‘Drink up,’ he said.
‘I ain’t playing, Jake.’
He shrugged and scooped it up to knock back himself.
‘You been drinking here all night?’ I asked Jake.
‘Hell no. I saw the show.’
I looked towards the stage doors. A few of the dancers were coming out, now. You could tell by the way they dressed – tracksuits or tights and leggings – and also by how they held themselves: that particular upright posture, chins outthrust, heads perfectly level.
‘You watched the whole dance show on your own?’
‘Why not? I know more about it than most of these posers.’
The bartender, bringing over the beers, frowned when he heard that. Jake waggled his head and stuck out his tongue at him, as if to imply some kind of uncontrollable insanity.
‘Was it any good?’ I asked him.
‘It was hit and miss.’
‘Any unarmed turnips?’
Jake snorted and sprayed beer on the bar top.
Before one of our sister’s performances, we’d seen this guy do a modern dance in the nude. He’d swaggered up to the front of the stage, swinging his pecker like a little lasso, and announced that he was an unarmed turnip. That had been the benchmark, from then on, and the kind of thing that Sandy had to rise above: the legions of unarmed and untalented turnips.
‘No – no turnips, thank God,’ Jake said, wiping his mouth with his hand. ‘But hardly any of them were classically trained. You can tell. They just don’t have the range, like her.’
‘Nobody did.’
That wasn’t really true, but it was true enough, in our minds. My beer was still sitting there – I’d been eyeing it but hadn’t touched it yet. Now I reached for it, in a way that felt momentous. It tasted smooth and cold and nice as ice cream. I swivelled around on my stool and leant back against the bar to watch the crowd.
‘I ain’t been back here since,’ I said.
‘That’s because you’re trying to forget.’
‘I haven’t forgotten anything.’
‘Except the anniversary.’
‘I was at sea. The season was late, this year.’
‘On your boat with your little fishing family.’
‘They’re good people.’
‘They ain’t kin.’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘Your body is.’
A dancer came up to the bar beside Jake and ordered a vodka lemonade. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, so you could see where the roots tugged at her scalp, and she still had sparkles and stage make-up on her face.
Jake glanced sidelong at her, then down at her feet.
‘This is one of the real dancers,’ he said to me. ‘She’s done ballet.’
She looked at him, startled, still holding a ten up for the bartender.
‘How’d you know that?’
‘You’re standing in third position. Only ballet dancers do that.’
Jake said all that without looking at her. He said it in a calm and certain way that is difficult to describe and unlike how anybody else talks – at least unlike how they would talk to a stranger, off-the-cuff. She might not have liked it, but he had her attention, all right.
‘Did you enjoy the show?’ she asked.
‘I liked your dance, and a few of the others. But you want some advice? You need to work on your arabesques. You bend your back leg too much.’
She turned to face him more fully, almost as if she were squaring up to him.
‘It’s not ballet. Modern isn’t as strict as that.’
‘An arabesque is an arabesque.’
‘I can do a proper arabesque if I want.’
‘That’s what I’m saying.’
Her drink was ready, and she took it without thanking the bartender, as if it was an inconvenience or a distraction. She looked about ready to dash the vodka in Jake’s face.
‘You sure know a lot about it,’ she said.
‘Our sister used to dance. She used to dance here.’
The dancer put her drink down. She looked hard at Jake’s face, and then over to me.
‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘You’re Sandra’s brothers, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right. Jake and Tim.’
‘I’ve met you. I danced with her. It’s Denise, remember?’
Without waiting for a reply, she hugged Jake, and then me. She started tearing up, so I patted her forearm, in a way that felt awkward, even to me.
‘It’s so good to see you. It’s been so long.’
‘Ten years,’ Jake said, tonelessly.
‘I still think about her.’ She was wiping at her eyes, now. All her mascara had run down her cheeks in black streaks and it was hard as hell, seeing that. I don’t know. It was as if she were crying for all three of us. ‘I was younger than her. She was the one we all looked up to. She was the dancer we all wanted to be.’
‘Me too,’ I said.
‘Oh – you wanted to be a dancer, too?’
Jake started laughing, and I had to explain that no – I meant I’d looked up to Sandy.
‘Of course. Everybody did.’
Denise took the straw out of her drink and threw it on the bar top and drank most of her vodka lemonade straight from the glass, knocking it back. When she finished, a little breathless, she asked, ‘What are you guys doing here, anyway?’
‘Just came down to see the place, again.’
‘Are you coming to the after-party? We’re going to the Alibi Room, I think.’
Jake said, ‘I got to take my brother somewhere. But we should meet up later.’
‘For sure.’
She pulled a pen from her purse, jotted down a number, handed it to him. Then she hugged Jake again, and me, longer this time – really squeezing the breath out of me. I could feel the strength in her body, thin and lithe as a wire cable, and she still smelled of sweat and activity, of a body in motion. All of that was so familiar, like hugging a memory or a dream.
‘I should mingle,’ she said. ‘But I’ll see you later.’
She took another look at us, not quite believing it, and moved off. We swivelled back to the bar and drank our beers in silence and after about five or six seconds Jake said, ‘Jesus.’
‘I know.’
I motioned to the bartender: two more whiskies. When he brought them this time he treated us with a kind of deference, his eyes downcast. He’d overheard some of it, I guess. I gave him another twenty and waved away the change and Jake and I knocked back the shots. I felt the belly-burn, that old familiar smoulder.
I said, ‘You said you wanted to take me somewhere.’
Two months before Sandy died, she auditioned for a dancing job in Paris with the Compagnie Cléo de Mérode, and landed it. At first I didn’t understand the significance of that. I just