Wallflower In Bloom (18 page)

“Wow,” I said. “I had no idea it was all about the shoes. So anytime I get into trouble I just click my heels together?”

Anthony grinned. “You got it, Dorothy. The magic in these soles will bring out the magic that was in your soul all along.”

It wasn’t quite a chiasmus, but it was close enough to feel like a good omen.

Anthony winked. “And if that doesn’t work, baby cakes, there’s always rehab.”

Live to dance and dance to live
.

S
orry,” I said. Apparently
sorry
was becoming my mantra. “But I’m probably not going to be as good as Kelly Genelavive.”

“Kelly Genelavive,” my dance partner said, “was a thug with hair spray.”

My partner’s name was Ilya. He was elegantly handsome in a kind of chiseled-featured, slicked-backed-hair, narrow-hipped, tight-butt way that they simply didn’t breed in Marshbury.

Karen had delivered me to Ilya, then slipped away again as soon as she introduced us. I didn’t even really like her, but I still felt completely abandoned every time she left me. Whose idea was this
DWTS
thing anyway? Maybe I could still get out of it with a quick injury and a public-service announcement.
Don’t drink and surf the Internet
, I’d say. I’d be propped up on crutches, with a couple of walking casts and maybe even a big white bandage on my forehead.
It’s simply not worth the risk
. My sad eyes would find the camera.
Look what happened to me
.

As if I’d summoned it, a real camera appeared. The guy who was holding it started tiptoeing around the room like that might keep me from noticing him. I’d watched enough
DWTS
episodes last night to know that my only hope was to ignore him. If I stamped my foot and asked him to leave or to come back later, if I cried or ran off to brush
my hair or to put on some makeup, that would be the footage they’d show to twenty-three million people on international TV right before my first dance. I mean, basically
DWTS
was reality TV with some choreography thrown in.

My dance partner held out his arms.

Every inch of me wanted to turn and run away, as far and as fast as I could go.

He wiggled the fingers on both hands in a come-hither gesture.

When I was a little, little girl, I used to think that if I closed my eyes, it would make me disappear. I closed them now.

No such luck.

I tried to take a step, but my new dance shoes seemed to have sprouted roots. “Oh, please don’t make me do this,” I said.

Ilya crossed the space between us. He was wearing a white T-shirt and black jeans and a black vest and black sneakers, and even walking across the room, he moved with a wiry feline grace.

He grabbed my right hand and rested the fingers of his other hand gently on my waist. I was so jumpy it tickled. I bit my lower lip to try to stop the giggle that slipped out of my mouth.

Ilya started waltzing me around the practice studio as if he were taking me out for a test drive. The room was long and open, so we had lots of ground to cover. One whole wall was covered with a devastating expanse of mirror. I tried not to look.

I flashed back on that old Felix the Cat cartoon from my childhood and realized that’s who Ilya reminded me of: He was a dead ringer for Felix. And then suddenly I couldn’t get the stupid theme song out of my head. It was driving me nuts, but I couldn’t get the words quite right either, which was driving me even nuttier. Something about Felix the Cat being the wonderful, wonderful cat and how you’ll laugh so hard your sides will ache and your something will go whackety whack. Or pitter pat. Or something like that. And that’s Felix the somethingful cat.

My dance partner stopped abruptly. Clearly my Felix the Cat flashback was not helping my waltz. The good news was the camera guy wasn’t laughing. At least not out loud.

When I opened the door to our practice studio to make a bathroom run, Karen the producer was standing there. She handed me her phone.

“Hello,” I said into the phone for lack of a better idea.

“Just checking in to see if you need anything,” Joanie Baloney said in her most adorable voice.

“How did you get this number?”

“Oh, I must have made a copy when I wrote down your messages.”

“You must have?”

“I just thought one of us should have an emergency number for you.”

Karen’s arms were crossed over her chest. If she’d been wearing a watch, she would have been looking at it.

“So,” Joanie said, “how’s it going?”

“Listen, I can’t talk. Mostly because it’s not my phone.”

“Listen, I’m just trying to help. And if you’d actually answer your own phone, I could call you on that.”

“If I actually wanted to, I would,” I said sweetly.

I rolled my eyes at Karen, just to let her know this wasn’t a voluntary conversation. She didn’t smile.

“Fine,” Joanie said, “be a bitch. Do you have plants you want me to water or anything?”

“They’re all dead,” I said, “but thanks for asking.”

Joanie let out a puff of air right into my ear. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

I sighed. “Thanks. I’m fine.”

“Good. Oh, and Tag wants to know what his schedule looks like
for the next few weeks. And he can’t remember where he put his password to log onto his computer.”

I clicked the End Call button and handed the phone back to Karen.

She shook her head. “And your mother wants you to call your brother.”

“Sorry about all this,” I said.

“If you’re having cell phone issues, let me know and I’ll hook you up,” she said as she wiped the phone on her sleeve.

Ilya leaned back so he could look me right in the eyes. “I am a world-class teacher. A world-class dancer. I am the best at what I do. The best in the world.”

“That’s very reassur—”

“Shhh.” He started dancing again, turning us to the right and then to the left. “I can mold you, I can shape you. I can tear you down and build you into what I need you to be. I have created champions out of nothing. Out of air.”

We looped around the perimeter of the room, spiraling in circles within a larger circle. It was like being on a Ferris wheel, only sideways, or on one of those awful cup-and-saucer rides. I wanted him to stop, but I didn’t, because I knew the room would just keep spinning. I wondered if a
DWTS
contestant had ever puked on her partner.

“I was a world champion before I was seventeen. My father was a world champion before he was seventeen. And his father before him. My mother was my father’s professional partner. Together they have won sixteen international Latin dance championships.”

“Wow,” I said, keeping my response to one word. I knew my limits, and it was the best I could do under the circumstances. I was thoroughly amazed at Ilya’s ability to dance and talk at the same time.

We were still circling, but now we were crisscrossing the room in a figure-eight pattern. I was trying not to count the number of times
I’d stepped briefly on my partner’s toes, but we had to be approaching double digits by now.

“In my house, our entire world was built on one principle: Live to dance and dance to live. Dance was our religion.”

“Not that I’m making excuses,” I said, “but I was brought up Catholic.”

He stopped. I stopped, too, but the room kept spinning just like I knew it would. My mouth went dry and I began salivating the way I always did just before my stomach started heaving. I knew my only hope was to keep breathing, long and slow, in through the nose and out through the mouth.

“Oh, boy,” my partner said as he watched me breathe.

“Sorry,” I said. In the short time we’d been together it was at least my eighth apology.

“Did your father never dance with you?”

I took another slow breath before I answered. “Of course he did. My whole family danced around the house all the time when I was growing up, but only to the Grateful Dead.”

Ilya seemed to think about that, or maybe he was thinking he’d be grateful to be dead himself right about now.

“Show me,” he said.

I put my hands over my head and waved them back and forth. Then I swiveled side to side as I played imaginary tambourines with both hands. Or maybe they were imaginary maracas.

Ilya pressed a palm to his forehead, like Homer Simpson, only classier and without the
doh
. “You have no formal dance training at all?”

He looked so sad I just wanted to cheer him up. “Of course I do. Intro to ballet, jazz, and tap. I can even Shuffle Off to Buffalo.”

He raised one eyebrow. Most people have to raise them both together; he was that coordinated.

I realized he was waiting for me to show him.

Alone in a hotel room in a strange city, dancing my heart out, I’d fantasized this moment a hundred times before.

I took a deep breath and headed for Buffalo. In my new dance shoes it actually worked pretty well, as long as Buffalo was to my left. But unfortunately, when I tried to shuffle back to the Buffalo on my right, I tripped.

I took a couple of running steps, trying to find my balance. Ilya caught me before I fell.

He pulled me back into dance position. He straddled my legs and started bending me over backward as if I were a reluctant Gumby. “Turn your head. Like this.”

I turned my head. “Gee, that’s comforta—”

“Shhh.” He bent me as far as I could go, then circled me around from the waist. He lifted me up. He started leaning away from me. “Put your weight on me.”

“Seriously?”

By way of an answer he dragged me across the shiny hardwood floor. I could feel the toes of my new dance shoes getting scuffmarks.

“Even you I can turn into a dancer,” he said.

Up until that moment, I was still under the illusion that I actually had
some
skills,
some
talent, even if my shimmering potential had been cut short as a child.

I waited till he stopped sweeping the floor with me and stood me up again. “I’m
that
bad?” I asked as casually as I could.

“No,” he said. “It would be worse if you had no rhythm.”

It wasn’t much, but it made me ridiculously happy. It was all I could do not to break into a jazzy rendition of “I Got Rhythm.”

Ilya held me by one hand and walked me over so he could pick up a tiny remote. He pushed a button and changed the music on the stereo to something sultry and sexy.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“Shhh.” He brought me back to the center of the room. He pressed
his front side to my back side and grabbed my hands. He started circling both our hips seductively, completely controlling the movement of mine.

Then he started circling our hips in the other direction, around and around and around again.

He stopped suddenly, his front still pressed to my back. I waited to see what would happen next. Maybe he was finished and it was time for a cigarette.

“Aaaaaaaaaand,” he said, moving our hips in a slow, teasing circle.

“Give-it-to-me,” he said, our hips doing a sudden bump and grind.

“Aaaaaaaaaand,” he said again.

I held my breath.

“Give-it-to-me.”

I pressed my lips together so my teeth wouldn’t rattle while we bumped.

“Aaaaaaaaaand.”

I heard a sigh and realized it was coming from me.

“Give-it-to-me.”

If Mitchell had danced like this, I might have tried harder to make things work.

Ilya let go of one hand and spun me away from him with the other. He reeled me back in like a yo-yo. Then he put his hands on my shoulders.

He shook his head. “But we have only seven days. Even for the best of the best like me, this is an impossibility.”

Wouldn’t you know it, just when I was starting to get into this. I wondered if he was going to try to trade me in for a newer model.
Say it’s not so, Ilya
, I wanted to plead.