Short Story by Julia Hawkins
Something forced Dora to turn around on the bar stool where she was sitting with her friend from the office, celebrating the end of a drab week of secretarial work. A slender, dark-haired man about her age stood at the front door, an older couple behind him. He met her eyes and looked as startled as she felt. Then he was approaching her, his face alight and she saw with amusement he was pretending to recognize her. “There you are. Have you been waiting long?” He had a thin finely structured face, the eyes especially alive, expressive and brilliant, and his clothes, the dark suit and loosened tie identified him as a professional, a peer. He also worked in an office.
He held out his hand, maintaining the same expression of humorous confidence that they were already acquainted and that she would enjoy his joking come-on. Would she care to dance? She had almost finished her second martini, had glimpsed the smiling moon as she paid the cab driver, and had ceased listening to her friend when the band in the next room played a song popular when she was in high school and had a crush on the senior class president. She yearned to be dancing. Indulging the surge of delight that his originality ignited and laughing, she slid off the bar stool and stepped up to him.
He took her hand securely, his other hand on her back light but purposeful guiding her onto the crowded dance floor. His chin next to her forehead, she smelled a faint cologne, she guessed, or some kind of odor that made her heady to inhale.
“It seems like yesterday when we first met, all those years ago,” he said. “We haven’t been here in ages. And Junior deciding to go out for varsity. How time flies.”
“Doesn’t it though? And Katie wanting to wear lipstick.” She paused. “I didn’t think I could still get into this old dress – do you remember? I wore it that night when you first asked me to dance.”
He pressed her hand. “And you are just as beautiful as you were then. Aren’t we glad this place is still open? We really should get out more often.”
For awhile they didn’t speak but concentrated on the music, coordinating their movements and Dora relaxed into his guidance. Finding their equilibrium, acknowledging the ease with which they slid into harmony he held her closer. The more they synchronized their feet with the music the more he twirled and slid them around the dance floor. At the end of the third dance, he said, “Where shall we go for our golden anniversary, darling?”
“Well, what about that cabin we rented for our honeymoon – remember how that bear frightened you? I’ve never laughed so hard.”
They held hands as they returned to the bar.
“And how you forgot to pack your nightgown?”
“Those were good times, and I’m just as in love with you today as I was then.” Her words, spoken in the same playful tone they had been maintaining, and acknowledged as a game, nonetheless startled them both.
“I don’t know why I said that. Sorry –. And we were having such fun.”
He turned his head, his hold on her hand tightened slightly as he listened to the exhortations of the couple he had arrived with now standing behind him. He released her hand. “I have to go,” he said wildly, and with a parting look of panic let himself be taken by the arm and led to the door. “I’ll be right back,” he called to her and disappeared into the night.
Fifty years later, a widow, Dora, was sitting on a bar stool with her girlfriends at the Senior Center. It was dance night and the band in the next room was playing songs popular when she was in high school. Something forced her to turn around and when she saw him, standing at the entrance, she recognized him immediately despite the white hair, recognized the fine bones beneath the age-lined features. He was looking around the room and seemed as jolted as she felt when their eyes met.
“There you are,” he said approaching her, his altered voice sounding with the amusement of the former evening but it had lost some of its bravado.
“Have you been waiting long?” He held out his hand and smiled questioningly. Would she care to dance?
As he led her to the dance floor he slipped his hand around her, swirling her into the dancing, he said in the tone of raillery the intervening years had not muted, “Just think, Junior now coaching high school sports and –.”
“And Katie marrying her high school sweetheart, working for Habitat for Humanity and –.” She didn’t finish her sentence because he spun her into a whirl that took her breath away.
Julia Hawkins is a San Francisco native who wrote reviews of cultural events for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Point Reyes Light (West Marin, California) in the 1970s, wrote theater reviews freelance in Marin County for a decade, wrote two novels, a screenplay and several short stories. Retired from word processing in a law office and currently gardens and writes.
