Grease Monkey Jive (32 page)

He watched Dan and Alex go through the section of the routine they’d just learned again. There was an easy playfulness to their dancing. Dan’s eyes were never off Alex and her touches were either teasing stings or quick caresses. It was hard to tell which Dan enjoyed more. Scott was so pleased Trevor had pushed him to put them together. So pleased their relationship was now set to glow both on and off the floor.

Dan was boyishly excited about Trevor’s data on Janelle, but not so side-tracked that he’d forgotten about Alex. He wanted her with him another night. He was conscious this was a change for him, wanting a woman in his space, in his cave, continuously, but he had no idea if it was too much for her. Outside of the bedroom and their moments on the dance floor, she was so self-contained, her thoughts a mystery to him even if her body and her reaction to his touch no longer were.

“Will you stay with me tonight?” When he tried to kiss her he got smile and teeth and laughter in response. It was a shocker of a kiss, but a great response.

He cooked a quick meal of chicken, vegetables, and rice, oyster sauce and ginger. He had her sit while he worked, set the table, poured water, and placed a meal in front of her. It was simple, but it would have to do. She was probably used to better, to Gwen’s roasts and restaurant diners, with proper table cloths and linen napkins instead of paper serviettes.

“You can cook.”

“I can scrounge a meal together. I’m no chef. You can ask Jeff; he rejects the leftovers.”

“I’ve never had a meal cooked for me by a lover before.”

Dan’s head jerked up, his fork clattering against his plate. He wasn’t sure which part of her sentence to react to. He said, “Never?” But the smile on his face was for the L word, not one he’d ever thought to hear her say.

“A high school crush used to cook me pasta, but I don’t think that counts. His mother was in the house. Phil preferred me to cook or restaurant food. So you’ve no idea how perfect this is.”

“Just be aware my repertoire doesn’t get much better than this. I’m a functional cook. A guy’s gotta eat. But I can’t do anything special.”

“You’re doing it now.”

“Just as well you’re so damn sweet – there’s no dessert.”

There was, though it wasn’t of the food variety, and they both knew it.

Watching her laugh at him across the table, Dan felt a man could probably live on vegetables and rice and Alex and the idea spooked him. He was so fallen, so gone on this woman with her pale knowing eyes, cool exterior, and flashing smiles.

She was like a rogue wave, come suddenly without precedent, unpredictable but in control, defining him with her very presence in opposition to his, making him re-think, recalculate his response. If he didn’t approach her right, manage her well, she’d crush him, roll right over him, spit him out, and leave him tasting sand.

She said, “Speaking of mothers, I’ll wash up. You go look at Trevor’s stuff.”

“Leave it; come with me.”

“You start. I’ll catch up.”

Trevor had assembled photographs, video, newspaper clippings, and interviews of Janelle on to a DVD, almost an hour of content and all of it new to Dan. He watched while Alex moved about in the kitchen.

His mother was a ghost, but so was the woman now dancing and talking on his TV screen. He saw nothing in her that he recognised in himself and nothing that fit his memories of her. She was petite where he was tall and broad, she was blonde where he was dark.

Where was the woman who had smelled of lavender and had made him brush his teeth, called him her hero, and read him stories at night? This woman looked like she preferred parties to story books. Where was the woman who put band-aids on his scraped knees and danced with him in the lounge room, making him repeat the steps till he knew them, making him squirm when she smoothed his hair and kissed him? This woman on his TV was lively and laughing, not a mother who cooked and cleaned and made him do his homework.

And it didn’t seem possible that someone with such spirit could be dead.

Dan wasn’t ready for how this made him feel. There was a wretchedness sitting in his chest, a slow burning anger towards this bright, sexy woman dancing in a sparkling yellow dress. His gut clenched at a sudden painful memory of how the night she’d died he’d cried himself to sleep and in the morning Jimmy told him to grow up and not cry any more. He’d been frightened of his real father, so he’d done as he was told, and the little boy who’d danced in the lounge room to Whitney, Mariah, Janet, and Madonna hadn’t danced anymore. Til now.

“What are you thinking?” said Alex from the doorway. She had mugs of tea in her hands.

“I’m nothing like her. I was hoping I’d see something in her that was me. I’m all Jimmy, all the time. Stupid of me. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ve seen photographs before, but I thought this might be different somehow.”

Alex watched the screen, Janelle and Bobbie waltzing. “She’s a great dancer, Dan, and she’s beautiful.”

“She is. But I don’t remember her like this. She was just my mum.” He gestured towards the screen, “This is someone I don’t recognise. I can’t understand why this woman would even look at Jimmy.”

“There must be some good things about your father.”

“He’s never killed anyone. He’s never been to gaol. He gave me how I look and my physical strength, so I can thank him for being strong and having good hair.”

Alex’s brow was crinkled. Dan didn’t want her to see this darkness, but it was a bitter tang in his mouth flavouring all the things he said.

“Your mum married him.”

“He got her pregnant.”

“With you?”

“No. She lost that baby. She fell down some stairs. He got her pregnant again to keep her. It’s one of the few stories he ever told me about her. How they fought and she fell. How I’d have had a brother otherwise. He told it like he was glad in the end there was only me to cramp his style. I always wondered if he pushed her. I asked him once. He gave me a black eye.”

“Oh God, Dan.”

“Old news. I don’t want to talk about Jimmy.”

“Do you ever?”

“Who would I talk to? Jeff’s not a fan and the boys already know first-hand what he’s like.”

“You could talk to me.”

“And have you run for the hills, instead of my bedroom? We’re a bit new to load you up with this.”

“I trust you not to drop me. You can trust me not to drop you.”

“Ah, Alex. I’m not sure what to say. He’s an angry man. I think he must have loved my mother at some point, but I can’t know that. All I know is how much he blamed her for abandoning him and then dying and leaving him responsible for me. He wasn’t designed to be a father and certainly not a single father. He didn’t know what to do with me, so for the most part he did nothing.”

Dan stood to remove the disk from the player. He could see Alex on the couch reflected in the blank TV screen. “Mitch and Fluke’s families were the ones who looked out for me. A couple of teachers too. The rest of the time I just worked it out for myself.”

When he turned back to her, he couldn’t read her expression, but she was focused on him, her eyes wide open and wary. “I don’t need your sympathy, Alex.” He didn’t want her too close to this part of his life. It was best forgotten.

“Why not? You had a tough childhood. I knew that before tonight. I knew you were the kid who’d slept in a bus shelter.”

“Yeah, but you don’t need to know that I put myself to bed, cooked my own meals, cleaned up my old man’s vomit. You don’t need to know he never once bought me a birthday present or looked at a school report or ironed me a shirt. I was a little kid, Alex. You don’t need to know how it went.”

But he’d just told her, in a voice that stung with anger. He saw it register on her face, the awfulness of it and the knowledge of how it still affected him. It would be fitting if she made her excuses and left him now. They stared at each other across the battered coffee table and he steeled himself to hold her gaze. This was who he was and he couldn’t do anything to change it. But he hadn’t meant for her to see this.

When Alex held out her hand, he took it, still cagey, but he let her draw him down beside her on the couch. Some of his tension released when she leaned her head on his shoulder.

“You’re right, Dan. It’s none of my business. I’m sorry. I just want you to know I’m here if you want to talk.”

He’d said more than enough, more than he’d ever said to anyone other than the boys. He wrapped his arm around Alex and rocked her to his side, struck by how quickly she’d become so important to him.

“Let me tell you what I know,” she said, rolling her head around to look him in the face. “You say your father is a violent drunk and I’m not disputing that, but I know that you’re not. There is nothing violent about you. I could never trust you to partner me, to lift me, to take me to bed and make love to me, if I thought you were violent.”

She resettled herself to kiss him, softly, dryly. “Here’s what else I know. You’re a survivor and you’ve made a life for yourself despite what Jimmy did to you.”

He tried to increase the pressure of the kiss. He wanted to kill this conversation and make her forget, make himself forget, but she pulled away.

“I’m not finished. You don’t think there’s anything of your mother in you. You’re wrong.” She went back to the player and slid the disk back in, brought Janelle’s image back onto the screen. “See that woman, look how charismatic she is.”

Reluctantly he turned his eyes from Alex to the TV.

“You can’t help but want to watch her. She’s got this magic about her. It helped make her a champion. She’s not classically beautiful, but she’s incredibly sexy. I know you can see that.”

“Yeah, I can see it. I guess it’s why I don’t recognise her as my mum. What are you saying?”

“That’s you, Dan. That’s the part of Janelle you inherited. That’s why women fall at your feet, why everyone remembers your name, why waitresses are in love with you. It’s not for your skills in the kitchen, it’s just you.”

He must have had a not-buying-it look on his face because she went on.

“The way you carry yourself, the way you open yourself up, that smile, how you look people in the eyes. I don’t have the right words to tell you what you have. It’s indefinable, but it’s real, Dan, and it’s what your mother gave you. Jimmy might have given you your looks, but your mother gave you your essence.”

He was on his feet now. He stepped in closer to the screen, studying Janelle, Alex’s words ringing in his head. His mother was magical to watch. Every twist of her shoulder, flick of her hand, tilt of her head, you had to follow them to see where they would lead, just in case you missed something important. It wasn’t a studied thing, not forced or turned on for the cameras, it was natural. There was one scene of her tripping, but you didn’t notice her clumsiness, you noticed how much fun she was having. You’d watch her just to see her trip again.

The fanbelt in his head was spinning furiously as images, thoughts, and feelings connected. If he was like his mother then Jimmy would have known it; maybe that’s why he’d been so rough on him. He could continue to punish the woman who’d left him by hurting the boy who was like her.

“Alex!” He grabbed her to him, crushing her mouth with a kiss that held all the pain of memories and the surprise of revelation. She kissed him back as hard, letting him fold her into his ache, helping him plaster the old wound over.

Then she led him into the bedroom wearing a mood he recognised. Teacher, instructress, leader – he was willingly her student. She’d just taught him something new about his life, she could do anything she wanted to him.

She pulled at his t-shirt, “Off.” She slapped the elastic on his workout pants and repeated the instruction, “Off.”

“What about you?” She was still wearing her dance skins.

“I’m in charge here.”

“Don’t I get a say?”

“You get to do as you’re told.”

“And if I don’t?”

Alex shrugged, a show of nonchalance, as the thumb of one hand dragged the side of her skins down one lean hip giving him a glimpse of her butterfly, giving him a look that could boil water.

“I see.”

“Patience. You’ll see what I let you see, when I let you see it.”

Dan’s eyes popped. She was a supped-up, hyper-drive version of the Alex who’d first taught him to dance. She was not to be disobeyed. So far he liked the lesson. He dragged his shirt off over his head and shrugged out of his pants and underwear.

She rewarded him by pulling the spike from her bun and shaking her hair out around her face. But that wasn’t near enough.

“Hey,” he gestured to his own nakedness.

“On the bed.”

When he stood his ground, she said, “I’m waiting.” None of his teachers had ever been this demanding or this sexy.

She had him lay flat on his back in the middle of the bed and she let him watch while she stripped off the tight pants and the g-string under them, the cropped top and the black silky bra. There was nothing hasty in her movements. She was slow and deliberate in her strip tease and she ignored him, never once looking at him or acknowledging his hunger for her, except when he sat up. Then she stopped, turned her back on him as if to leave the room. When he sank down again, she turned quickly, but not enough to hide her smile.

She crawled up on the bed and straddled him. “I’m going to explore you.”

He dragged his eyes from her perfect form to her gorgeous face. “I’m not going to stop you.”

“You might. There are rules.”

He put his hands to her waist to hold her in place.

“No touching the dancer.”

“What?”

“No touching the dancer. If you touch me, I’ll leave you here all wound up and frustrated.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

“Alex?”

“Arms out at your sides. Crucifix.”

“And if I do this, what’s in it for me?”

She drew her wet heat up against him, a long, full, weighted stroke and threw her head back, her moan making him catch his breath. “Oh God, yeah, stupid question.”

“No talking.”

He closed his mouth and released her and opened his arms out, one hand gripping the edge of the bed, the other fisted in the sheet. He was drunk on the sight of her, his head filled with the spicy scent of her skin, of the music of her voice as she used their wordless language to appraise him.