Step step stepstepstep, shuffle ball change and a backward pas de bourree. Wild steps interspersed with genteel moves, the ones he has learned all his life. He dances the road untravelled with the wind as his companion. The wind never complains but accompanies him faithfully.
Doug Hastings is used to being a disappointment. He scuttles into his shell when his wife screams at him. She's always got her happy face on. Doug doesn't like that happy face. He can see how sad she is behind it. He dances alone. No one else will dance with him. Shunned to the murky corners, he watches his life go by and dances around it, never treading on the cracks. The music swirls over him like velvet and he drapes himself in it like a fine gown.
On the roof his son is dancing with the most beautiful Spanish rose of the dance floor, twirling and skating over the surface in front of the Coca Cola sign. His star shines as bright as that sign and his deepening romance with that girl from the beginner's class dazzles far above the sparkle and diamante. It lifts them above and beyond everyone else. That he knows. He hums as he tackles the tentacles of his imagination and instinctively switches to a mambo. The chains are broken, he is free and the horizon is limitless.
He just hopes that his son will understand that in time.