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“I can’t, either. We’ll be the cutest couple on the dance floor.”
The din of wedding guests and music got louder as they got closer to the dance floor. Karl dragged his feet a little more. He would do the Electric Slide with Vivian, but he’d prefer not to. Then his shoes hit the wooden floor and he thought about how he’d look, tripping over his own feet and knocking his pregnant wife to the floor.
At the sight of thirty people crossing their legs front and back, front and back, Karl stopped. He could joke about it at the table, but he really didn’t dance. He stood on the sidelines and watched others dance while remaining aloof and impassive. Straitlaced, never in anything more casual than khakis was his M.O.
He took a deep breath and let it out in a great puff. He hadn’t danced since he was thirteen, and that memory alone was awkward enough for him to consider abandoning Vivian. His one middle school dance…his fingers skimming the girl’s back, sliding down to the crest of her butt and then chickening out at the last minute for fear she would raise a fuss and his dad would find out. His erection and the step back he took every time she took a step forward. His certain knowledge that his deodorant—another new experience—had failed and she would be assaulted by his BO just before banging against his jutting erection.
By the time he’d figured out how to touch a girl’s butt, control his erection and trust in his deodorant, no one expected him to dance. And he no longer had to worry about a lecture from his father on respecting women if his hand slipped from a girl’s waist to the curves of her butt. None of which helped him with his current predicament. Boy or girl, his child was getting dancing lessons.
“Are you okay?” Vivian turned to look at him.
“Fine.” He still didn’t take a step forward.
Her lips twitched from side to side as she examined him. Finally, she wiped that stuck lock of hair from her cheek and said, “You don’t have to dance.” She looked over her shoulder at the dance floor. “We can just go back to your apartment.”
Her eyes lost a bit of their luster as she said those words. Living with his mom and working at Healthy Food, Vivian had become part of the community he had grown up in, and he wanted to take her away from it—even if just for a night—because everyone knew Karl Milek didn’t dance.
The newspapers liked to say he was a leader in Chicago’s Polish community and leadership gurus liked to say leaders become leaders by not being afraid of making asses of themselves. He closed his eyes to gather his sense of dignity, then looked his wife straight in her copper-colored eyes and smiled. “Let’s show this room how poorly the Electric Slide can be done.”
His reward wasn’t going to be taking Vivian home with him tonight; his reward was the way her smile brightened his life. Swallowing the last of his resignation, he followed his wife onto the dance floor, faced the wall and prepared to boogie-woogie-woogie.
And he immediately went to the left and bumped into Vivian, who laughed with unrestrained delight. He stood in one place to watch her feet and listen to her “step, cross, step, clap” instructions and the person to his right ran into him—Mrs. Biadala, who made mother-hen clucking noises and told him how cute he looked.
He hadn’t danced since he was thirteen and he hadn’t been cute since he was six. Past six, he’d been “an old soul” and “precocious.” Tonight was a night of firsts.
“Back, back, back, clap.” Vivian’s amused instructions jarred some distant memory in his brain and he didn’t even have to be told to lean forward, tap his back foot and make a stupid circle with his forearm. Or hop to turn and face the other direction. Apparently, bounding about like an ass in a line with other people was as much about muscle memory as riding your bike or ice skating.
He missed crossing his legs, but he moved to the right with the rest of the dancers and was only a millisecond or so behind them clapping. After the next hop and turn, he moved to the right and crossed his legs behind one another like he was supposed to, though he still clapped too late.
“See,” Vivian said over her clap, “I knew you were a regular Gene Kelly.”
