Grease Monkey Jive (14 page)

She turned to Trevor. “Who did you have in mind?”

Trevor tipped his head up and smiled towards Dan, who was standing with Mitch and Belinda and the students of the advanced Latin class.

“You are mentally unbalanced,” said Scott, his jaw dropping.

“Trevor, you’re joking?” laughed Alex, but her smile fell when Trevor said, “I’m perfectly serious. We’re out of other options and it’s this or pull out of the comp.”

“But he’s a Neanderthal with two left feet. He knows nothing,” said Scott. “And even if he was minimally competent, why would he agree to it?”

“I just took his class. He knows a lot more than he lets on. He moves easily and he has an incredible presence. Dan and Alex would make a simply stunning partnership. If you’re half the teacher and choreographer you make out, Scotty, you can make this work. You can tailor the routines so Alex is the star and Dan is a superb support. You can play to his strengths. You can make everyone fall in love with them as a couple.”

On the sprung wooden floor between Scott’s plastic boot and Trevor’s leather soles lay an invisible gauntlet. Scott rolled his eyes; Alex held her breath. Dance with Dan? She looked over at him talking with Mitch. She knew he moved well, and picked up the steps quickly, but he was a rank beginner. He may look the part, but there was simply no way he’d agree to it anyway. Why on earth would he, especially after she’d been so contemptuous of him? Trevor was dreaming.

Trevor was moving. He was stalking across the floor towards Dan. Now Dan was laughing, running his hand through his thick wavy hair. Now they were both making their way across the room to her and Scott.

“Oh shit!” said Scott, cutting a look, part terror, part aggression, at her.

“I’ve told Dan our situation and he’s agreed to help,” said Trevor.

Standing beside Trevor, Dan looked at Alex. He couldn’t read her expression, but she looked more worried than relieved. He couldn’t imagine why they needed him. Trevor had just said Alex needed his help and that was enough to get him moving across the floor. But now that he was here and Scott was puffing like an old steam train, he was wondering what had possessed him. Alex didn’t even like him and he was so anxious about correcting that anomaly that he’d just agreed to God knows what without reading the fine print.

Scott sighed extravagantly. He stumped around Dan on his crutches slowly, making tutting noises, making Dan look over his shoulder to watch him.

“He’s not too tall. He’s got a decent body. Posture’s not bad. How are his knees? We need to know his knees are good,” said Scott.

“My knees are fine,” said Dan, bemused by Scott’s actions and words.

“Hmm, says his knees are fine. What about his back? If there are any back problems, then it’s over.”

“My back is fine.”

“Says his back is fine.”

“What about the feet? If they’re flat, this is not on.”

“Look, instep. I have an instep.” Dan lifted one bare foot and waggled it about.

“Hmm, says he has an instep. Gosh, he knows the proper word.”

“I’m right here, you know.”

“His ears work. Do we need that, working ears?”

“Hey!” Dan growled, leaning in towards Scott. “I didn’t ask to be here.”

“Mouth certainly works.”

Dan looked at Trevor and shook his head, his impulse to help out transformed into a strong desire to bolt. “Sorry mate, I’m outta here.”

“Dan, don’t! Scott!” said Trevor quickly, putting his hand on Dan’s arm and glaring at Scott.

“I said I’d do you a favour, but I didn’t sign up to be insulted and inspected like a side of beef,” Dan said, frowning at Trevor.

Scott snickered, “You said it, caveman, not me.”

“Scott!” Trevor near shouted.

“Oh, blow me!” Scott said, clenching his fists in frustration. “I don’t like this whole idea, but I can’t think of a better one. I don’t think caveman here can pull it off, but I don’t know what else we can do. Can you handle it, Alex?”

Could she? Dance with Dan, the caveman, the surfer, the player? The man who did extreme favours for people he barely knew? She couldn’t trust him – she wasn’t even sure she liked him – but he was standing there looking at her, waiting for her to say something. Trevor was right about his presence; he could draw eyes, he could enthral. Maybe she was part enthralled herself, part in lust with a caveman. Was that the reason she felt unbalanced around him? In any case, this was the last chance – she either agreed to this or their attempt was over.

“Yes,” she said, and Dan gave her a smile that crinkled his eyes and chiselled his cheek bones and she grinned back at him, and felt the stupidity of what they were thinking about. There was no way this would work, but it might be fun trying.

Scott sighed again, “We’re at your mercy, surfer dude. And I don’t like that either.”

Alex pressed her heel down on Scott’s good foot, not hard, but enough to warn him. “Dan, that’s Scott’s way of telling you he’s sorry. Right, Scott?” She shifted her gaze from Dan to Scott who said, “Something like that,” and pulled his foot away.

“Scott didn’t mean to insult you, Dan, but yes, we were inspecting you. If you had knee or back problems or flat feet we probably couldn’t do this. It would be too stressful for your body.”

Dan looked from Alex to Trevor; he held up both hands in a surrender gesture. “Ok, now you’ve got me worried. You’d better tell me exactly what it is you need from me.”

There was a silence and then Trevor, Alex, and Scott all spoke at once, making Dan blink in surprise. The reality of what they wanted him to do sunk in slowly. They wanted him to take Scott’s place in the dance competition for three rounds over the next nine weeks. They’d pay him five Gs if they won. His job was to help Alex stay in the placings while Scott’s ankle mended, so Scott and Alex had a chance at making the final round and claiming the fifty Gs prize money.

He was their last option. They were either completely friggin’ mad, or someone – Ant – had put them up to this. He roared with laughter. He wished Mitch and Fluke had stuck around to hear this. Maybe not Fluke. Fluke was likely to think this made up for causing Scott’s fall.

“I guess that’s a no then, Dan?” said Trevor.

Dan whipped around to face him. “You’re serious!”

Trevor nodded.

“What the hell makes you think I can do this? You’ve got advanced students so there must be other dancers around. I don’t get it. Someone put you up to this. You’re having me on.”

“It’s not a joke, Dan. We’ve tried to find other qualified dancers and, for one reason or another, we can’t get anyone,” said Alex. Now that Dan was back peddling, she was anxious to reel him in. He was their last chance and a last chance was better than nothing.

“Get a better qualified student than me – that can’t be hard,” Dan said. He looked at Trevor for an explanation that made sense.

“We have more qualified students than you, Dan, but none of them can match the way you look, the way you fit with Alex, and that goes a long way to making up the artistic side of the points score. We know you won’t score high for technique, but you have a strong presence and we can use that to our advantage,” said Trevor.

They were completely mad and he was thoroughly confused, but Scott got in his face. “You’re fricking good-looking and Alex is fricking gorgeous. You and Alex will look so fucking hot together, that no one will notice you can’t dance.”

His mouth dropped opened in surprise, he could’ve caught flies. He shook his head. “It can’t be that easy?”

“No. It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, caveman. You’ll have to learn all the steps, the routines, rehearse every day, and that’s just so you don’t make a laughing stock out of Alex,” said Scott. “And if this fool idea is of any value at all, you’ll have to dance passably well so that we don’t give the judges any reason to disqualify or eliminate us. Put it this way – if you screw up, Alex and I lose. So, no pressure.”

Dan met Scott’s eyes, saw the challenge he was throwing down, saw his fear and anxiety. Ok, so this wasn’t a joke on the scale of Ant’s usual machinations. This was real. It was still nuts – world class, fuck-up-waiting-to-happen nuts.

He looked at Alex. She was smiling at him. “It’s a big ask, Dan, a really big ask, and none of us can see any reason why you’d do it. Trevor thought it was worth a shot.”

Trevor nodded. “You’re Janelle Maddox’s kid, right?”

Dan started at the sound of his mother’s name.

“It shows. I think you have some magic to bring to this you don’t even know about. Sure it will be hard work. It’ll be strange. I’m not saying the ballroom scene is the sanest in the world, but if you are your mother’s son, you’ve got guts and you don’t back away from the hard stuff.”

“Did you know my mother?” Something shifted in his chest at the idea of hearing about her.

Trevor shook his head. “No. I saw her dance. She was beautiful and she was a legend in the ballroom community. She was always the first to try something new. She was bold. She took risks, on the dance floor and in her life, and it was impossible not to watch her, whatever she was doing. You’ve got that quality in you, Dan, hard to define, but impossible to ignore.”

This had gone from weird to weirder. Dan shook his head to try and order his scrambled thinking. He couldn’t see any way this could be good, any way he could legitimately pull this off. His mother was a remote memory, shimmery and painful, and the reflection in the window was the proof he was his father’s son. He was a grease monkey, not a dancer. He dealt with cars not cha-chas, was built to climb under chassis’ not caper around a dance floor. He was only here because of the bet anyway. It would be wrong to get into this and then let Alex down.

“I really don’t think this is a good idea, guys. Alex, I’m sorry. I know what this means to you, but I can’t help you.”

Trevor reached out and gripped his arm. “Will you think about it, overnight?”

He sighed, shook his head. There was nothing to think about. This was quite possibly the dumbest idea he’d ever heard, but the look on Alex’s face arrested him. Something about the disappointment he saw in her eyes made him hesitate.

“Ok, I’ll think about it.” He could call Trevor in the morning and put this whole craziness to bed. He nodded to Scott, gave Alex a smile, and moved to the back of the room to pick up his bag.

Alex had trouble identifying the feelings that whispered through her body as she watched Dan leave the studio. She was slightly awed at Trevor’s insights about him, annoyed with Scott for being so obnoxious towards him, and totally mystified about why Dan would consider their proposal. It was last grasp madness and inspired genius at the same time, but nothing about it would make sense to Dan.

So why did he agree to think about it overnight? Why didn’t he just walk away to the tune of Scott’s insults?

As she watched Dan chat to Belinda, she worked it out. Fear. That’s what she felt. Not relief that there was a chance still to stay in the competition, but a gut churning fear that he might actually agree.

If he agreed, she’d have to spend a huge amount of time with him, work closely with him. She’d have to let him touch her – she’d have to touch him back. They’d have to learn each other’s bodies and anticipate each other’s thoughts and that scared the hell out of her. He’d invade her life and she wasn’t sure she could manage a man like Dan Maddox doing that.

Scott calling the advanced Latin class to order brought her focus back to the room. There really wasn’t much sense to what she was feeling. There was no way Dan was going to say yes anyway.

Dan was just about out the door when Belinda grabbed his arm.

“What was that about?” she said.

“They want me to fill in for Scott in the dance competition.”

“You!” Belinda’s shock was amusing.

“Yeah me,” he said laughing. It truly was a stupendously dumb idea.

“Why would they think you can do it?” Belinda said, suspicion narrowing her eyes.

Dan shrugged, “Beats me.” He wasn’t buying all that stuff Trevor said about him having a presence like his Mum, though it was interesting to hear him compared to her. Refreshing even. It sounded so much better than the usual, ‘you’re so like your father’ refrain.

“Are you going to do it?”

“I agreed to think about it.” And leaving the studio, in the Valiant, on the drive home, at the supermarket getting milk, cereal, and dog food, and back in the flat with Jeff, he thought of little else.

In the morning he had his answer.

Dan had sympathy for Jeff. Sometimes it wasn’t easy being the dog in the Maddox family. Jeff had a hard morning. First there was the overly long beachside run, much longer and harder than normal, and then the unexpected visitor. Now, there were loud unpleasant noises. It looked like Jeff’s plan was to stay under the kitchen table until they stopped.

Jimmy was the one making all the noise. “Did I ask you to make that payment?”

“No.”

“Then who made you God?”

Dan turned his back on Jimmy and filled the kettle. If they really got into it now, he’d be late for work. He’d already pushed it this morning by going for a longer run. He’d wanted to make sure he made the right decision about competition and he needed a clear head for that. By the time he and Jeff were back at the flat, he was comfortable about calling Trevor to say no and bemused he’d entertained thoughts otherwise.

“You answer me when I’m talking to you.”

“Dad, I made the payment because the bank called. You’re behind and I’m the guarantor on the truck loan. What did you want me to do, let you default?”

“Fucking bank. I was only a week late and they can’t wait a week.”

“No, they’re not good at that.”

“Fuck the bank. Fuck you.”

Dan sighed. The kettle boiled. He met Jeff’s wary eyes as he cowered behind the chair legs. Jeff was the smart one. He wondered why he’d let Jimmy in because now he was going to have trouble getting him out. “Ok, well I know how you feel now. I won’t do it again.”

“You can bloody well wait till I ask you next time. I don’t need my own son thinking he needs to be my saviour.”