Jack parked and turned the engine off. “Did you like the movie?”
Viviane nodded, thinking of the colorful costumes and the lively dance numbers. “I wish I could dance,” she mused.
“I can teach you,” Jack said.
Viviane looked at him. “You don’t know how to dance.”
Jack smiled. “I do. I know how to waltz; I can do the fox-trot. I even know how to tango.”
Viviane’s eyes grew wide. “Where did you learn that?”
“Must have read how somewhere.” Jack opened his door. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
As she stepped from the car, a cold draft of January air ran up Viviane’s bare legs. She wrapped her coat tighter around her.
Jack grabbed Viviane around the waist and pulled her close, so close that she could feel his breath on her face as he spoke. “It’s believed,” he said, “that the tango was born in the brothels of Buenos Aires.” He moved his right hand to the middle of her back. “I think it stems from the Latin word tangere, which, of course, means ‘to touch.’”
“Of course.”
Jack took her left hand and placed it on his shoulder, then took her right hand with his left. In spite of the cold, their palms were slick with sweat. Jack cleared his throat. “Okay, I’m going to take two slow steps forward. Just follow my lead.”
So they danced as Jack counted out the beat — T-A-N-G-O! — ​until Viviane could move in his arms as naturally as an Argentinean prostituta. It was hardly a fast dance, but perhaps because it came from the Latin word for “to touch,” both Viviane and Jack were soon breathless. They broke away and collapsed onto the grass, watching their breath make clouds above their lips.
Jack turned to Viviane. “Are you cold?”
“Freezing,” she lied, and turned to wrap her hands around his neck. She pulled his face to hers, and he met her smiling mouth with his.
Their kisses grew deeper. Jack moved on top of her, propping himself up with his elbows, his body hovering a few inches above hers. That was where they usually stopped. Then Jack would take Viviane home, her cheeks flushed, her eyes only able to make out a hazy outline of Jack’s face, regardless of what else might be in front of her — a hot stove, a dinner plate, a mother asking, What’s wrong with you?
But on this night, before Jack could move away, Viviane reached up and let her fingers trip along the buttons of his shirt. With fast fingers, she unbuttoned the top two, then left him to finish the rest while she moved on to her own, watching his face as she revealed the lace hidden under her clothes.
Jack leaned down and kissed her bare neck. When his mouth passed across her collarbone, she shuddered. Lightly, his fingertips circled her exposed navel. He reached for her waist —
“Stop!” Viviane yelped, grabbing at his hands.
Jack sat up, breathless. “Viviane, you’re being silly,” he said. “I’ve known you since you were six. I was there when you were sick. Come to think of it, you threw up on my shoe.”
When Viviane was nine, she suffered what she remembered as the worst stomachache she’d ever had. She did throw up several times, actually, and once on Jack’s shoe. She was diagnosed with appendicitis and rushed to the operating table, where she received quite a scar. Not just any scar, but a deep crevice about the width of Jack’s ring finger that ran the length of Viviane’s right side. When she was younger, she loved that scar — it was hideous and grotesque and perfect for pretending to be a battle-scarred soldier. But now, at sixteen, Viviane hated it — it was hideous and grotesque.
Viviane brought her hands to her face. “It’s ugly,” she moaned.
“It’s not,” Jack said, “but if you want to see something ugly, take a look at this.” Jack held out a hand to display a jagged white line between his thumb and forefinger. “Can opener,” he said.
Viviane took a closer look at Jack’s tiny scar and smiled. “That’s nothing,” she said, sitting up and pulling off one of her shoes. “I dropped a hot skillet on my foot.” She showed him the mark. “And . . .” Viviane held up her elbow, pointing out a thick pucker of scar tissue. “I was six. Learning to ride a bike and I crashed. I had to pick the rocks out of my skin. I think I missed one, though. Here, feel it.”
Jack laughed. “I don’t need to feel it. I believe you.”
“Jack, I need you to feel it,” Viviane said in mock seriousness. “It’s very important that you do.”
He pressed his fingers gingerly against Viviane’s skin. “Yeah, okay. I think there’s something in there. Or it might just be your bony elbow.”
Viviane made a face. “Ha-ha.”
Jack then revealed the place where he’d cut his ankle on the runner of a sled one winter, the circular scar from a childhood vaccination, and the pockmark along his nostril left over from the time everyone in second grade came down with the chicken pox. “So, see? I’m much more scarred than you’ll ever be. Probably always will be.”
There were other scars — from wounds that leave the skin unmarred. Of those, Jack certainly had many more than Viviane. Each pondered this in their own silent way as they lay side by side, the air around them growing colder still and the moon moving higher in the sky.
“Sometimes I think my dad must hate me,” Jack said after a moment.
“He doesn’t hate you,” Viviane whispered, too quickly to be convincing. She didn’t actually believe that John Griffith had the capacity to care about anyone other than himself. Even if he tried. Even if he wanted to. Viviane could count on one hand the number of times she’d heard her own mother say I love you, and she’d still have a few fingers left over. But that didn’t mean Emilienne wasn’t capable of love. It just meant, for a reason Viviane had yet to understand, she preferred to hide it.
“Sometimes,” Jack started, “I think he wouldn’t hate me as much if only —”
“If only what?”
Jack turned and gave her a sad smile. “If only you and I weren’t together.”
Viviane closed her eyes and pushed down the small ball of panic growing in her stomach. She groaned and gave Jack a nervous, playful jab. “You breaking up with me, Griffith?”
Jack paused just long enough for the ball of panic to bounce back up into Viviane’s throat. “No,” he finally answered. “That’s something I could never do.”
He stared into the dark shadows around them. “He thinks I’m useless,” he murmured.
Viviane pulled him to her. “Shush,” she said. With a sigh of defeat, Jack let his head drop against the lace exposed by her open shirt. His breath grew deep and heavy while Viviane tried to draw comfort from the rhythmic beat of his heart against her pelvic bone.
JACK AND VIVIANE sat parked on the dirt road at the bottom of the hill on Pinnacle Lane in John Griffith’s 1932 Ford Coupe. It was September and Viviane had just turned seventeen, making her one year and two months younger than Jack.
Jack tapped his foot in rhythm to a song playing in his head. The cuff of his pants had inched up his leg, exposing his sock and a section of his calf. His socks were navy blue; the hairs on his leg were unusually pale and silky. Viviane couldn’t see them, but she knew what they looked like. The hairs on her own legs stuck out like sharp pins. She didn’t know whether to be self-conscious about this or not — it wasn’t her fault there was a shortage of razor blades — so she pulled her feet away from the humming floor and tucked her legs under the skirt of her dress, just in case. The sole of her left shoe grazed Jack’s thigh.