Such a Dance (8 page)

“Oh.” Eddie wasn’t sure why he found that disappointing, but at least he hadn’t been mistaken.

Lane took a step closer to where Eddie stood on the sidewalk. Forty-eighth Street was mostly deserted, but, either way, they were partially hidden by the awning on the shop next door to the Marigold, a rundown storefront that, from the looks of it, sold sewing machine supplies.

Eddie blinked and Lane was standing right in front of him.

“Why did you come to see me tonight?” Lane asked.

“I’m not sure, exactly,” said Eddie, which was mostly true. “I, um, saw you last night. In the audience. And I . . .” He shook his head, not wanting to admit to anything.

“What?” Lane stepped into the space around Eddie. Then he reached over and tucked a loose lock of Eddie’s hair away from his face and into his hat. That little touch was like a jolt through Eddie’s whole system.

“I saw you last night and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since.”

One of those suppressed smiles flashed on Lane’s face again. He shook his head. “I just came out for some fresh air. Do you want to come back in with me and have a drink? The band is in rare form tonight.”

“All right,” said Eddie. “Yes, let’s go in.”

 

Over cups of ice and the very excellent whiskey Mook had managed to procure, they sat at Lane’s corner table and chatted.

“Do you go to theater often?” Eddie asked.

Lane shrugged. “Sure. I try to see the big shows every year. When I was a kid in Illinois, my mother got one of the New York newspapers delivered, and it always had theater reviews. I used to read them and imagine myself in the audience. We went to see theater sometimes in Chicago, though. Florenz Ziegfeld did a revue there when I was a teenager, maybe in 1911. Eugen Sandow was his headliner. Did you ever see him?”

Eddie smiled. “I met him once, actually. I was really young, fifteen or sixteen, and I was doing stupid little routines on the boardwalk in Coney Island for pocket change. He held an exhibition there for bodybuilders, and I snuck into it. After the show, I was feeling particularly brave, so I walked up to him when he was signing autographs and introduced myself.” He laughed and shook his head. “I was so young.”

“He was a fine specimen of a man, though, wasn’t he?”

Eddie laughed again. “Oh, lord. That man was something else.”

“Seeing him on a stage did some strange things to me.” Lane shook his head at the memory, recalling that seeing a scantily clad man flexing his muscles had been about the most arousing thing his teenage self had ever seen. The memory brought with it some nostalgia, but horror, too, as it had been one of the first times Lane had realized he was different from the other boys. “Strange things,” he whispered.

“I’ll bet.” Eddie winked.

Raul walked over and told Lane he had a phone call. Lane nodded and excused himself. Eddie tipped his hat as Lane left the table. He walked to his office, in the back of the building, off the kitchen. And, somewhat to his chagrin, he found it was David Epstein on the phone.

“How’s business?” Epstein asked, his customary greeting.

“Good, good. Full house tonight.”

“Excellent. I understand Mook got you a shipment of whiskey from Canada.”

“Yes. It’s very good.”

“I’ve got a guy who can get you rum from the Caribbean. Knows the runners in the boats off the coast.”

“Thank you, sir, but I promised Mook—”

“I’m not actually giving you a choice in the matter. I spent a lot of dough on this deal. Expect a shipment on Thursday.”

Lane sighed. He didn’t like doing business with unknown parties, but he didn’t want to anger Epstein. Sometimes staying alive required being threatening, but sometimes it required going along. “Of course, sir.”

He endured a long lecture from Epstein about loyalty. Epstein offered him a pair of Yankees tickets, which Lane thanked him for but declined as politely as he could. He liked baseball all right, and there were remarkable things happening at Yankee Stadium that season if the sports pages were to be believed, but he didn’t have time to waste in the Bronx just then. After a few minutes, he finally managed to get off the phone. He walked back out to the floor.

Lane liked the look of Eddie sitting at his table with a drink in his hand and a dazed expression on his face as he took it all in. He bobbed his head slightly in time with the music.

The band was good. It was made up of musicians who had been exiled from other bands. Legs Aurelio had some contacts at other clubs and had helped Lane find them and get them to play together. Something about their shared status as outcasts had made the musicians come together in a spectacular way. Tonight, their playing just worked and nearly everyone in the place was competing for space on the dance floor.

Lane wanted to be one of those men competing for space.

He walked over to the table and smiled at Eddie. “Would you care to dance?”

“With you?”

Lane bit back a laugh. “That is what I was implying, yes.”

Eddie eyed the dance floor warily. “I don’t know . . .”

“Please don’t tell me you don’t know how to dance.”

Eddie looked up at Lane, a blank expression on his face. Then, finally, he cracked and started to laugh. “Oh, sure, I’m hot on a stage, but here?”

Lane walked over to where Eddie sat and offered his hand. “One dance.”

Eddie stared at Lane’s hand. “What if... ?”

Lane understood then that Eddie’s reluctance was due in fact to a fear that someone would recognize him. “Wear your hat.”

Eddie fingered the edge of the fedora that sat on the table. He looked like he was still deciding until the band kicked it up a notch, playing a lively tune that Lane didn’t recognize, though Eddie seemed to know it. He picked up the fedora, put it on his head, and stood up next to Lane. Very softly, so that only Lane could hear, he sang a few bars of the song. His voice was smooth and rang out, even through all the noise in the club. It was a strong reminder that this man was, in fact, a gifted performer, the same man he’d seen and been enchanted by on the stage the night before. And yet, he was also just Eddie.

“Let’s dance,” Eddie said.

Before Eddie could change his mind, Lane grabbed his hand and dragged him over to the floor. “I’ll warn you that I am, in fact, a completely terrible dancer.”

Eddie took a moment to listen to the tune. Then he said, “Try this.” He took a few steps. Lane tried to mimic them. Then Eddie tried something a little more complicated, and Lane tripped when trying to copy the moves. Eddie laughed. He reached over and put a hand on Lane’s shoulder. “You really do have two left feet.”

“I think I have five.”

“Here, watch me.”

Eddie pushed gently away from Lane, and then he was off, his feet moving impossibly fast as he stepped to the music, and it was impressive enough that the other men on the dance floor started to notice. Eddie, granted, had his hat pulled low on his face and was wearing street clothes, so it was probably not obvious to anyone but Lane who he really was, but it was clear he was a professional dancer. Some of the other men hooted and whistled when Eddie really got going. Then he stopped suddenly and held his hand out toward Lane.

Lane took it reluctantly and immediately found himself in Eddie’s arms as they did some kind of improvised close dancing that felt ridiculous and amazing all at once. “There’s no way I can keep up with you.”

Eddie laughed. He had a great laugh. Lane was amazed that the otherwise morose Eddie seemed most happy when he was dancing. “Oh, I’m just showing off. Ignore me.”

“I couldn’t ignore you if I tried.”

Lane put his hand on Eddie’s waist and looked around as they danced. There were other men on the dance floor showing off for each other, throwing their feet around or trying out wild steps. There were a few smudgers, too, men dancing close together. There was even a couple kissing in the corner. Lane turned back to Eddie, who was grinning and trying to lead Lane in some kind of dance. Lane really wanted to kiss him.

When Lane leaned in, Eddie turned his head, so Lane contented himself with kissing his cheek. He resolved, though, that if they were going to keep seeing each other, Eddie was going to relent and let himself be kissed one of these days.

But for now, they danced closely. They danced until the band took a break. Sometimes Eddie would stop to teach Lane something. Sometimes they would both just make up steps. Sometimes they danced so close that Lane could feel the whole length of Eddie’s body pressing against his.

The band stopped playing, and a very sweaty Eddie laughed as he pulled away from Lane gently. “This is fun,” he said. “I’ve never danced with a man before.”

“Really?” Lane couldn’t imagine how that could be possible, except that he could. There weren’t many opportunities for men to dance together like this, at least not in public.

“Really,” Eddie said. “I appreciate that you let me lead. I probably could have figured out the follower’s part, but—”

“I’m happy to have you lead me. I’ve never danced much at all.”

Eddie smiled. “You’d be just fine with a little practice.”

Lane put his hand on the small of Eddie’s back and started to steer him back toward his table. Eddie stopped suddenly and turned around. He grabbed the lapels of Lane’s jacket and leaned in close, his lips grazing the edge of Lane’s jaw. “You want to go to my place?” Eddie asked.

Lane laughed. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Ain’t We Got Fun?”

T
here was a jumbled dream about horse racing and losing a bet and drinking too much, and then Eddie eased awake and found himself naked in bed with a hand not his own pressed to his belly.

He thought that an interesting development. He shifted slightly so that he could see where the hand went, how it was connected to a long arm decorated with dark hair, how the arm curved, how the biceps and shoulder muscles stood out prominently, how the collarbone led to the beautiful face of Lane, whose eyes were closed and mouth agape as he slept.

Eddie sighed happily, remembering how they got to this point. His movement caused Lane to stir, but he didn’t wake up, and instead snuggled closer to Eddie. Eddie had a vision of what life could be like: instead of hiding behind the heavy curtains of his room at the Knickerbocker, they were in an open, sunny bedroom, lingering in bed in the morning, maybe reading the paper, maybe eating breakfast, maybe just talking about nothing. It was a nice image, but, Eddie reminded himself, it was not a world they were a part of, and that’s not what this was.

Lane mumbled something and then came awake slowly. He blinked a few times, and then saw Eddie and smiled. He leaned over and kissed Eddie’s cheek. “Hello,” he said.

“Hi.”

Lane yawned. “What time is it?”

Eddie looked over at the bedside clock. “A little after five.”

“Plenty of time, then.”

“For what?”

Lane reached under the sheet. His hand moved around Eddie’s lower body until it settled on what it was looking for and gave a gentle squeeze. Eddie grunted and shifted his body a little closer to Lane’s.

Lane smiled at him and smoothed Eddie’s hair out of his face. “You know,” Lane said, “we could make this a regular thing.”

“We could.” Eddie couldn’t think of a reason not to.

“It makes sense, right? We make some arrangement to meet regularly like this. This is a good thing, what we have here. Right?”

“Sure. Yes.” It was good. Eddie allowed himself to hope for a moment that this regular thing could continue to be good, though he knew moments like this were fleeting.

Lane shifted and moved his legs so that they were layered with Eddie’s. He sighed sleepily and then drifted off before Eddie could say anything more.

 

Lane woke up in an empty bed. He sat up and looked around. Eddie was seated in a chair at his desk, hunched over what looked like a notebook, staring intently at the page. Feeling inspired, Lane very quietly got out of bed. He walked up behind Eddie and slowly snaked his arms around him. Eddie instantly stiffened, but didn’t otherwise move away. Lane felt him sigh.

“Are you all right?” Lane asked.

“Just looking at some music,” Eddie said, gesturing to a page of notes in front of him. The title on top of the page read, “My Heart Is Full.”

“Are you singing this song?” Lane asked. The notes on the page might as well have been a foreign language for all the sense they made to Lane.

“No. Marian is.”

Eddie’s tone was so neutral that Lane found it alarming. There was no emotion at all. Lane looked at the page and wished he could read it, wished he could see what Eddie saw there. It all looked like a jumble of lines and dots and symbols. “Do you like the song?”

“Sure, it’s pretty. Not the kind of thing Marian usually sings.”

“How did she—”

Eddie cut him off. “It’s not important.”

Lane held up his hands and backed away.

Eddie turned around in the chair. He frowned. “I’m sorry for snapping. But we’re not . . . you and I are not friends.”

“We could be.”

Eddie gestured at the space between them. “See, this is why I pay for sex. At the end of the night, the other fella leaves. There’s no bull.”

“There’s no feeling.”

“Maybe I like it that way.” Eddie turned back around to his music.

Lane was surprised by how hurt he felt by that. He tried to come up with a joke to cover it, but his mouth stubbornly asked, “So this regular thing we decided to have is just sex. I come here and we fuck and that’s it.”

“That’s what I said.” Eddie didn’t turn around. He kept his head down, looking at the music. After a long pause, he added, “Look, that’s all I have to offer you, okay? I can’t have some happy little romance. That’s not how this works.”

Lane sighed, not sure that he could come up with a convincing counter-argument. Eddie’s attitude was one Lane had encountered before. He had a number of friends in the New York queer community, and plenty of them felt strongly that long-lasting relationships between men were an impossibility, that all that there could ever be was sex but not love. Sometimes Lane believed that. But what about Clarence and his George? What about Scott?

More to the point, Lane thought as he stared at Eddie’s back hunched over that desk, there was a lot more here than just sex. It wasn’t a mere transaction. There was also conversation and affection and, yes, maybe even the beginning of friendship. Maybe it wasn’t a romance, but it was a lot more than sex.

Which was why Lane didn’t run out of the room then. He wasn’t sure what made Eddie so stubborn, if it was some past experience or else just a delusion that queer men were not capable of anything more than fucking, but something in Lane wanted to stick around and get to the bottom of it. So he said, “All right. I’m not proposing we get all sweet. I’m not going to bring you flowers or try to talk you into necking in the back of a taxi. All I was trying to do was say that I like you, which I thought would be evident anyway since I’ve now spent the night with you twice.”

Eddie dropped his head back and looked at the ceiling. He didn’t say anything.

So Lane started to get dressed. “Not that I think friendship is such a bad thing. Seems to me, you could use a friend.”

Eddie didn’t say anything, but Lane saw him close his eyes.

“Worth thinking about, at any rate,” Lane said, pulling on his shirt. “Look, anytime you want me, come by the Marigold.”

Eddie stood up and nodded. Then he really surprised Lane by shooting him a wounded look. Yes, this man was hurting on the inside. Lane knew he should probably give up on Eddie, that even regular sex with Eddie would probably be more trouble than it was worth, that he didn’t need any more stubborn people in his life. But something about that look had him wanting to stay, wanting to figure out how to heal it. Eddie, Lane decided, needed him.

Then Eddie said, “You could, uh, come by the theater. After the last curtain. I usually leave around eleven. Stage door, the one that exits onto Forty-first Street.”

It wasn’t an admission of anything, but it sure was a hell of an invitation. “All right,” Lane said. “Maybe I’ll stop by sometime.”