Blues Dancing by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

Author:Diane McKinney-Whetstone
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins

Eight

There was space between them. This pair of lovers who’d not gazed on each other for two decades. Kitt backed away and threw up her hands conceding defeat or wanting to shout hallelujah, she wasn’t sure which. The Hawkins twins’ father had something soft and clear blaring through the stereo, Louis Armstrong singing “You Go to My Head.” And all around these two was the laughter and frivolity of the two parties merging at the archway between the living and dining rooms. The children darted in and out in neat circumferences and edged Johnson and Verdi closer in. But they were too conscious of the space between them, the years, the searing passion that had turned on them. It was as if the space had its own form accumulating itself now from a heap on the floor, taking on color. Blue: not Sage’s blue that danced and showed itself in all its variations. But a still sad blue as if symbolizing all the abbreviated trumpet notes that had sagged and then fallen at their feet.

Though they stood right next to the cast-iron pole lamp and the light filtered through the Tiffany-style shade and rained all over them, it felt dark in here under this crowded archway as Verdi and Johnson watched the space between them reverberating like a broken heart.

Until Johnson looked up. Thinking it silly to stand here in front of the only woman he really ever loved and stare at the floor like a pubescent boy at his first school dance, he looked up. And there was that face that had enchanted him all those years ago, that he’d dream about even now in dreams that were so real he’d wake swearing he’d just touched the mole on her cheek. The same doe eyes with that downward slant, the same brown-over-gold skin color, the same roundness to the cheeks, fleshiness to the lips, politeness to the nose. Her hair was cut short though, straightened and tapered at the sides. He didn’t know why that surprised him, surely he couldn’t have expected to see her still sporting that overgrown Afro he’d nudged her into wearing. What did surprise him was that she was so slim, thin actually, far too thin for a woman nearing forty and purporting contentment. She should have a roundness to the hips like Kitt, he thought, like Posie, like she had the day he met her. Surely it was in her genes. He felt himself growing agitated at Rowe, holding him responsible for her uncharacteristic smallness, damning him, damning himself too. But then Verdi looked up and the agitation dissipated. Just having the feel of her eyes on him after all these years and everything that wasn’t good and honest and pure dissipated. He thought he could even forgive Rowe if it meant he could hold on to the feel of her eyes. And then he couldn’t even meet her gaze anymore and was back looking at the blue space on the floor.

Verdi too. She

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