From Andromeda and Back

CHAPTER NINE

A PEAK IN DARIEN, PART THREE

As he worked the ones and twos and as the dance floor gave back what Johnny gave out, he knew the moment had come. Jackie was swaying and bobbing on the edge of the crowd, delighted but waiting. She had refused dance after dance and was aiming her gaze solely at Johnny, as if no other sight had ever come into her ken. She moved—with that cool shifting of shoulders and hips that, without her feet moving an inch, made dancing real and irresistible.

As for the crowd, Johnny had already crammed the speakers with Tupac and Dre’s “California Love,” The Pharcyde’s “Passing Me By,” Souls of Mischief’s “’93 Til Infinity,” and finally Roger’s version of Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” As they marched forth one after another, they sent the crowd into delirium. Familiarity plus unfailing beats kept the dance floor full.

Now Johnny wanted to throw in the perfect atmospheric segue, and so he faded out, faded in, let the dancers dictate the moment, and then let Depeche Mode’s “It’s No Good” smoothly ride under Roger’s “Grapevine.” The speakers were joyfully throbbing in a continual handoff that ignited the dance floor. He was now playing for her, her alone, and in doing so he carried the whole club.

* * *

Neil Young has famously sung that “When you dance I can really love.” With this observation, he had hit upon yet another elixir that sparks love. Shakespeare put forth music, Dorothy Fields suggested the special way a person looks at a special moment, and, well, such lists can be extended at will. Tonight, however, it was dance.

Depeche Mode’s “World in My Eyes” was gracing the ears, and Terry saw Kathy dance for the first time—moving in those minimal, almost secret ways that somehow always landed on the beat. Just a wave of the arms, nothing frantic like some of the happy dancers on the floor, but movements almost surgical in their precision. And always, after a few moments of this, she would glance up at Terry, her head bobbing gently to the beat.

Terry’s heart skipped a beat. He had never felt such a thrill. He had been in combat, had been wounded, had made love, lost love, but he now realized all of it had been prelude. He was standing on that peak where one can see for miles and miles in any direction. And she, incredible she, was dancing in front of him, with him, for him.

Oh, he moved. He was no statue, but his movements were at best a pastiche of thrusts and jerks, and yet when she looked at him, they landed on the beat. The music had drifted into Depeche Mode’s “Waiting for the Night,” and its spacey echoes sprinkled magic over the whole club.

Terry looked up, and Kathy made the move she had been dying to make for a whole year. She wanted her gaze to lift his until they locked, and once they did, secrets that had lain in caverns for months forced their way to the surface. She bobbed, she twisted, she conducted, then—there! There it was. Their gazes met and stayed locked. They were no longer just dancing; they were on the precipice of something far deeper than that.

* * *

Seal and a special guest would take everybody home. Johnny was playing his ’90s dream list, and as “The Beginning” marched through the space, he could see people singing the bridge: “Music takes you round and round and round and round and round, hold on to love…” And everybody was swinging. Everybody was oh, so cool. Everybody was in the throes of happiness. The bartenders were dancing, the proprietors were dancing, and Johnny guessed that not a soul had made for the restroom. Not here. Not now.

“When you dance I can really love.”

And so it was.

Kultar and Melissa found themselves closer than they had at first planned. The crowd pushed and bumped. It moved as one organism, and the stomping on the floor only added to the mini-Arcadia of delight.

A large male dancer, sweating and moving as if he were conjuring a hurricane, pushed Kultar squarely into Melissa. They met like an electric shock, and then there was this: Neither pulled away. Neither even shot a look of consternation at the large offender, who kept moving and took no account of his actions as he generated his storm.

Instead, a facade was quickly erected.

“Dream is killing it,” yelled Melissa.

“That’s my boy, always keeping it 100%.”

They moved and swung with the crowd, and neither backed away. It was that moment when souls are two, merging—to steal from Donne—as compass legs coming together. They danced and were conjoined, and they loved it.

* * *

Jackie bobbed and bobbed. She was now left alone as prospective partners realized that she was, well, Johnny’s girl. Not really, but those who had been turned down thought so, and so she, on this night when the forest was alive and humans and fairies came into contact—on this, of all nights—was alone.

Then she started, and a smile forced its way onto her lips. The DJ who was, on this night, saving everyone’s life came down from the stand, stood in front of her, and said:

“I meant what I said. Every word of it.”

“You better.”

They stood eyeball to eyeball. There was no blinking.

“You were in rare form tonight,” Jackie said.

“So, Cool, it’s me and you?”

“Are you asking me for a dance, Johnny?”

“You already know.”

Seal’s “Prayer for the Dying” came up, riding beneath them, and the engagement was instantaneous. They moved. Both were the epitome of cool. All shoulders, hands that gently punched or painted pictures. Hips swung in unison.

“So?” Johnny asked.

“You already know.”

When music swings like this, it has a face, and its face is not smirking like Puck’s mischievous conducting. It smiles, it touches, it too nods and bobs. It does for lovers what only magic can, and the harmful stings are nowhere to be found.

And we come to Sade.

Johnny had set it up to murder and leave no witnesses, and so Diamond Life graced the room, coming down from Seal’s heat and replacing it with the killer queen of cool. Johnny knew perfectly well that Diamond Life was an ’80s album. He was cheating, and he knew it. But the night demanded Sade, and Johnny Dream was not about to let a little thing like chronology stand between him and perfection.

The ’90s were in the house. With a few glorious exceptions.

* * *

But to really reduce Ma Jolie to cinders, one more selection needed to be made. And now Johnny’s prearranged setlist delivered it.

“I Couldn’t Love You More” would take them all the way to 1:50. There was no need for a last call, for embraces were the tonics that needed no other libations.

And so it was that Terry gently embraced Kathy, Kultar embraced Melissa, and Johnny embraced Jackie, who leaned her head on his shoulder.

* * *

Across the room, Truft had come back in to retrieve a battered hat he had left on a table. It had been knocked to the floor.

“Bastards,” he mumbled.

He staggered, having shut down the dive bar on top of the drinks he had consumed at Ma Jolie earlier. He slammed the battered hat on his head and looked at the dancers.

He reeled when he saw it: there were Terry and Kathy, Kultar and Melissa, and Johnny and Jackie, locked in embraces, bodies up close!

Even through the alcoholic fog, outrage and sneering contempt burned through.

“Races mingling like animals. By Monday this will be outlawed, crushed, never to be seen again.”

He mumbled this and considered giving the vile enemy a full Heil Hitler. That would shake them up! Show them what’s what and, more importantly, what’s to come.

Alas, his balance was wavering, and Munck was waiting for him in the car. He rocked backward, pitched forward, stopped in mid-tilt, then turned and staggered out the door before he collapsed completely.

* * *

Peter had pulled up to the edge of the street and waited a moment. He wanted to process the night itself. The dancing, his beloved in the magnetic pull of another man. What kept the whole farce from becoming tragedy was that Terry was white.

He trembled as he thought about his lack of discipline. By Monday it would not matter, but still, he was a Volkmann! What would his grandmother and mother say? Yet in spite of the near disaster, he could utter one word:

“Kathy.”

He had left her, but soon he would have her—for all time. It was not what he wanted, but he would make it all cohere.

He moved off, driving deep in thought. As he drove, a thought gripped him and would not let go: Would Pasadena look this way Monday morning? Would it still be tree-lined and pleasant as it peeked toward the mountains? Or would it be a vast industrial hell, an outpost of the Reich? Would the Reich find its Southern California succor elsewhere, perhaps by the beach?

He drove aimlessly, with no particular place to go, and decided to see Pasadena one last time as it existed in this reality, as a city he had known for over thirty years.

Of course, as a bastion of the Reich, it would be Jew-free, Black-free, Latino-free except as slaves and servants.

But not Kathy.

No, he would store her, feed her, protect her until the time came to reveal her, first as his personal slave for a while—and she had to accept that—and then maybe later, no, he could never marry her, but he would also never let her go.

This was too much, too weighty for this night. There was a full plate for the weekend, and he could think better in the morning. And then there was this: no staff member would be allowed to leave the Institute from tomorrow morning on, so why not, in the still of night, make one last little tour of the city?

And so he aimed his Porsche, driving at ease but also recognizing that as the clock ticked, anxiety would grow.

He shook his head to clear it and found himself passing by a field of giant black electrical towers. He paused and wondered if even these giants would be here after the great power surge of Sunday night into Monday morning.

He looked at the vast terrain lined with the black Eiffel towers, and he noticed that the towers seemed to stretch on endlessly into the darkness until—no—until they came to that horrible, black U-shaped monster in the far distance.

Its blackness burned through the dark, and it loomed some stories above the giant electrical towers. That hideous shape, the toilet-lid U, seemed even from such a distance to be speaking to him and him alone.

No cars went by. No street lamps were lit in this part of town. Nothing but blackness and that damnable shape that cut through the blackness with a sneer.

Peter involuntarily screamed out, but he could not take his gaze away from the hideous shape that loomed over everything like a summons.

He made himself hit the gas.

He lurched forward with a skid, headed back to the Institute.

More The Long Form: The Long Form: Level 1757, Chapter 9: A Peak in Darien, Part Two

I’d love to hear your thoughts, so speak your mind. Leave me a comment or feel free to hit me up at: fromandromedaandback@gmail.com. And thank you!