THE NARRATIVE ARC

The Night We Danced 500 Miles

And then tangoed 500 more

Time can pass slowly after you work with someone, and something brief and lovely happens. Then you never quite connect again. You are careful to not let your guard down. I‘m not good at that. I believe, even now, I wouldn’t be careful if the same person came back at the right time.

I wasn’t worried the moment might happen. But how many ways in a life can a bolt of lightning strike you more than once? What god would do that to you?

There once was a young actor who looked like a Greek god. I looked like the middle aged woman I was. We had our chance. Very memorable. We had an affair of erotic letters as we performed in a play. Letters delivered to each other in our dressing rooms, in white envelopes. After the play was over, I kept his missives in a rose covered box. I smiled about it every once in a while. It was a sweet game. I thought it was all done. You might have thought the same thing.

Then something more happened, that left me with a song that beats like a heart. Not just memories of letters. It’s time I told you about that. The kind of story you only hear or tell near Valentine’s Day. The kind of night when fantasy lovers danced. I knew we were only fantasies. I don’t know if he remembers. He has danced a lot. With so many people.

When he asked me to dance one night, out of the blue, after such a long time apart, I was stunned.

I said no.

He said yes.

He pulled me up from a table where I sat alone, in a karaoke bar some of our theater company was trying out, after work. He tugged my hand with firm fingers.

I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by the Proclaimers had started playing. Thump-thump-thump-thump-a thadda thump…

He asked if I tangoed.

“No!” I laughed.

“Easy,” he said. “I put my hand here (on my back) and you move this way. I put my hand here (on my waist) and you move that way. If I put my hand here…” He slid it down towards the end of my spine.

“I will not be moved, sir.”

He had a wicked grin. “You’ll understand the hand. Trust me. It makes you move whichever way I want you to go.” He whispered that close enough for me to taste his breath.

I studied his face closeup. I had trusted him when he looked like a boy, all shiny. Those big blue-gray eyes were starting to hide under heavy lids, with slight crinkles at the edges. His once curly hair cut closer to the skull. His body had butterfat skin laid over strong muscles. He was easy in movement and on the eyes. He was enough inches taller to allow me to lift my face to his but still feel his equal. But the main thing I adored about him was that I believed in him. We could do this. I let him pull me up onto the dance floor. I had never tried any kind of ballroom dancing, except solitary waltzes in empty rooms.

“Go with it, lady,” he whispered.

You too. Go with it. Imagine the tango in your bones. I didn’t have to. Once on the floor and in his arms, I felt like I had danced the tango all my life.

And I would dance five hundred miles, and tango for five hundred more. Just to be the one who danced with him a thousand miles around that floor… (modified from “The Proclaimers”)

I expected him to start singing the song. I wanted to. But both of us stayed silent. Completely focused on the movement between us. And, at last, what I couldn’t feel for him before, finally happened. I wanted him as a lover. As if he could hear that thought he pulled me closer. I felt a thrill building. He wasn’t kissing me but I felt my lips open as if he had. I couldn’t give a damn who might see what was happening. Our legs moved together as if we were one. The room moved around us.

I’d never been in an embrace like that before. So confident. He had power over me. All of it gentle. And I wanted to submit to it. I am not the type of woman who wants to be controlled by a man, but he was the rare exception.

In the nights of our letters, the first time we touched, I thought he felt more like my child. But that night we felt like lovers. The energy coming from him vibrated through me like the fiddle-bow of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem, Love Song:

…Drawing one voice from two strings, it glides along…

But then the song was almost done! The moment was too short. I steeled myself for the ending…

The thump-thump-thump-thump-a started one last time…

We were about to relearn a rule of the stage. “Timing is everything…”

We were stopped, one move towards what I felt might be a kiss, by the loud calls of a single name.

His girlfriend showed up for the karaoke contest. We broke apart like the dance had never happened. Every single one in the company became busy at the job of not looking our way. Except for the music director who came to sit with me, later, while my ex-dance partner sang. And his girlfriend adored him out loud. With woots.

The director said, “I’d rather hear him sing than watch Hank Aaron hit a home run.”

I glanced at him quickly and looked away again.

“So would I,” I said. And I could still feel the dance as we watched a man of many talents sing. He won the contest of course. He always would. His prize was a kiss from his lovely girl.

There would eventually be another meeting. A long lunch date somewhere I don’t remember anymore. Whatever had been between us was nostalgia by that time. We talked about what we’d do with the letters we had once written to one another. We thought about writing a book together. Calling it White Envelopes. We couldn’t agree on how to write it. We might have danced well together, but we were very independent writers. He decided to stick with writing fantasy and children’s books. I like to write about real things, and poetry. Would we ever be onstage again? Together? That seems, completely, over.

We decided to let the letters go. Mine in a scented fire. I don’t know what he did with his.

I don’t have to know. I don’t need them. When I think of him, I just keep hearing the song. And dancing the miles again.

Debra Urbacz wrote about an affair I have definitely not given up! Pass the pastry. While you’re at it, read Debra’s story…