Chapter 21 #3
Kelli couldn’t quite imagine going in. Orlando would have already gone in; he’d be charming and witty and he’d already have two mermaids on his arm.
But Kelli didn’t know how to do that. She didn’t know how the good, professional version of her was supposed to behave at a party, either.
She cast around for someone else to picture and came up with a sheltered girl from one of the coastal cities, a little younger than Kelli, who’d never had anything bad happen to her but who’d also never seen a party like this.
The mermaids had invited her for reasons that had yet to be revealed.
When the girl saw Orlando, another human in this sea of strange creatures, she would cling to his arm, looking around at everything with wide, eager, overawed eyes.
Kelli could be that girl, minus the clinging.
It was actually very tempting, now that she’d managed to picture it, being that girl.
“It’s probably too loud. But. . . .” Kelli couldn’t tear her eyes away from those lights, or her mind from that rhythmic beat. It was a little like the songs that she listened to on the way to work, to drown out the hyperloop’s noise. “Can we go in for like two minutes? Just to see?”
“Of course,” said Ting, smiling. “Come on.”
It was definitely too loud. Ting had said the dance floor was an emptied-out warehouse, and it looked that way—utilitarian, with a high ceiling and big loading doors, and exposed steel beams at the top where the speakers and lights had been hastily hung.
It had been painted, like the rest of the distribution center, in a wash of dark, garish, iridescent colors, and a few walls held white projection screens, where more of those cartoons were playing: vaguely humanoid figures moving in time to the music themselves.
Simpler lights flashed and spun in an ever-changing colored pattern.
The colors made Kelli’s head swim, but the sound wasn’t as bad as she had expected.
She hated the noise of crowded concourses—everyone’s separate sounds mingling and clashing.
On the dance floor, the beat pounded, but its very loudness and insistence made it a kind of unifying force.
There weren’t twenty or thirty different sounds.
Just the one, overpowering song, with a structure and tune that made sense to her.
Everybody moved, in their individual ways, to that one sound.
Even the lights and the projection screens flashed and swerved to it exactly in time.
Kelli shied up at the side of the room, back to the wall so it was less overwhelming, staring at them all.
There were at least five different dances happening.
Some of them were lewd beyond description—couples pressing up against each other, full body to full body, grinding their hips like they weren’t in front of hundreds of other people.
All kinds of couples, Kelli noted, not just men with women—but that only embarrassed her more, and she had to look away.
Some of the other dances were better. Some of them didn’t involve touching one’s partner at all, just wriggling around a few feet from them, synchronized, face-to-face.
And in the middle of the room a few people did spectacular stunts that didn’t involve any partner—flipping and twirling like gymnasts while a circle of onlookers cheered them on.
There’s more than one style, she thought to herself. This was all too much, but there was something about it.
Ting said something to her, but she couldn’t make out the words over the beat, only a faint bwah bwah bwah as their mouth moved.
“I can’t hear you,” Kelli shouted, gesturing to her ears and shaking her head.
Ting made a thoughtful face, then stepped back a bit and beckoned.
Kelli could still understand gestures. She stepped toward them.
Ting met her gaze, smiled, took a purposeful, exaggerated step to the side, then looked at her expectantly.
Kelli copied them, wide-eyed, the way the girl in the mermaids’ den would.
They tapped their feet together, then stepped to the other side.
She followed that, too. They did that a few times, adding just a little more each time—a step back or forward, a gentle sway with their hips, a lift of their arms. Kelli didn’t understand it at first—it was hard to think when everything was this loud.
It was some game Ting was playing, and she was supposed to play along.
But then Ting sped their pace a little, matching it more precisely with the beat, and all of a sudden Kelli understood.
Without having to speak to her, they were showing her how to do the dance. The simplest, safest one, where nobody had to touch each other even a little.
Kelli was dancing.
She blinked at Ting as she moved, blinked at the room around her, the colorful lights and the pounding beat.
Once she’d gotten the hang of it, she couldn’t help but move her feet to that beat—it would have felt wrong to move them in any other pattern.
She’d never danced before. It was probably an indulgence she shouldn’t allow, but she thought maybe she liked it.
Ting caught her stunned expression, and grinned.
At that moment, Rowan walked in with a spring in his step, already moving in time to the beat. He caught Ting’s eye and the two of them exchanged a few shouted words.
“I can’t hear you!” Kelli shouted again, gesturing to her ears even more emphatically.
But Rowan and Ting seemed to know what to do. With a little salute, Ting bowed out and went looking for another partner. Rowan stood in front of Kelli alone now, and he gave her a little flourish of a bow, then a small beckoning gesture. Kelli understood it. He was asking: may I have this dance?
She nodded, unaccountably breathless.
This was probably too dangerous. Kelli was the kind of person who had to take deep breaths and wear noise-cancelling headphones on the way to the hyperloop, just so she didn’t get too agitated and say something unkind.
She knew what had happened last time she and Rowan got carried away.
There was no telling how it would go if she gave in and let herself dance with him.
But she was already here. She’d already made all the choices that led up to being here. She was being a girl who was impressed with the dancing. She might as well.
Rowan danced in the same style as Ting—Kelli could not stop thinking about style now—but a little more complicated.
He moved his arms and shoulders more, light on his feet and expressive.
Kelli swayed when he swayed, lifted her hands when he did.
She was sure she must be the clumsiest dancer in the world; she must be getting half of it wrong.
But Rowan watched her with a delighted grin, and she couldn’t help but grin back. This was . . .
Nice. Nice was the word. She wouldn’t be able to deal with the loud warehouse forever, and the whole thing might soon prove to have been a bad idea; but for now, this was nice.
They gradually circled around the room. They passed all sorts of people doing other dances, or groups clumped up and watching from the walls, some with drinks in their hands.
People their age in trendy clothes, like Rowan and Ting and Zhaleh.
Older people in work coveralls, many with tattoos poking out or rakish hairstyles.
Big men in suits, who looked so much like the standard goons from a crime show that Kelli had to stifle a laugh when they passed.
Women in almost nothing, writhing around in ways that Kelli didn’t dare to let herself watch.
Women in suits like the men, or in heavy and tough-looking jackets, or in anything they wanted at all.
Style, Kelli remembered, was a word that applied to clothes, too.
There were words in the songs, but Kelli had trouble picking words out of music. She made sense of enough short phrases to identify what most of the songs were about. Songs about love; songs about confidence; songs about having a good night out. Songs about dancing.
She looked across at Rowan as they danced, at his dark eyes looking back at hers. His delighted expression.
For the first time, Kelli felt a little bit guilty about this.
Not about consorting with smugglers and criminals, but about the other part.
The part with Baz. If this did all go sour in a few minutes, would she really be able to go through with it, tell him everything, turn Rowan and all his friends in to face justice for their crimes?
If it didn’t all go sour, would she be able to explain away the message she’d already sent?
Even Kelli knew that the justice system didn’t always deliver justice correctly.
It especially wasn’t nice for trans people, she’d heard.
She wished it didn’t have to be like this.
If only things ten years ago hadn’t turned out the way they did.
If only Rowan had someplace else to go for the healthcare he needed, or maybe if he wasn’t trans in the first place.
If only nobody had hated them for who they were or made them hide it, and people like them could go dancing in places like this all they wanted to, and so could their friends, and none of the bad things had ever happened.
If only Rowan’s media wasn’t illegal. If only they could have stayed together, these last ten years, dancing like this, telling each other stories. Happy.
It was a stupid thing to think.
At last, one of those men in suits came up to Rowan and said something in his ear.
He stopped dancing and beckoned for Kelli to follow.
She trailed after him up a flight of rickety metal stairs and up to a side door, one that was guarded by two more of those big men.
The guards looked them both up and down, then nodded.
Kelli squared her shoulders and took a deep breath.
This was it. Time to stop being the wide-eyed girl and be the professional; they were going to meet the Quixadas now.
She would be polite and nice and honest, and just in case she had to report it, she would learn everything about Conchita Quixada and the Brimstone Syndicate that she possibly could.