LET'S DANCE
5
LET'S DANCE
It didn’t rain.
Truman didn’t dance in the street, but kept his eyes on the skies, looking for clouds, hoping the weather would turn. But the days stayed warm and dry, and he felt guilty ignoring his music.
Jacob had warned Truman about the Fourth of July traffic at the resort, but it still didn’t prepare him for the onslaught of tourists and locals who rolled in for the festivities.
Andrea worked the front desk while Truman manned the side register for the little general store. By the afternoon, the crowds swarmed the store nonstop, the check-out line always two or three people deep. He hardly had a moment to think between transactions. When he did have a few moments, he ran to the back cooler to restock the beer. Even Jacob’s wife Lisa came in to help for a few hours.
About four o’clock, Truman rang up a 12-pack of Schmidt beer for a local, Ben Dobbs, a logger who lived up the road in one of four cabins the locals called the Stone Cabins.
Andrea attended to a couple checking into an RV spot. They were staying a month, leaving only after the annual Northwest Championship Hobie Cat sailboat races took place on Lake Quinault in August. They had their Hobie Cat on a trailer behind their Airstream RV.
“Getting a head start, are we?” Andrea asked them.
“Our first time in Quinault,” said the woman. She was about Truman’s age, early thirties, brown hair tied back into a ponytail. “Since it’s our first time on this lake, we wanted to get a feel for it, and have a good vacation at the same time.”
Andrea handed them a card to fill out. “Spot number twenty-two. Are you going to pay nightly or by the week?”
Truman turned back to his own cash register and found Dennis Reynolds, a high school senior, waiting with some Doritos, M&Ms, and sodas. He worked across the street as a dishwasher. Jacob had hired him a few weeks back to help with the summer rush.
“Hey, Dennis.” Truman’s fingers flicked across the register, entering the totals.
“I hear you play guitar,” Dennis said. He had blonde hair and blue eyes, but Truman didn’t see much life in his dark pupils.
“That’s $9.44,” Truman said, smiling. “Sure, I play. You too?”
He nodded, but he didn’t smile or look that excited about it. “I’m already working on the basics,” he said. “I want to learn more, and there’s no music teacher at the school. It’s boring this summer.”
“You graduated this year, right?”
“Yeah. The one thing my parents did of any use to me was buy a guitar for a graduation present.”
Truman nodded, smiling politely. “Nice. Actually, I think I might have heard you playing it one night across the street, back behind the restaurant.”
Dennis frowned, then remembered what Truman meant. “Right, on a break. Out in the fenced supply area. I guess sound travels.”
“Sounded all right.”
“I’m thinking I can improve.” He handed Truman a ten-dollar bill. “Maybe you’d be willing to give me a few pointers? A lesson or two?”
The request surprised Truman. He stared at Dennis, who now looked at him expectantly. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m willing to pay some.”
Truman handed back the change. “I don’t really have time—”
“Maybe we can see how it goes.”
Truman crossed his arms, staring Dennis down. The boy looked uncomfortable.
“Okay. We’ll figure something out. Promise.”
“Awesome. Thanks.” He looked toward the door. “Well. I’m going across the way and get back to work. Looks like everyone’s getting here early for the fireworks.”
Dennis left and closed the door behind him.
Truman hardly believed he’d agreed to give the kid some guitar lessons. When would he have time? He wondered if he’d enjoy it, or resent the time it took away from composing.
Then again, what composing was he actually doing?
Perhaps teaching would lead him back to normal work habits. The July weather wasn’t likely to change, and he really wanted to return to the first movement of his symphony, muse or no muse.
Kachina.
The name came to him again, and it was like before, as if it had just been implanted into his brain.
Is that your name?
His skin prickled, and he shook off the chill and forced himself to smile at the next customer.
Every Fourth of July, the Quinault Tribe put on a fireworks show at the Cedars Resort. Locals and tourists alike gathered during much of the day on the large lawn that sloped down to the lake shore, anxious to find a good viewing spot.
A beautiful evening. The lake like glass. Clear, warm, and quite without any rain.
Jacob kept the store open an hour longer to accommodate the extra traffic before and after the show, so when the first fireworks went off at 9:30, Truman was still on duty. Predictably, the customers disappeared when the first mortar thunked its payload skyward, lighting up the darkness with blooms and sparkles.
Truman stepped outside with Andrea, and they viewed the show from the front porch. Five minutes in, Truman realized they hadn’t said a word to each other, preferring to admire the pyrotechnics without comment. The crowd on the lawn across the street provided plenty of commentary, however, the oohs and ahhs joining the pops and booms of the fireworks. Truman daydreamed about those firework detonations burning a hole in the sky and letting loose a torrent of rain: soaking him and drowning him and filling him up with the voice of his muse, flooding the valley with music to soothe his soul.
The fireworks ended with no such apocalyptic rapture, and Truman found the grand finale anti-climatic and disappointing. What had he expected? His dancer to swoop down from the sky on a wall of water?
Later that night the festivities continued in the lounge, more boisterous than usual with the holiday crowd enjoying the afterglow of the evening. During the off-season, the lounge closed down early, usually at nine, but the summer crowds made it worthwhile to stay open until midnight, and on the weekends, until two a.m. On the biggest weekends, Jacob hired small bands to provide live music, and tonight, Black Velvet—two guys and a drum machine—were trying to rock out with covers of ’70s and ’80s tunes.
Cheesy. Truman didn’t say so to Jacob, who bought him two drinks before drifting off to mingle with the crowd. Truman sat at the bar flanked by strangers. A lot of locals knew him now, but none were close enough to talk to, and he frankly didn’t want to give up his bar seat.
Black Velvet had just started ba ba baa-ing a pretty decent version of Abba’s “Take a Chance on Me” when Truman noticed the woman on the small dance floor in front of the brick fireplace. Her feet barely moved, but she twisted and rocked back and forth to the beat, her arms held up high, head bobbing and turning side to side. Multi-colored lights flashed in her long, silky black hair, as if the ceiling spotlights were focused on her alone. Her hair whipped across her face with each bob of her head. She had on a dark halter top and wore jean shorts that were loose around her thin legs.
Much of the dance floor was in shadow, and most of the dancers did their own thing along the periphery of the spot-lit floor, but here was this thin dark-haired woman, maybe late twenties, bathed in diffused light, radiating a sexual energy that Truman found difficult to ignore. He couldn’t make out her face, but imagined it was angelic.
She was dancing alone.
Several dozen people sat near Truman or leaned against the dividing wall separating the main bar from the lower level, but they didn’t pay any attention to the girl. For a moment, Truman wondered if he was seeing things, but just then a couple came onto the floor and purposefully stepped around her to find a spot to dance. As Black Velvet crooned Abba’s lyrics about love strong enough to last, she spun, her arms wide and head back, and he heard her yell out “It’s magic” in synch with the music.
The boys in the band finished their Abba tune, said thank you, then flew into David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance.”
She mouthed the words to the song, channeling Bowie, colored lights on her face, swaying under the moonlight, now, the serious moonlight. She smiled in his direction. He was one of many guys in her line of sight, so he most likely imagined it, but it still made him smile back and nod. Then she was spinning again, drifting out of the spotlight toward the darker edge of the dance floor and the seating area near the double doors to the deck.
“Let’s Dance” ended, Black Velvet announcing a short break, and when Truman turned back to the dance floor, the girl was gone, nowhere in sight. He stood next to his chair and scanned the lounge, but he didn’t spot her. A surge of panic ran through him because he hadn’t had a chance to say hello. Thinking he might not see her again, he left the bar stool and weaved through the crowd, glancing in every direction until he made a full circuit of the lounge. He stationed himself for a few minutes by the old broken-down jukebox, in case she had gone into the restroom, but she didn’t come out of there. She’d gone, disappearing as quickly as she had appeared to him on the dance floor.
He stepped into the warm night and searched for a sign of her, but she was nowhere in sight. He hadn’t danced with her. Talked with her. Asked her name.
It was closing in on two in the morning. Someone set off a big firework somewhere that rumbled through the night. He listened to it echo off the lake for a moment before he realized it was not some retort from a loud firework.
It was thunder.
By the time he climbed the stairs to his upstairs rooms, the rain started. It was no cloudburster, that was for sure. Truman felt as disappointed as he had at the end of the fireworks show, but it was rain.
Usually, the rain brought the voices he couldn’t tell anyone about. His dancer. This—Kachina. No way to know for sure if the name went with the voice, but Truman liked to think so.
He leaned out his window, listening for her, but heard only the patter of rain on the roof. It surprised him that he couldn’t hear her. He’d come to expect it.
Still, and maybe because of the images he had in his head of the girl dancing in the lounge, he found himself inspired enough to sit at the piano and stare at the staff paper where he had scratched out the opening third of the first movement. The melody from the rainstorm early in the summer was transcribed there in the most delicate of pencil strokes. A simple but unforgettable melody.
Let’s dance.
He needed to transform it now, after a simple restatement, and come up with his variations. He wanted the listeners to hear different permutations of the whole so their minds would work to compare the ideas. Set them up by creating tension and surprising them with the unexpected.
Something unexpected had hit him the moment he set foot into the rain of Quinault, and the lack of summer rains had caused him to stubbornly ignore his symphony. The ache in his chest tonight had pushed him to the piano. He struck a key with the pointer finger of his left hand. The B just to the left of middle C. The note sounded and lingered, unnaturally loud in the small room. B natural.
Be.
He hit the note again.