Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
brUNO
I’m sitting on our veranda, trying to catch a moment of peaceful reading before we have to be down to the infernal croquet brunch.
I’ve scanned through the Times as well as Kelsey’s Instagram account, which was linked from one of those articles Sadie sent to me.
I hadn’t meant to dive so deeply into it, but I am posing as her boyfriend, after all.
And it’s interesting to see her life. She really is different from her family—her life, her personal style, especially the quality of aliveness that she has.
Kelsey comes out dressed in some sort of tennis outfit and leans against the rail. “You’re probably jaded about this view, living on a yacht. I never will be.”
I put the device aside. “What’s your view in Manhattan?”
“Similar to our former room in this very hotel. Brick wall. A pipe with some truly expressive rust. Not the best ever.”
“So why don’t you move? If you don’t like your view.”
“I have amazing friends in the building. The rent isn’t terrible for the neighborhood, and it’s near my Broadway gig and the place where I run a dance program.”
“You run a dance program?” I ask. I saw a lot of pictures of kids, but… She runs it?
“Yeah, an after-school dance program. What? Is that so shocking?”
“You don’t seem like the organizational type.”
“I’m not at all the organizational type. Unless I care about a thing.”
That is so her. She would’ve been the kind of student to give her teachers fits: perfectly capable of doing the work, but completely uninvested unless it interested her, at which point she’d excel. “So you care about teaching kids to dance? That’s your thing?”
“For sure. People think about dancers learning a few steps or something, but it’s so much more than that.
The kids get exercise and they get to express their emotions and their personality, and that is so important, you can’t even imagine.
I work with a lot of kids where it’s their only expressive outlet.
And with arts cuts these days...” She narrows her eyes and there’s that icy fury again.
“Well, my friends and I have been doing a bunch of outreach to schools that are most affected or that most need it. Our little way of saying FU to that.”
I press my lips together, suppressing a smile, thinking how on-brand for Kelsey, taking up major pursuits as an FU to something.
She turns away, looking back out at the ocean. “It involves us taking a lot of subway rides and a lot of us pushing cafeteria tables and benches around, but it’s worth it. We’re giving these kids something that they desperately need. I get chills, sometimes thinking about how some of them blossom.”
“You don’t have a car?”
“On what planet would we have a car?”
Right. Manhattan. Parking and all of that, I guess. “And what’s this Broadway show you’re in?”
She regards me suspiciously. “Is that genuine curiosity, or are you doing homework?”
“The show is part of our story. I should know the details.”
Her dimples appear in full force. “Liar. I think you’re just so fascinated with me. You must know all!”
“Do I have to research it myself?”
“Absolutely not. Stay right there.” She disappears into the suite, returning with her iPad. She sits beside me, close enough that I can feel the warmth of her skin, and holds up the screen. I look at the screen.
“I don’t have a huge part. My friend Mia’s one of the leads. But I dance. And I sing a little.”
She hits play. The device comes alive with music, color, and movement.
I’m not looking for her, but I see her instantly, tap-dancing away in satin shorts over fishnet stockings, with a sequined top and a little hat set at a jaunty angle.
There’s this unguarded, even unbridled quality to the way she moves, making the dance look easy and fun, though I’m sure it’s neither.
Her legs are long and extraordinarily powerful.
Deft. Shapely. But of course, she’s a dancer, every bit as much of an athlete as a sprinter. “So this is tap dancing.”
“Have you never seen tap dancing?”
“I grew up with two brothers and attended military boarding school. When would I have seen anything like this?”
“Your parents sent you to military boarding school?”
“My dad sent us. After my mom died. He was not really wanting to raise three young kids.”
“I’m so sorry about your mother.”
“It was a long time ago. She drowned.”
“Oh no.”
I mumble something about her shoes and towel left behind in the sand and the fierce currents.
“And you lived in that military school full-time?” she asks.
“That is the idea of boarding school.” I keep my focus on the screen.
She looks at me for an uncomfortable moment.
“Tell me about this,” I say.
“This show is called Anything Goes. It’s a musical from the 1930s. The main protagonist, Reno, has this very exuberant entourage called Reno’s Angels, and that’s us. Basically like backup dancers.”
It really is mesmerizing. The footwork is dizzyingly precise. I take the tablet without thinking. I don’t give it back. I’m puzzled by the way she’s in perfect time with the other dancers, but also somehow doing her own thing entirely.
“Right?” she says. “I mean, you got one look at me up there, and is it any wonder you couldn’t stay away?”