Gerald Lynch
dancing lessons
“You mean like ballroom stuff, waltzing and that?” I snickered. Then in mock-shock: “Not square-dancing! Do you wear costumes? I cannot see graceful sister Linda in buckskin fringe.”
He puffed derision from his nose and slouched in the chair, looked away to the snack counter-cum-bar, where Charlie was making faces at whatever was on his phone. Once upon a time, he’d have been sitting on a stool at a cash register, scanning a racing form, toothpick emplaced; we’d not been part of that time, Phil and I, we were Millennials. Okay, I shouldn’t have made fun right off, but Phil had talked in a hangdog way, as though expecting a smackdown. I’d simply obliged. I knew him best, better than Linda.
We were on a beer break at our bi-weekly snooker game, which had once been weekly, where play had frozen. Neither of us was a great shooter, so there was no point in playing safely. I’d broken, and after a few shots, the cue ball was jammed by cherries. Usually, when play reached such a standstill, the next shooter would just break up the pack; if a cherry sank, the shooter was credited and could try to pot a colored ball; if no cherry sank, the other could then find a shot, and play opened up. We didn’t play strategically till the end game, apart from the occasional gleeful snooker. Our games often came down to the black ball, which, no matter how much of a dog, I had a talent for flubbing (it was some kind of mental block with me). But Phil had not broken the jam and instead announced more than suggested a beer break. He’d ignored my mock complaining that, in refusing to smack the pack, he was cheating me, which was not like him.
Correction: Phil was a pretty good shooter. He didn’t practice or play enough to become more than that, but he could go on an impressive run of thirty or more points (which could mean sinking as many as six to eight balls consecutively). I didn’t mind when he did so. I was all quiet appreciation as he got cocky and fairly danced around the table twirling his cue like a majorette’s baton (which was imitating Tom Cruise in that travesty sequel to The Hustler). He’d be potting balls and unnecessarily calling his shots, which he did using the language that was ours alone for snooker games: “Broon boo-ell” (brown ball) “in zee cor-nair gives Philly twelve toe-tal,” “Pinko” (pink ball) “for da holy side makes it six addition-el. … And now for Mr. Negritude” (the black ball, the highest scoring), and such childish nonsense (which could yet make Charlie smile at his phone). When Phil got hot, Charlie would turn up the music, which was always tuned to some oldie-goldie Boomer station, Beatles and Stones and shit. That would get Phil going, playing his cue like a guitar and prancing around the table doing a pretty good pouting Jagger. When he was done, Charlie would snort and turn down the volume.
But he and Linda were taking dancing lessons? Of course. She’d been training him since well before they married—how to behave, how to treat her in public, how to dress—which had intensified afterward. I shouldn’t have been surprised about the dancing lessons. I suspect he’d suggested the early beer break because anxious about telling me of their—if instigator Linda’s—latest undertaking.
Downcast, he slid his bottle in the condensation, swallowed, and then took a swig.
“Yeah, it’s kinda neat actually, you and Jane should give it a shot.”
I backed off. “Really? Was that your idea or Linda’s? I mean about us joining you. But even if I wanted to, which I don’t, Jane would never.”
“Don’t be so sure. But I meant you guys doing it on your own, as a couple. Anyway, it’s just as well we do it separately, Linda’s still smarting from Jane’s pointy-tits comment.”
Jane had known Linda through high school, they never liked each other. Jane liked Phil though, a lot of girls had. We’d been sitting on our deck when he told us he was marrying Linda. I congratulated him, Jane took a swig. I awaited the dreaded best-man question, which can have only one answer. Jane went for more beers.
I’d said, “How’d we end up like this, bud? Married, spending weekends building decks?”
“Just lucky, I guess. If it weren’t for Linda and Jane we’d be the ones upside-down in a ditch.” He was referring to Jim Maclean, an old high-school friend, who had died that Spring, alone in a single-car accident, drowned in a few inches of ditch water, with enough alcohol in his blood to take the finish of a finished deck. Maclean wasn’t married at the time, if already twice divorced.
“A lesson to us all.” I smirked and sipped.
Jane slid open the patio screen with her elbow, three bottles skillfully held against each other under her tucked chin. She’d been eavesdropping. “Who’s a bitch? Not me I hope.” Without missing a beat she swung round and slid the screen closed with her elbow.
No more talk of our creeping middle-class lives or of dying in a ditch.
Jane and I had been married two years already, a simple ceremony at the minister’s house, with Jane in a lovely regular dress she still wore occasionally and with Phil as my best man, reception in the church basement. At the time he and Linda had only just become a thing. She’d been snooty about the modesty of our wedding: “No reception line?” Jane’s mother had pinched her mouth at us.
At their wedding, Linda had come round to a small group of us, Phil in tow and carrying a basket with chunks of memento cake in filigreed paper tied up in yellow bows. Brian Murphy nodded at it and looked at Phil: “Nice work there, Phil.” Linda’s hyper-makeup and pasted smile were a bit scary. A couple of the girls gushed their congratulations. Murphy hoisted his beer bottle and said, “Nice play, Philly boy.” We all toasted. Jane swigged from her bottle, which she always brandished like an equality badge, then nodded at Linda’s chest: “So, Linda girl, you went in for the whole pointy-tits-dress thing, eh?” Which had made us look at the stiff white cones, and laugh. Some of us got no memento cake.
In the pool hall, I didn’t flinch at Phil’s reminder of that scene. “That’s Jane.”
“And that’s Linda.”
“And there you go—the new master of the dance!”
“For better or worse, buddy.” He tipped his bottle, which I clinked, and we drank deeply. None of that was like us.
At first, there could be as many as four or five of the old gang at snooker nights. But Linda had managed to alienate Phil from all our old friends, always as a consequence of her disliking the friend’s female partner. Phil and she began socializing with a group composed exclusively of her old friends, female and male, a feeble clique from high school she still dominated. Jane and I had joined them once for their big monthly dinner night out, where they ate expensively and slowly and acted pretentiously but sat on for only the one after-dinner drink. Their talk was all about TV reality shows and their jobs. Apparently, they’d all become teachers. Phil and I talked only about sports and work. We were both carpenters, so union brothers too. That is,we talked when Linda wasn’t getting his attention. Afterward, Jane said, “Do we have to have them over for supper now, like a married couple thing?” I didn’t hesitate: “No.”
Within a year of their marriage, I was the only friend left from our old gang, and Jane’s pointy-tits observation had come close to breaking our solid friendship. Linda must have known not to press—Phil was nothing if not loyal—even if doing so would have cut his last tie with a rowdier past she’d been no part of. She again came close when she refused to have me as their best man at her monster wedding (some four hundred guests). Phil explained that she’d thought I’d have more fun drinking with the old gang at its designated table, in the deepest corner of the monstrous posh hall. I knew though it was because she thought I’d ruin her “special day” (granted, I had been drinking more the past few years and, okay, I’d become something of an ugly drunk). The best man was Michael St.-Cyr, from their new gang, a guy Phil and I used to laugh at. Still, we managed a workaround, if now at only bi-weekly snooker evenings.
Phil’s hooking up with Linda was one of those mysteries of partner choice we’ve all lamented in close friends: a rational man marrying a wicked bitch (the male equivalent a wicked prick, because of course reasonable women make the same mistake). I tried once to explain Phil’s choice to Jane, as we often talked of his baffling match.
In a nutshell, Phil had married a gal just like the gal, if with significant differences he must have been blind to. Linda was dictatorial and tolerated no opposition while Phil’s mom was controlling but reasonable. Where Phil’s mom was cool, Linda was cold. Linda was bossy, and nasty, when she didn’t immediately get her way, while Phil’s mom made her dictates sound for your benefit, which they could also be. Where Mom was understandably manipulative, Linda was a compulsive liar, one of those who would lie just for the pleasure of practicing her black art. If anything, Phil’s mom seemed to be compulsively truthful, and sometimes brutally honest which, now that I think of it, may have confused her darling boy’s psyche. From the boy I’d grown up with, Phil always did as Mom said. As a growing boy, he was always quoting Mom: Mom says this, Mom says that. As fiancé-in-waiting, Phil would talk of Linda’s perceptiveness. He would observe how, though not school-smart, she was people-smart, even though she was always being let down by their friends. I didn’t point out that she couldn’t be both. And much else similar about Linda’s hidden virtues, which no one else had ever suspected, the observations of which attested only to Phil’s blind adoration. Which is also to say, his ignorance of her deceitfulness, baffled not only Jane and me but was lamented by all his old friends, till they wrote him off. I wouldn’t.
That said ungenerously, such two-bit psychologizing doesn’t really explain, let alone excuse, why a smart boy like Phil, under no obvious extra-Linda pressure, would agree to partner for life with a woman who looked set to own him in misery. Her isolating him from his old friends had been a signal of things to come. Soon she was dressing him like a catalog model, in creased “slacks” (no jeans) and stiff-collared shirts, with hair styled in the fashion, that standing straight up like cartoon alarm. He’d taken to shaving only once a week, and to sporting what’s called a “soul patch” below his lower lip. None of which bode well for my best friend’s manly soul.
Eventually, I had to email, text, and call just to get him to an increasingly rare snooker evening. He worked himself down to just one beer, and in the end, left the bottle half-full. He gave up inventing plausible excuses and simply texted, “We have plans.”
I went around to his place and Linda answered the door. She didn’t invite me in. Without batting a big eyelash she said that night was their dance lesson.
Turning away I said, “Hey, are you guys going to Murphy’s wedding?” Murphy, one of Phil’s and my oldest friends, would be the last of our gang to settle down.
Linda said, “I guess we’ll see you and Jane there.”
The emphasis pissed me off.
“Stan,” I said, raising my eyebrows and touching my right fingertips to my sternum.
She looked rarely confused. “Wha …?”
“Phil’s oldest buddy, Stan? Say hi for me, will you … uh, it’s Linda, right?”
She smirked.
I’d not asked if Phil was home, I knew he was. The whole interior behind Linda had that empty house air of hushed hiding. His old black Toyota truck was in the driveway, a For Sale sign in its back window. On their front walk, I had to turn back, because I felt that I too was now abandoning him as in my mind I’d blamed all our old friends for doing.
“What about the day after tomorrow, Wednesday, can Phil come out and play then, Linda?”
She had no sense of humor, another thing. Gazing like I was disappearing anyway, she didn’t miss a beat: “We’ll be practicing … Stan-the-man.”
They practiced dancing lessons? Like I said, a liar from the liars. Turning to the road I said under my breath, “Holy fuck.”
Murphy’s wedding was a small affair, with fewer than fifty guests, a church ceremony with a reception in the basement hall. Within half an hour most of our old friends, males and females, were not to be seen without a bottle in their hands, sometimes two bottles, with some already wobbly on the floor and ‘dancing’ dangerously. By then, Jane had been working on having me drink more responsibly, which I didn’t like.
When Brian and his new bride, whom I’d never met, did the rounds thanking everyone for coming, she, Susan, play-punched me in the stomach and said, “Brian’s told me all about you, Stan, Stan-the-man. If I bring you a beer, will you open it with your teeth?”
Jane piped up, “Go for it, Stanley, we have dental insurance now.” In the laughter she took a swig from the bottle, her eye sideways on me across it. In other words, I’d better not even think about it.
When the wedding supper had ended, the white tablecloths were removed. For that changeover, the guests had been asked to wait outside, which Linda could not stop tch-tching about. She’d marched up the concrete-step entrance to the church and stood at the top, her mouth pursy, arms crossed under and hefting her breasts, tapping her toe. The rest of us stood below on the sidewalk. She offered quite the pic, in the loose semi-translucent green dress, with the old brown-brick church soaring behind her. She was joined by Phil and some others (almost exclusively the new gang) who must have assumed that was the thing to do if Linda was doing it. She tightened her mouth and rapidly shook her head when one of Phil's old friends offered a flask, and that face slowly elongated into her most maddened when the sweet odor of marijuana reinforced for me who we were. Watching Linda I knew I’d have to fight the temptation to get drunk and stoned.
Jane gripped my forearm. “You’re obsessing over her.”
“I am.” I too waved off someone’s offered flask. “But it’s Phil.”
“I know. Permission to get wasted, Stan-the-man, but only if you do not go near them.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m on a leash.”
I took a hit on someone’s clipped roach. It was offered to Jane and she did too.
All the polished plywood gave the low-ceilinged basement a dull golden glow. Phil and Linda were sitting by themselves at the end of one of the long tables. She had before her a tall glass of water, as it would never have been gin or vodka and wasn’t sized for wine. She had added checking her watch to toe-tapping, or toe-flapping, as her long legs were crossed. Surely she couldn’t be eager to leave already? Phil had nothing before him, which looked unnatural. He gave off an air of nervous isolation, which I could feel even at a distance. His legs were swung out from under the table as he was half-turned away from Linda and watching the dancing, whose activity was picking up. Were they fighting? Could their relationship be in trouble already? Their marriage? I’d seen that in many old friends, whose celebrated unions could end within a couple of years, and sometimes less. Did I want that? Was I that mean-spirited?
I felt Jane’s hand again squeeze my forearm. “Not with Phil and Linda, Stan, but we do need to find a seat, these new shoes are killing me. I hope nobody asks me to … dance. Hey, c’mon, what’s up with you anyway? You look like your best friend just died.”
“Very funny.” But she’d snapped me out of gazing. I’d been thinking that of course Linda had dressed him up, and that he was likely the only guy there still wearing a tie, which I imagined her leading him around … by. “What? Hold on a sec.”
Phil had stood. He unfolded a showy formal hand to Linda, which she prissily took. People were watching them already. Brushing fumbling dancers aside, he led her to the center of the floor like some scene from a movie set in posh old England where the women didn’t appear to have legs and the men wore white wigs like prissy bitches. I ignored Jane and kept the pair of them in sight.
I’d assumed he meant they were learning to waltz or something like that. So, I was dying to see how they would dance in that crowd to that music. The DJ was spinning middle-of-the-road pop, to which all were able to shuffle while continuing to drink. The music stopped, and the DJ announced a by-request, which he introduced as a Colin James song. It wasn’t a contemporary tune but old-fashioned, from the swing era it sounded, with an overture of jazzy horns and the lyric’s only distinguishable word being “Cadillac.”
Phil and Linda faced each other, Linda with her back to us. They raised their arms widely overhead and knitted their fingers. I’d never seen Phil smile so wildly, and I wondered if Linda was grinning back the same (likely, as I recognized it as the practiced opening of an act, and the big false smile would better suit her). Their hips commenced swaying, feet shuffling. A space opened around them. They picked up, and the floor cleared farther as people receded, opening a rectangular area, in effect giving the two of them the whole dance floor.
Jane squeezed my biceps from underneath. “What the hell?” she half-laughed. People had begun clapping, hooting, whistling. I jerked my arm away.
Phil backed off into one corner formed by the guests, Linda into the kitty corner. With an index finger waggling at his temple, with bony butt sticking out and his legs a little bowed he approached her, who was dancing towards him with elbows tight to her sides and forearms at waist level and hands sort of limp-wristed, and with her ass swinging in the breezy dress. He looked foolish, she looked pretty good. When they met in the middle they hooked arms and spun, and spun rapidly, it looked risky and was done smoothly, like ice dancers. People were now cheering: “Go Phil!” “You go, Linda girl!” “More more!” with much hooting and whistling.
They disengaged and in opposite directions went around the perimeter clapping, which succeeded in getting everybody clapping more rhythmically. They hooked up again and returned to the center where, standing a bit apart, they executed some shuffling steps and high-step side-kicking, in perfect coordination. Then Linda stood in the center with a forefinger on her cheek and big-lipped pouting, with her legs pretty far apart and ass prominently hitched up. Phil danced up behind her and, with a wide-eyed look (at her ass), pretended to lick his forefinger, touched her ass, and made a sizzling sound. The crowd crowed and whistled. Which still wasn’t enough for Phil, who turned to all sides with a cupped right hand to his ear while flapping the other towards himself for more appreciation. Which he got.
The end began with Phil gripping Linda’s hands and her falling backward, slipping between his legs and springing to her feet out the other side. I don’t know how she did that. Phil skipped (yes) to the manmade border and ran back toward Linda, hit the floor a good ten feet from her and slid to a stop right under her spread legs, his head propped on his elbow, eyes rolled upwards, a mischievous smirk on his enflamed face.
The crowd found a yet wilder level. I was … I don’t know what. Grudgingly impressed, and confused, and confused because impressed, and grudging.
Jane articulated loudly into my ear: “Where, on earth, did that come from?”
I said, “Holy fuck, what was that?”
I had to strain to hear her: “You’re telling me you didn’t know about this?”
I shouted: “They’ve been taking dancing lessons, I’d meant to tell you. They invited us to join them, or Phil did anyway. Nuts, eh?”
She finally trained her strangely glazed eyes on me. “A lot of practice time together went into that, Stan.”
“You think?”
Phil finally broke from a back-slapping gang and came over alone. Neither I nor Jane said anything about the performance. After pinching his mouth for too long, he said, “How about some snooker Tuesday?”
Jane made her stinky face (nose crinkled as at my forgetting to spray and vent the bathroom). She made to swig but stopped: “Is Linda playing snooker too now?”
Phil laughed in a way I’d never heard. I didn’t have a bottle, so he took Jane’s without asking and drank deeply, handed it to me. Turning away he said, “What an idea!” He returned to the group still surrounding Linda, stepped between two old friends, and slipped an arm around her waist. I looked away and saw that Jane was now the one fixated.
I said, “Let’s get outta here before they do it again.”
“What? It’s awful early for an exit, Stan, even for you.”
“I can’t take any more.”
“Have a beer, settle down.”
I headed for the stairway, surprised to be thinking she could come with me or not.
We were the last still living in the old neighborhood, close enough to walk home. Usually, we’d have held hands and gabbed away critically about the old friends we’d seen (“Alice is putting on the pounds.” “She’s pregnant, Stan.” “Oh … Ed Hunt too?” That sort of thing). Not now. I grew increasingly self-conscious with each echoing awkward step of walking unattached, strangely out of sorts. I can’t explain how but knew that Jane felt shabby too, shabbier than when we’d arrived.
When she finally said something, she appeared to be speaking to her plodding feet: “That must have taken one helluva lot of practice together.”
“What a waste of time, eh?”
“Yeah… Kinda cute though.”
“They were showing off.”
“They were.”
I stopped, as did she a couple of paces on when she missed me and turned back.
I thought I knew something I’d not known. “Know something? We’ve been wrong about Linda and Phil, or Phil anyway. I’m thinking now that he’s got just what he always wanted. Did you see the faces on him? He’s the one who uses Linda.”
She dropped her gaze. “Yes, but she uses him too.” Then looked at me squarely: “We really should have them over for supper.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
We had one more snooker evening. Played one game. Spoke little. Took only one beer break, and again he didn’t finish his. For once I didn’t flub the colored balls and didn’t need the black to win, though I made it anyway, a difficult distant shot hugging the cushion.
Phil said, “Nice shot.” He dropped his cue on the empty green table—the wood smacked the slate (Charlie didn’t like that; me neither, I’d been hoping for another game). “Ever think about getting Jane to play?”
“No. I think she’d rather we took dancing lessons.”
Gerald Lynch was born on a farm at Lough Egish in Co. Monaghan, Ireland, andgrew up in Canada. His short story "Christmas Comes Again" appeared in the June 2021 issue of Barzakh. His most recent novel, Plaguing Jake, was published in June 2024by At Bay Press. He haspublished 10 books, 8 of them fiction, and numerous short stories, essays, and reviews. He has been the recipient ofa few awards, including the gold award for short fiction in Canada’s NationalMagazine Awards.