I should probably quit. That was the realistic way to see it. But if I quit, what did I have? An empty apartment and a job I hated. And not much else.
At the studio on 91st Street, Tess and I changed into our dancing clothes—which were basically the same as yoga clothes. Tess didn’t have yoga clothes, but she had a soft pair of slim joggers and a tank top, which worked just fine.
There were only ten of us in class today, because it was a new studio. The instructor, Bonnie, had only opened it six weeks ago. I knew Bonnie from some tap classes we’d taken together. Tap was one of the first dances I learned, when I was Tess’s age, and I could do it in my sleep, but I liked to take a refresher every once in a while. Bonnie was the same. When she told me she was going to open her own dance studio, I signed up.
I stood next to Tess at the back—the only place Tess was comfortable—as Bonnie led us in some stretches, then outlined some simple jazz moves. She put on music and told us to practice as she came around and coached us one on one.
“This is stupid,” Tess said as she did the move, crossing one foot behind the other, executing a simple turn and slide.
“You’re a natural,” I told her. “Just don’t forget about your hands. Raise your left like you’re going to lift the ceiling.”
“Totally stupid,” she said, but she did the move again, raising her hand this time. Her cheeks were flushed and her ponytail was swinging. In a few minutes, we were both laughing.
“See?” I said after Bonnie had taught us another move. “This is better than sitting in the library.” The library down the street from our building was the only place Tess was allowed to go on her own while her sister and brother-in-law were at work.
“You’re supposed to encourage me to go to the library,” Tess said. “So I’ll read and stuff.”
“The library is for weekdays,” I said. “Saturdays are for dancing.”
We executed the moves imperfectly, our rhythm was off, and sometimes we lost our balance, but like I’d promised Tess, no one cared. What mattered was that we did it. In celebration, I put my arm around Tess’s shoulders and we took a selfie as class emptied out, sweat and all.
“I’m going to put that on Facebook,” I said, just because I knew it would drive her crazy.
She rolled her eyes, like I knew she would. “Mina, no one uses Facebook.”
I was still laughing as I changed my clothes.
Ten
Holden
Our unit was based at our headquarters, the place where we gathered to wait for calls. It was a low, boxy building of brown brick in east Brooklyn, surrounded by a gravelly parking lot and weeds. Aside from the large garage where the ambulances were parked, the headquarters contained a room with bunk beds, a work room with computer stations, a kitchen, and a common room with a sofa and TV. On a twelve-hour shift, you might spend hours in at headquarters, checking supplies and doing paperwork. Or you might not spend any time there at all as you went out on back-to-back calls. No two days were ever the same.
This Saturday, I was on shift with Grim. The other units were out on calls, and Grim and I were at headquarters, Grim inside doing charts, me in the garage, washing the ambulance and checking the supplies. I might have an hour to wash the ambulance; I might have thirty seconds. You never knew how it would go.
As I sprayed the side of the ambulance with the hose, I thought about Mina. We hadn’t set up another meeting yet; our schedules hadn’t synced up. I wanted to take her out again tonight, but I was on a long shift.
Still, that didn’t stop me from thinking about her. A lot. The way she’d looked at dinner the other night. The way her blouse dipped in a V at the top of her cleavage. The way her cleavage looked even more considerable than it had in high school, if that was possible. I had been a big fan of Mina Maple’s cleavage at eighteen, though I’d never told her that. I was still a big fan of it now. In fact, in moments of boredom like this one, my favorite thing was to fantasize about it in serious detail.
My phone buzzed in the back pocket of my uniform pants, and I lowered the hose to take it out and look. As if she were psychic, Mina had texted me. Where are you right now? Are you saving someone’s life?
Not exactly, I wrote.
She wrote: So what do you do when you’re not saving lives?
I’ll show you, I wrote back.
I propped my phone on a nearby folding table, set the camera timer, and walked back to the ambulance, spraying it with the hose. When the photo app clicked, I walked back to my phone and texted her the picture.
That’s what I’m doing right now, I wrote. Total excitement. Your turn.
There was a long moment when she didn’t answer. I wondered if I had said something wrong, but then she finally sent a reply.
Mine isn’t quite as sexy as yours, she wrote.
I blinked, then grinned to myself. So she thought it was sexy, huh? I could deal with that.
Show me, I wrote.
There was another pause, and then a photo came through. It was Mina and a young girl who was in her early teens. They were at some kind of a workout—both of them had their hair tied back and their cheeks were flushed. Their arms were flung around each other’s shoulders and they looked like they were trying not to laugh. Mina was wearing an off-the-shoulder tee with some kind of strappy bra beneath it, and she had no makeup on.
I stared at the photo for a long minute, looking at her flushed skin, her natural confidence, and feeling a crazy rush of lust. Mina had always done this to me, especially when she had no idea she was doing it.
Before I could write anything, she wrote me a text. That’s Tess. She’s staying with my neighbor, who is her sister. We went to dance class.
That was nice, but in this moment I couldn’t really see the other person in the photo. I wrote: I disagree with your assessment. You’re very sexy.
There was a pause. I had gone too far, maybe—she was still mad at me for fucking up ten years ago, but I had to be honest. What I wanted was for her to be sweaty and flushed, just like in the photo, but because we’d just spent the entire night having the kind of mind-blowing sex she thought only existed in romance novels.
Dream on, Holden, I told myself. Dream on.
Finally, Mina texted back. You’re not supposed to take all of the drugs, Holden. You’re supposed to give them to patients.
So she was parrying with a joke, then. Fair enough. If I was going to get any kind of shot, I would have to work for it.
Was that what I wanted? A shot with Mina?
Yes, it was. The question was, how did I get it? I wouldn’t have a shot as soon as she knew the entire story about prom night. She’d want nothing to do with me after that. I was already drawing out my telling of the story as an excuse to see her again, but I couldn’t in good conscience try and get her into bed until she knew the whole truth.
Damn it.
Taking up her joking tone, I returned, Fine, I’ll cool off by turning the hose on myself.
Take pictures, Mina wrote.
Sure.
But take your shirt off first.
Now she was the one being flirty. No. I’ve decided to play hard to get, I wrote. And then, when the alarm on my work phone went off: We’ve got a call. Gotta go.
I turned off the hose as Grim came out into the garage, hefting duffel bags of medical supplies. “Let’s go, Prom Date,” he said, using the nickname he and Eric had started using on me. Sometimes it was a pain in the ass to live and work with people who knew too much about you.