Return

You return to the dance studio because you must, because quitting isn't really an option, not in this life. Because if, yesterday, you felt so cluttered and tangled with the smash stuff of yourself, today you could be calm, couldn't you? Be ordinary, self-contained.

You could also be happy, or I was, for there was Jean, being his funny-smart self, and there was this song, from the soundtrack of The Mask, that we've decided to dance at a September showcase, and there were those ridiculous words (at my age), "I'm just a baby in this business of love." When you can't dance like you always wished you could, you can at least act the part, and in a Kenneth Cole T-shirt and white capris, I made as if I'd been swined with pearls, as if I were standing on a street corner at midnight, a bunch of Dick Tracy characters hanging about. I write stories, why not act them? Why not be who I am not, and feel the glory pull of that?

So there I was, mixing the fox trot with quick step with high kicks and play, and there was hardly a soul about (just Nate and Cristina, who are forgiving, just gorgeous Tirsa, and, sometimes, Scott), and I didn't care what I looked like or what I got wrong. I didn't even count the wrongs. I just swirled my imaginary pearls and danced. I was a baby in the business of love.