Part 3
After the riotous fast songs earlier, the bass-heavy beat of a slow number trickles like spring rain. All around us, couples fall into enrapturement with their sweeties. Rick wraps his arm around my waist and cradles my right hand against his chest. I loop my arm around his neck. The last time I danced like this was with a freshie at college; he had sweaty palms and his nose whistled.
"This is nice," I say.
"Mmhm," he murmurs.
I step on his foot.
"Sorry."
Rick winces but shrugs it off.
"Do you go dancing often?" I ask.
"Not too many mixers in the Cairo prison system. There was that one time they dressed up a camel like an Arabian dancing girl. But you don't want to hear about that."
"I should think not."
"I was kidding, Evelyn."
"Oh. I know."
I don't follow Rick when he turns and step on his foot again.
"Sorry," I say again.
Rick puts half a foot of air between us. "I'm getting the feeling you don't dance much, either."
I bristle. "I – well--" I've got nothing. "No. I don't. I suppose I'm not the most talented dance partner you've ever had."
"No. But you're the prettiest."
I flit my hand in a 'go on with you' gesture. "Flattery will get you nowhere, Mr. O'Connell."
"Doesn't stop me from trying," he says, and kisses me. "What was that about back there, with you and your brother?"
"About my father?"
"I've never seen him get upset about anything, other than his money or his booze."
I consider the least detailed and most evasive phrasing. "For someone as obsessively focused on the present as Jonathan is, he's awfully stubborn when it comes to forgetting the past."
"What happened?" Rick is looking down at me with concern. I realize with a start that he isn't asking out of scandalous curiosity; he's worried about me, about some upset in my past. I'm not used to someone wanting to know all the little details of my life, not even Jonathan.
"One night, when Jonathan was eleven and I was five, my mother took him to a picture show. It was a special night, just for Jonathan and Mother, because Jonathan was going back to boarding school the next day. He so disliked being sent away."
"Was your father living with you then?"
"Yes, of course he was."
"Oh. You just made it sound like, I dunno, it was just you two and your mom."
"My father . . . how to put this? He liked having children, but he didn't much like children. Does that make sense?"
"Sure."
I want to ask if it makes sense because Rick shares that opinion, but the last thing I want to do is give the impression that I'm compiling a review of his child rearing abilities.
"So, driving home from the picture, a motorcar spun out of control on a mud puddle and hit their buggy," I list the facts.
"Oh, wow," he says sympathetically.
"Jonathan broke a bone or two, but he recovered. Mother didn't."
"God, I'm sorry."
"It was a long time ago," I say. "I think Jonathan's problem is that he blames our father."
"Why?"
"Oh, it isn't as if he's being sensible. I think he's angry that Father couldn't replace Mother. Father loved us dearly, but he was wrapped up in his own loss." Though I thought I had moved beyond this, I feel tears prickling at the back of my eyes. I lean a little closer to Rick, feeling the warmth radiating off his broad, sturdy chest. "He simply didn't know what to do with two children if Mother wasn't there to – to do the things that mothers do. Father tried, but eventually he sent Jonathan back to school and me to my great-aunt. I've only talked to my father a few times in the past few years; the last I heard, he was living alone in Spain."
Rick's hand trails a soft path up my back and down again.
"It really was a long time ago," I say with my head on his strong shoulder.
"I'm still sorry," he says.
The corners of my mouth turn up. "Thank you for caring about me."
"Anytime."
Arms wrapped around each other, we sway to the music, not even moving our feet.
At length, Rick says, "I don't remember my parents. They died of a fever when I was four."
"Oh. I am sorry."
"Yeah, tragedy all around, huh?"
"Did you have any brothers or sisters?"
"Ah, let me think."
"You have to think?"
"Well, eleven is a lot of people to keep track of."
"Eleven?" I gape.
"Plus the two babies who didn't make it."
I total the sums in my head: all told, Rick's mother was pregnant for more than ten years of her life!
"We were a farmer's family," he explains. "They need sons at harvest time and girls to help with all the housework."
"Jonathan and I could never even learn to share things between just the two of us," I say, horrified at the idea of nine more Jonathans pulling my braids and throwing my dolls on the roof.
Rick smiles. "You get used to fighting for your territory."
"I would imagine so."
"So, anyway, my oldest sister kept the farm running while we kids were little, but we every year we sold off it off, bit by bit. I was just another mouth, so when I got old enough, I joined the Legion."
"Where are they now?"
"I dunno. Two of 'em grew up and moved out before I was born, I never really knew them. Even when I was young, we weren't like you and Jonathan, all buddy-buddy."
I smile to think that despite our bickering, Jonathan and I appear to others to be 'buddies.'
"Don't you talk to any of them now?" I couldn't imagine not talking to Jonathan at least once a week. We go to dinner and parties together, we tell each other everything. He knew I was interested in Rick before I did.
"Nah," Rick says. "I don't know what I'd say to them."
I muse, "My family always seemed so small when I was little, but I was never lonely."
Rick laughs. "It wasn't as bad as you make it sound! I liked them. I just didn't make a lot of attachments."
I wonder if that habit of avoiding attachment has followed him to adulthood. I may not have a lot of people in my life, but I'd hold on to the ones I do with my last breath.
I see a finger tap Rick on the shoulder. It's Jonathan, asking via male code if he may cut in.
"Think you can survive without me for a bit?" Rick jokes.
"My heart will break every moment you're gone," I deadpan.
Rick hands me off to my brother. The slow song ends and the music picks up again. Couples begin to leap about like Chinese acrobats; in the center of the room, a pair of feet flick up into the air. I suddenly become stiff as a poker.
"Do you know how to dance like that?" I ask my brother as quietly as possible.
Jonathan laughs. "Don't worry, pet, I couldn't toss you up in the air if I wanted to."
"Ha ha," I say, still terrified of looking foolish and possibly breaking an ankle – mine or someone else's – in the process.
"Just follow my lead," Jonathan says.
He holds me at arms' length so I can watch his feet; it's a one-and-two-and step, simple enough without any of the fancy stuff. To my delight, I manage to land on the beat more times than not.
"Not so hard, eh?" he says. "Just like when we were kids."
I laugh. Jonathan used to invent goofy steps and get me to do them with him. We looked foolish, of course, but anything to shake life into a great-aunt's birthday party.
"Where did you learn this?" I shout over the music.
"From a sweet, lovely Parisian lady of the evening," he answers with a lopsided grin.
I roll my eyes. I never know whether or not to believe him when he says things like that, and I would rather not think too much about it.
"Ready for something more complicated?" Jonathan says.
I shake my head, but suddenly the room spins around. I catch a brief view of the ceiling before Jonathan sets me right. I hold on to his shoulder for dear life until the room stops whirling.
"Fun?" he asks.
"Don't do that again!" I gasp. Though I'm grinning at the thrill.
"You loved it," he says.
"Let's try that," I say, indicating a couple near us.
Jonathan and I more or less copy their kick-step manoeuvre, except I crash into him at the twist.
"Sorry!" I laugh, gasping for breath.
Jonathan pretends to be in pain. "Maybe you should stick to the basics."
"I think I'm doing smashingly for my first try!" I say hotly.
The song ends and the band strums up something with a tad less jump. Couples around us abandon tumbling tricks for dancing with which I'm more familiar.
Under the quieter beat, Jonathan says, "I'm sorry about –" he nods in Rick's direction.
"I know," I say.
"Still mad?"
I attempt a scowl. "If I was really mad, I wouldn't be dancing with you," I say.
"Good point," he says. "You and he, ah, seemed to have something important to say to each other during that slow number."
I nod. "I told him about Mum, and you, and Father."
"Ah."
"I wish . . ." I trail off.
Jonathan nods, knowing as he always does what I'm trying not to say. We dance in silence, just the two of us and our shared memories, as it's always been.
"Pray tell," Jonathan asks coyly, "how are things with you and Rick, seriously?"
I smile. "I don't know. Sometimes I haven't the faintest idea what he's talking about, let alone thinking. Sometimes he's completely infuriating! And then he'll say something sweet, and I'll be confused as to whether he's a decent man inside a scoundrel or a scoundrel who is trying to be a decent man."
Jonathan cocks his head and smiles. "That's about the most charming description of the power of love as I've ever heard."
"I didn't say I'm in love with him," I say quickly. "It's not as if I'd like to be wandering about moony-eyed."
"Evelyn, you couldn't be the head in the clouds type if you wanted to be."
"I'm not convinced of that," I say grimly, as if love is a disease. "The other day at work, I was recording the births and deaths of the Ham'ut dynasty and found that Hamuput's birthday is exactly two days and nineteen hundred years before Rick's. Which completely distracted me because I was suddenly thrown into a tangent of wondering what to give him for his birthday, because what do you give a man who can buy anything he wishes at a whim?" I say, quite vexed.
"A quandary surely faced by Hamuput's queen," Jonathan says.
"Indeed."
"Perhaps, when you had the chance, you should have asked Anck-su-namun what she gave her husband."
"I believe it was a dagger in the chest."
"Hm. Well. Suppose that won't do," Jonathan says reluctantly.
"Quite," I say.
"You look good, my dear. Love looks good on you," he says. "You should look like that more often."
I feel my face growing warm. "I'm not planning my wedding just yet. I only can say with certainty that . . . I'm happy." I look up at the raised bar area and see Rick leaning over the banister, watching me. I toss him a wave and a smile. "He's really . . . splendid."
Jonathan makes a face. "Really? He's so . . . American."
"He's fun to argue with," I correct.
"Oh, well that explains everything!"
I can't hold back my grin.
*
Continued in part four.