Dance to the Piper (4 page)

He demonstrated, and Maddy watched, considered the move, then grinned at him. "I saw the design for my costume, Macke. If I bend over like that, the boys in the front row are going to get an anatomy lesson."

Macke looked her over. "A small one, in your case."

The dancers around her snorted and cackled. Maddy took the ribbing with a good-humored laugh as they moved back into position to take the count. They moved, with gusto, on eight.

Reed watched with steadily growing astonishment. Over a floor shiny with sweat, the dancers sprang to life. Legs flashed, hips rolled. Men and women found their partners in what seemed to be a riot of churning bodies. There were lifts, jumps, spins and the soft stamp of feet. From his vantage point he could see the exertion, the drip of perspiration, the deep, controlled breathing. Then Maddy stepped out, and he forgot the rest.

The leotard clung to every curve and line of her body, with the dark patches only accentuating her shape. Her legs, even in battered tights, seemed to go all the way to her waist. Slowly at first, with her hands at the tops of her hips, she moved forward, then right, then left, always following the rotation of her hips. He didn't hear the count being called now, but she did.

Her arm snaked across her body, then flew out. It didn't take much imagination to understand that she had tossed aside some article of clothing. She kicked up, so that for a moment her foot was over her head. Slowly, erotically, she ran her fingertips down her thigh as she lowered her leg.

The pace picked up, and so did her rhythm. She moved like a leopard, twisting, turning, sinuous and smooth. Then, as the dancers behind her went into an orgy of movement, she bent from the waist and used her shoulders to fascinate. A man broke from the group and grabbed her arm. With nothing more than the angle of her body, the placement of her head, she conveyed teasing, taunting acceptance. When the music ended, she was caught against him, arched backward. And his hand was clamped firmly on her bottom

"Better," Macke decided. The dancers sagged, unwilling to waste energy by standing upright. Maddy and her partner seemed to collapse onto each other.

"Watch your hand, Jack."

"I am." He leaned over her shoulder just a little. "I've got my eye right on it."

She managed a breathless laugh before she pushed him away. For the first time, she saw Reed standing in the doorway. He looked every inch the proper, successful businessman. Because she'd wanted to see him again, had known she eventually would, Maddy sent him an uncomplicated, friendly smile.

"Take lunch," Macke announced as he lit a cigarette. "I want Maddy, Wanda and Terry back in an hour. Someone give Carter the word I want him, too. Chorus is due in room B at 1:30 for vocals."

The room was already emptying. Maddy took her towel and buried her face in it before she walked over to Reed. Several of the female dancers passed him with none-too-subtle invitations in their eyes.

"Hello again." Maddy slung her towel around her neck, then gently eased him out of the way of the hungry dancers. "Did you see the whole thing?"

"Whole thing?"

"The dance."

"Yes." He was having a hard time remembering anything but the way she had moved, the sensuality that had poured out of her.

With a laugh, she hung on to the ends of the towel and leaned against the wall. "And?"

"Impressive." Now she looked simply like a woman who'd been hard at work—attractive enough, but hardly primitively arousing. "You've, ah… a lot of energy, Miss O'Hurley."

"Oh, I'm packed with it. Are you here for another meeting?"

"No." Feeling a little foolish, he pulled out her hairbrush. "I think this is yours."

"Well, yeah." Pleased, Maddy took it from him. "I gave it up for lost. That was nice of you." She dabbed at her face with the towel again. "Hang on a minute." She walked away to stuff the brush and towel in her bag. Reed allowed himself the not-so-mild pleasure of watching her leotard stretch over her bottom as she bent over. She came back, slinging the bag over her shoulder.

"How about some lunch?" she asked him.

It was so casual, and so ridiculously appealing, that he nearly agreed. "I've got an appointment."

"Dinner?"

His brow lifted. She was looking up at him, a half smile on her lips and laughter in her eyes. The women he knew would have coolly left it to him to make the approach and the maneuvers. "Are you asking me for a date?"

The question rang with cautious politeness, and she had to laugh again. "You catch on fast, Valentine Records. Are you a carnivore?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Do you eat meat?" she explained. "I know a lot of people who won't touch it."

"Ah… yes." He wondered why he should feel apologetic.

"Fine. I'll fix you a steak. Got a pen?"

Not certain whether he was amused or just dazed, Reed drew one out of his breast pocket.

"I knew you would." Maddy rattled off her address. "See you at seven." She called for someone down the hall to wait for her and dashed off before he could agree or refuse.

Reed walked out of the building without writing down her address. But he didn't forget it.

Maddy always did things on impulse. That was how she justified asking Reed to dinner when she barely knew him and didn't have anything in the house more interesting than banana yogurt.
He
was interesting, she told herself. So she stopped on the way home, after a full ten hours on her feet, and did some frenzied marketing.

It wasn't often she cooked. Not that she couldn't when push came to shove, it was simply that it was easier to eat out of a carton or can. If it didn't have to do with the theater, Maddy always looked for the easiest way.

When she reached her apartment building, the Gianellis were arguing in their first-floor apartment. Italian expletives streamed up the stairwell. Maddy remembered her mail, jogged back down half a flight and searched her key ring for the tiny, tarnished key that opened the scarred slot: With a postcard from her parents, an offer for life insurance and two bills in hand, she jogged back up again.

On the second landing the newlywed from 242 sat reading a textbook.

"How's the English Lit?" Maddy asked her.

"Pretty good. I think I'll have my certificate by August."

"Terrific." But she looked lonely, Maddy thought, and she paused a moment. "How's Tony?"

"He made the finals for that play off-Broadway." When she smiled, her young, hopeful face glowed. "If he makes chorus he can quit waiting tables at night He says prosperity's just around the corner."

"That's great, Angie." She didn't add that prosperity was always around the corner for gypsies. The roads just kept getting longer. "I've got to run. Somebody's coming for dinner."

On the third floor she heard the wailing echo of rock music and the thumping of feet. The disco queen was rehearsing, Maddy decided as she chugged up the next flight of steps. After a quick search for her keys, she let herself in. She had an hour.

She switched on the stereo on her way to the kitchen, then dropped her bag on the twelve-inch square of Formica she called counter space. She scrubbed two potatoes, stuck them in the oven, remembered to turn it on, then dumped the fresh vegetables into the sink.

It occurred to her vaguely that she might tidy the place up a bit. It hadn't been dusted in… well, there was enough clutter on the tables to hide the dust, anyway. Some might call her rooms a shade messy, but no one would call them dull.

Most of her furnishings and decorations were Broadway surplus. When a show closed—especially if it had flopped—the markdown on props and materials was wonderful. They were memories to her, so even after the money had started to come in regularly she hadn't replaced them. The curtains were red and dizzity ornate—a steal from
Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
The sofa, with its curvy back and dangerously hard cushions, had been part of the refuse of a flop she couldn't even remember, but it was reputed to have once sat on the parlor set of
My Fair Lady.
Maddy had decided to believe it.

None of the tables matched; nor did any of the chairs. It was a hodgepodge of periods and colors, a tangle of junk and splendor that suited her very well.

Posters lined the walls, posters from plays she'd been in, posters from plays where she hadn't gotten past the first call. There was one plant, a philodendron that hovered between life and death in its vivid pot by the window. It was the last in a long line of dead soldiers.

But her most prized possession was a hot-pink neon sign whose curvy letters spelled out her name. Trace had sent it to her when she'd gotten her first job in a Broadway chorus. Her name in lights. Maddy switched it on as she usually did and thought that while her brother might not often be around, he always made himself known.

Deciding not to spend too much tune picking up when it would only be cluttered again in a couple of days, Maddy cleaned off a couple of chairs, stacked the magazines and the unopened mail and left it at that. More pressing was the task of washing out her dance clothes.

She filled the tub with warm water and soap, then added the lights and leotard she'd worn to class that morning. With them she added her rehearsal clothes. For good measure she dropped in sweatbands and leg warmers. With the sleeves of her knee-length sweatshirt rolled up, she began the monotonous job of washing out, rinsing and wringing. Using the makeshift clothesline she'd fashioned in the tub, Maddy hung every piece up to dry.

The bathroom was no larger than a closet. When she stood up and turned, she faced herself in the mirror over the sink. Mirrors were an intimate part of her life. There were days when she danced in front of them for eight hours, watching, recording, assessing every muscle and move of her body.

Now she looked at her face—fairly good bones, satisfactory features. It was the combination of pointed chin, wide eyes and glowing skin that won those awful accolades like 'cute' and 'wholesome' Nothing earth-shattering, she thought, but she could give them a hand.

On a whim she swung the mirrored door open and grabbed two handfuls of makeup at random. She bought it, stored it, even hoarded it. It was almost an obsession. The fact that she rarely used it unless she was performing didn't make her hobby seem odd to her. Whenever she wanted to play with her face, she had all the tools handy.

For ten minutes she experimented, putting on, creaming off, then putting on again, until the result was simply a bit of exotic color on her eyes and the faintest hint of warmth on her cheekbones. Maddy put the pots and tubes and pencils back into the cabinet, then shut the door before anything could fall out.

Was she supposed to chill that wine? she thought abruptly. Or maybe she should serve it at room temperature—which was now hovering around eighty degrees.

* * *

She must have given him the wrong address. Reed didn't doubt his memory. He'd been taught early the importance of remembering names, faces, facts, figures. When your teacher was your father and you adored your father, you learned. From years of practice rather than from natural inclination, Reed could hold three columns of figures in his head and tally each of them. Edwin Valentine had taught his son that a smart businessman hired the best accountants, then made certain he knew as much as they did.

He hadn't forgotten the address or mixed up the numbers, but he was beginning to believe she had.

The neighborhood was tough and seedy and rapidly getting seedier as he drove. A broken chair, with its stuffing pouring out the side, sat on the sidewalk. A group of people was arguing over ownership. An old man in an undershirt and shorts sat on a grimy stoop and chugged a can of beer. He eyed Reed's car owlishly as it passed.

How could she live here? Or more to the point, he thought, why would she live here? Maddy O'Hurley had just come off a year's engagement in a solid show that had brought her a Tony nomination. Before that, she'd had another year as the second lead and understudy to the star in a successful revival of
Kiss Me, Kate.

Reed knew, because he'd made it his business to know. His business, he assured himself as he pulled to the curb in front of the building that corresponded with the numbers Maddy had given him. A woman who was about to embark on her third major Broadway show could afford to live in a neighborhood where they didn't mine the sidewalks at night.

As Reed stepped out of his car he spotted a young hood leaning against a lamppost, eyeing his hubcaps. With a quiet oath, Reed approached him. He'd dressed casually, but even without tie and jacket he looked as if he belonged at the country club.

"How much to watch it?" Reed began bluntly. "Instead of strip it?"

The boy shifted his position and smiled with practiced arrogance. "Pretty elegant wheels you got there, Lancelot. Don't see many BMWs cruise through here. I'm thinking of getting my camera."

"Take all the pictures you want. Just don't take anything else." Reed slipped a twenty out of his wallet. "Let's say you're gainfully employed. There's another ten if the car's intact when I come out. You won't get more by hocking the hubcaps, and this way all you have to do is take in the evening air.''

The boy studied the car, then its driver. He knew how to size up an opponent and figure the odds. The flinty eyes were direct and calm. If he'd seen fear in them, the boy would have pushed. Instead, he took the twenty.

"You're the boss. I got a couple hours to kill." He grinned and showed a painfully crooked front tooth. The twenty had already disappeared before Reed started toward the front door.

Her name was on a mail-slot in what might loosely have been called a foyer. Apartment 405. And there was no elevator. Reed started up the steps to the accompaniment of squalling kids, ear-splitting jazz and the sweating Gianellis. By the time he reached the third floor, he was doing some swearing himself.

When the knock came, Maddy was up to her wrists in salad. She'd known that he'd be on time just as surely as she'd known she wouldn't be. "Hang on a minute," she shouted, then looked around fruitlessly for a cloth to dry her hands with. Giving up, she shook what moisture she could from them as she walked to the door. She gave the knob a hard yank, then grinned at him.