we could actually go small with this—make it concentrated. Eight or ten—”

“No.”

“Wait, stop, just listen for a second, okay? You know we’re exploring the idea of domestic accidents, and it’s, like, perfect. So if we go with the fainting grandmother, the peeing ring bearer, and those two bridesmaids fighting over the bouquet—”

“Are you listening? No.”

“—lead with the picture of Bobby McCloud jumping—”

“No!”

“The puking bridesmaid. We’ve got to show that, obviously.”

“Dimple, it’s not happening! Period. And if Jane ever finds out anything about those pictures, I’ll be fired instantly. There’s a reason they were hidden.”

“Wait, these are hidden from
Jane
?”

“Yes! But also the clients. They don’t know about them, either. And this isn’t the way they’re going to find out.”

“I’m not sure why Jane’s opinion really matters,” Dimple said.

This was not a good path to go down. “Look, you asked. I am saying no. Clear?”

Exhale. Silence.

“Dimple, do you hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I know what you’re saying. And I know we’ve had this discussion before, but somehow, Amina, I’m just never quite convinced that you don’t want me to keep bothering you about it. I mean, right? You do, a little, don’t you?” Dimple took another sharp drag. “I mean, you don’t, like, lose ambition because you switch tracks for a little while.”

“Switch tracks? I’m a wedding photographer!”

“So what? What if showing your stuff was, like, what you needed to get past it? You know, like on fucking
Oprah
. Scared-of-her-shadow housewife remembers her inner fire, starts a multimillion-dollar business, takes care of orphans on the side. Full circle!”

“I’ve gotta go.”

“Wait! No! Okay, look, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to do that. I just hate having to beg you for something you should be thrilled to give me. I mean, this is business. It’s an opportunity. You took these pictures, the best fucking pictures I’ve ever seen you take, by the way, and what? You think if you show them, you’re somehow worse off?”

“When did this become about me? Your job gets hard and I’m the jerk?”

There was a brief pause on the line, punctuated by the anxious bleat of a ferry.

“Okay, fine, that’s fair,” Dimple said. “Yes, I’m stuck. I don’t have a good match, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have a pristine set of prints that I love all ready to mount! But you do. And you’re here, so we could bang this out fast. And I really do think you’re a great fit for the show.
Please
.”

She sounded like a junkie. Like a photography junkie. The saddest, most pretentious thing in the world.

“I’m not there,” Amina said.

“You’re coming back this week.”

“No. I need to stay here for a little bit.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Something is really wrong with my dad.”

“What?”

It should not have felt so good, or easy, to tell Dimple everything, given the preceding conversation, and yet it did. It felt like taking off a tight helmet.

“Oh God.” Dimple’s shoes clacked as she paced. “Does the family know? I mean, obviously my mother doesn’t, or everyone would, but the others?”

“I don’t think so. It depends on how far it got around the hospital. But don’t say anything about it yet, okay? I need to figure some stuff out.”

“Of course. Right. I won’t mention it to Sajeev.”

Amina frowned. “Why would you tell him?”

“What? Oh, just because he asks about everyone from home when we talk.”

“You talk?”

“He’s been coming by. Talking about digital cameras, blah blah blah. Not important. How long are you going to be out there? Like, a few days or what?”

“Maybe another few weeks.” Amina leafed through the remaining pictures on the desk, trying to channel Monica’s strange, flat tone from the day in the car. “We just need to get him checked out and then take things step by step.”

She stopped on a picture of her parents. She laid it flat on the desk. Dimple was telling her she’d keep picking up the mail, watering her plants, but Amina barely heard her. Technically, the photograph was beautiful. Taken at that moment when the sun pulls all the color in the desert to the surface, it showed Thomas at his radiant best, mid-dance, his arms thrown to the sky, a ring of blurred, smiling faces surrounding him. Except for Kamala’s. Even slightly out of focus, Amina could see the wary pinch of her mother’s brow, the look of someone assessing a traffic accident.

For half an hour after she and Dimple hung up, Amina sat at her brother’s desk, listening to her parents tumbling around the house, banging into and out of it at regular intervals, opening and closing cabinets and drawers and doors without ever seeming to run into each
other. It was amazing really, a dance so intricate it felt choreographed, executed to perfection through years of practice.

And what would they do if something was really wrong with Thomas? How could they possibly face it any better than they could face each other? Amina looked at Kamala’s blurry face in the picture. It was useless, really, to fear whatever was making its way toward them, its slow progress dismantling the familiar routines of their lives, but that did not stop her from sitting as still as she could in the brightening day, as if stillness could keep the worst of it at bay.

CHAPTER 3

A
nyan George was endearing in his own way. It wasn’t a way that made Amina feel like reproducing with him, or even getting close enough for a friendly hug, but his offer to help in the kitchen, his attempt to appear casual in a button-down shirt and a horrible argyle sweater vest, his inquiries about Kamala’s many sisters, and the tittering laugh he released generously at anything even resembling a joke made dinner the following night somewhat less of a chore than she had imagined it would be.

“More cabbage?” Kamala asked, pushing the bowl toward him. “Amina, hand him the cabbage.”

“Oh, no thank you,” Dr. George said, patting his sweater vest. “I am finally stuffed. It was absolutely delicious.”

“We’ll send it home with you! Don’t want you becoming skin and bone!” Kamala smiled a bit too hard, her eyes darting across the table. “Amina will be quite a cook someday, you know.”

“You must take after your mom in the kitchen?”

“God, no. The only thing I can do in the kitchen is try not to hurt anybody.”

“Amen to that!” Thomas said.

“Oh,
pah
. What for dessert, Anyan?” Kamala asked, annoyed. “We have ice creams and we have cookies and we have ladoo.”

“Much as I hate to, I should go. Early-morning call and whatnot.”

“Sure, sure.” Kamala was already walking toward the kitchen with hands full of dishes. “Let me just get your leftovers together. Amina, come.”