The afternoon sun was high when I climbed out of bed, and I was hungry as hell. I heated up a huge portion of Darlene’s casserole and ate every bite. After, I took my best gray suit to the dry cleaners and told them to rush it. While it was being cleaned, I wandered into Macy’s on Union Square and bought a new tie.
After, I picked up my dry cleaning, showered, changed, and at a quarter to seven, I headed out. At the florist on 14th, I started toward the red roses, but a stand of daisies in brilliant yellow and orange caught my eye.
“Gerber daisies,” said the florist with a smile. “In Egyptian times, the gerbera daisy represented light and sun. In the Victorian era, they came to represent happiness.”
“In the Victorian era…” At the word, my photographic memory conjured my house; Darlene’s house too.
The florist smiled. “They’re my favorite.”
I touched one of the soft, bright petals. “Mine too.”
With a bouquet of two-dozen Gerber daisies wrapped in green tissue paper under my arm, I jumped on the Muni for the Mission District; an artsy, bohemian part of the city.
I walked along a busy street lined with shops and cafés, and one too many new condo complexes. The tech industry was sucking some of the life out of the old San Francisco. The Brown Bag Theater was a hole in the wall; a holdover from before the tech boom, and that still existed by the city’s sheer force of will, though I wondered for how much longer.
I paid a $10 ticket at the rickety box office and stepped into the shabby interior. The wallpaper was faded and covered in posters from previous shows. The lobby was nonexistent; a small space where one wall was heavy with black curtains. A handful of people loitered in the space, talking and drinking wine from a tiny bar stand. I was the only one wearing a suit.
At ten to eight, a nervous-looking guy in black passed out programs and told us to take our seats. I filed in to the fifty-capacity space with the rest of the audience; we filled maybe twenty seats.
I laid the flowers across my knee and watched the stage—a small rectangle of scuffed black illuminated by a single light in the center. My stomach twisted as if I were the one about to perform, and I scanned the program—a smudgy Xerox folded in half.
Most of the dances were as a group, but Darlene had a solo, halfway into the show.
She never told me.
Then the house lights dimmed and the show began.
It wasn’t good.
I was no dance connoisseur but every number felt amateurish and overly dramatic. Trying to make a statement, somehow. Except for Darlene. My considerable bias aside, she was riveting. Stunning. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. The dumbass director shoved her in the back of every ensemble dance, and still she shone brighter than the lead dancer we were supposed to be watching.
Three routines later, and Darlene took the stage. She moved gracefully into a cone of light in a simple black dancer’s dress with billowy material that floated around her long legs. Her hair was tied up on her head in a loose ponytail, revealing the long lines of her neck and shoulders. Like my favorite shirt of hers, the back of her dress crisscrossed her shoulder blades—highlighting the lines and lean muscle. The sleeves were long but sheer, also giving elegant definition to her arms.
God, she’s so beautiful.
The program said she’d be dancing to a song called “Down.” I’d never heard it before, the first notes—a lone piano—descended like downward steps. Darlene remained frozen until a woman began to sing. A lonely voice, yet bright and clear.
I stared at Darlene, watched the play of her muscles under her skin as she moved, filled the small space with her presence, flowing like shadows and light; slow with the piano, fast and precise with the techno beat.
As the song came to an end, Darlene collapsed onto her back, braced on one elbow; the other arm reached for the unlit space above her, her hand grasping at nothing. On that final note and last haunting lyric, her back arched and her head fell back, as if she were being pulled upward by an unseen force, and then left there, suspended in the si
lence.
The moment hung and then the meager crowd caught their breath. I broke free from her spell and my hands slammed together over and over. A few other audience members whistled or whooped where they had only politely applauded every act that had come before.
My chest swelled with pride. She was the best and they all knew it.
Then the next and final dance came, and Darlene was once again relegated to the back of the stage. I didn’t know what kind of hierarchy this dance troupe had but it was painfully obvious Darlene deserved to be the lead.
I watched her make-do in the back with her partner—the clumsy schmuck who’d bruised her head in rehearsal a few weeks ago. She struggled with him now. I saw her correct mistakes, or cover for him when he was off-time. A sneer curled my lips, and I tried to focus on her. Just her.
And then it happened.
The pairs of dancers in the back came apart and then flew together, and Darlene’s klutzy partner stomped on her foot with his heel. I shot halfway out of my seat as Darlene’s face contorted in sudden pain. No one else seemed to have noticed—the lead dancer had executed some sort of gymnastic feat to capture their attention.
Darlene put on a stage face and I sank down slowly, watching in awe as she powered through the rest of her dance—about ten more seconds. She favored her right foot, but subtly, and the only real sign of her pain was the sweat the glistened across her chest.
As soon as the dance ended, the dancers bowed, and Darlene’s partner shot her an apologetic look. She stared straight ahead, into the lights that blinded her to the audience, but I saw the tears in her eyes and the clench of her jaw. She kept her right foot behind her left as she bowed to the smattering of applause, but as soon as the black curtain began to drop, she limped off.