Dancing with the Dead Read Free Page A

for Mardi Gras.”
    Shoosh! Shoosh! “Murdered how?” Willis asked.
    “Helen thinks her husband did it,” Mary said.
    Willis shrugged. “Well, that’s usually the guilty party, the victim’s spouse.” Shoosh! “That oughta do it.” He handed the brush back to Lisa.
    “Or boyfriend,” Helen said, looking at Mary.
    “Same thing.”
    Lisa snorted, somehow making even that seem sensual.
    Two more students, Jean and Marci, who took turns driving each other to the studio, came in from outside, talking and laughing. Suddenly silent, they nodded, then glanced around for a place to sit down and change shoes. Mary stood up and moved away, leaving space on the bench.
    Larry, another instructor, bustled out of the office smiling. “Everybody ready for merengue?” he asked, clapping his hands. Enthusiasm was his long suit.
    “Ready for anything,” Lisa said. Willis stared at her.
    “All right, onto the floor, folks. Staying, Mary?”
    “No, I gotta be somewhere.”
    “Aw, nooo you don’t! Come on and stay!”
    “Sorry, Larry, gotta run.”
    “Awww!” Then he seemed to shake off his acute disappointment; life would go on for him after all. “Okay, whoever’s coming, let’s go!” Swaying his hips in Cuban motion, he merengued over to the far side of the dance floor. The students followed.
    “Take care, Mary Mary,” Helen called over her shoulder, then got in line with the other students.
    Carrying her dance shoes in their nylon bag, Mary walked to the door, subtly swaying to the rhythm of the Latin music now pulsating from the speakers. “Weight over the bent leg!” Larry was yelling. “Atta girl, Helen! Beauuutiful!”
    Mary pushed the door open and stepped outside into a cool, light drizzle, the real and indifferent world greeting her with a slap in the face.
    Before climbing into her yellow Honda Civic, she held the door open so the dome light stayed on and looked in the back of the little car. A woman alone had to take precautions. She’d heard on the news, or somewhere, about women being attacked by men who’d hidden crouched behind their cars’ seats and then made themselves known by an arm around the neck along some desolate stretch of road. A knife against the throat.
    No knife-wielding maniac tonight. But then she hadn’t really expected one. Stories like that were mostly rumor grown to become urban legend.
    As she drove away she glanced in the rearview mirror and thought she saw a shadowy form pass behind the car, very near. Though startled, she felt no fear. She simply stepped on the accelerator and instantly was away from any danger, real or imagined.
    Imagined, she was sure, as she turned left from the parking lot onto the brightly lighted avenue.
    Imagined.
    Urban legend.
    She switched on the radio and found music.

5
    M ARY’S MOTHER, A NGIE, lived alone in a one-bedroom flat on Shenandoah Avenue in South St. Louis. It was only a fifteen-minute drive from Mary’s apartment on Utah, but Mary didn’t go home before stopping at a White Castle drive-through and picking up hamburgers, french fries, and Pepsi for supper. Home wasn’t a place she deliberately avoided, but also not one she yearned to experience. No home of Mary’s had ever been that to her.
    Even the aromatic hamburgers couldn’t overcome the pungent, mingled cooking and cleaning scents of the flat as Mary shoved open the door with her hip and trudged up the wooden steps to the second floor. The upstairs hall smelled as if it had recently been fogged with perfumed insecticide.
    Angie had heard her coming and was standing with the door open, waiting. She was barefoot and wearing her beige terrycloth robe, as if she’d just taken a shower, but her hair was dry. Her feet were old, with prominent tendons, yellowed nails, and talons for toes.
    Angie was an older version of Mary, with red hair. Her features were haggard, with flesh as delicate and crinkled as worn folding money surrounding her eyes, and dark lines swooping from