At the Dance
"Your hands are so beautiful," Cecile said. "Hold up your palm…like this." Cecile held up her right hand toward Adam, palm out and he did as she asked with his left hand. Cecile placed her palm against his, her small delicate hand dwarfed by his broad-heeled hand and its long, elegant fingers. "And palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss," she said quietly.
"Then let lips do what hands do," Adam said and watched as Cecile smiled delightedly.
She clapped her hands together with obvious joy but Adam regretted that she had taken the warmth of her hand away even if it was to express such pleasure. "Oh, yes, Adam, you've read it!"
Adam smiled at her. Cecile's face reflected such radiant happiness that just seeing her made Adam happy as well. "Yes, I've read it." He laughed lightly.
"Such foolish characters, don't you think? To have died for love. Love is supposed to make people happy but I suppose I can understand how, when it's suddenly lost…" Cecile looked away and then back at him.
The beauty of her face grabbed him around the throat and strangled the words from him. "Well, if they were silly at all it's because they were too young," he said, "and too impulsive." He resisted the urge to reach out and touch Cecile's rounded cheek, to smother himself in her dark hair.
"Yes," Cecile said, her face becoming serious. "Too young and too impulsive. Had Romeo only waited, sat by her body and waited, had prayed. Just a short prayer would have been enough time… Juliet was only thirteen, do you know that?"
"Yes," Adam answered. He couldn't help but grin at the naiveté of her question, as if she was the only one to be aware of Juliet's youth.
"People think girls that young can't know what love is but they can, you know."
"Now how would I know that?"
Cecile laughed and it reminded Adam of sunshine spreading its glory over everything and warming the world and all that was in it. Her laughter warmed his heart like that.
"I suppose you wouldn't," Cecile said. Then both her voice and her eyes dropped. "But I know, Adam. Believe me, it's true."
"I believe you, Cecile." Adam didn't like seeing her this way, her face taking on a sadness. "Cecile," he said and was pleased to see her look up at him with expectation. "Shall we go inside? Do you feel like dancing again?"
"May I take off my shoes? They're pinching me. Besides, I dance better that way, when I have a connection with the ground. Would you mind? Would you be ashamed of me?"
Adam paused for a moment. "No, I don't mind. And I would never be ashamed of you." Then he watched as Cecile bent down and quickly unlaced the length of her heeled boots and removing them, let them fall on the wooden planks of the school's back porch where the dance was being held. Adam felt he should turn his eyes away as she exposed her legs to roll down her white stockings, first one, then the other, but he didn't. He enjoyed the revealed curve of her calves and the narrow elegance of her ankles as they were exposed but what struck Adam the most was that Cecile wasn't being seductive-she was just taking off her stockings with no other intention than to be rid of them, to release her legs and feet from this second skin.
She stood for a moment, her stockings in her hand, thinking of where to put them. "Here," Adam said, "I'll take them." He put out his hand.
"Thank you," she said and handed him the stockings which he tucked into his pocket. Then he placed his hand on the small of her back and walked her into the large room and smiled at her as he put out his arm and held up his cupped hand and she fit herself into him so that they moved about the dance floor. Without the shoe's heels, Cecile was even smaller.
"I can't dance with anyone else but you now. Not for the rest of the night," Cecile said.
"And why is that?" Adam asked.
"Because they may not dance as well as you and step on my feet."
Adam burst into deep laughter and Cecile smiled up at him. "You are a cunning little thing, aren't you?" Adam said to her. And he held her closer and she danced with no one but him and he with no one but her. And Adam was smitten.
It was only after Mr. Turpin walked over to them and tapped Adam on the shoulder saying that it was time for Cecile to leave and he took her away that Adam remembered her shoes on the back porch of the building and the white silk stockings in his pocket. By the time he had retrieved the boots, the Turpin's carriage was gone. Adam held her boots and decided that he would ride to their house and leave them on her front porch so he did. But her stockings he kept; Adam felt that the sight of Cecile's stockings might give Mr. Turpin the wrong idea. And when Adam was home and in his room, he pulled the stockings out of his pocket and ran them through his hands. They had encased Cecile's legs, caressing her delicate skin and so he pressed them against his cheek and closed his eyes.
Then he pulled them away and threw them on the top of his bureau. "Idiot," he said to himself. He laughed at his foolishness and removed his string tie and threw that on top of the stockings. The black of the tie and the pure whiteness of the stockings only illustrated, Adam thought, how he and Cecile were so different. He was almost thirty-two and becoming set in his bachelor ways and she was a young, fresh girl of nineteen on the threshold of her life and Adam had no business holding romantic thoughts of her, he felt. So he slid into bed and picked up the book he had been reading but found it difficult to concentrate on Humphrey Clinker and his cohorts so Adam closed the novel and tossed it on the floor. And Adam's last thought as he was drifting off to what ended up being an uneasy sleep, was that there was enough mystery, irony, happiness and pain in life; no need to borrow them from a novel.