Ten o'clock, SoMa

The honest version is that I stayed on purpose. The version I tell people is that the street door was already locked, and what exactly was I supposed to do — knock?

Here is what actually happened. The last advanced class let out at ten, and the sprung floor still held the heat of our feet. Everybody filed out through the cubby hall, snatching bags from their slots, and I hung back, because the final combination was still sitting in my calves like a grudge. Specifically the late arm before the turn. I kept rushing it. Everyone saw. She saw.

I came to this studio at thirty, which in dance years is like arriving at the Olympics with a walker. I stayed because it was the first thing that ever asked for everything I had — which is my way of admitting I noticed Celeste's gray hoodie dumped over one cubby slot the way you notice weather.

The only light left white and honest was the studio itself, glowing through the doorway like something you're not supposed to look at directly. The street key lay on the windowsill next to the Bluetooth speaker. She'd already thrown the lock on the street door at nine-fifty, while the rest of us were still dragging through the last eight-count. To leave, I would have to ask her to open it.

A locked door has never looked so much like an invitation.

Just a cooldown

She stood at the barre with one hand on it, the way a woman stands at a barre when the class is gone and she answers only to the mirror. The speaker was looping one more slow track, something with a piano in it that took its time, and the hallway fluorescents buzzed on behind me, unflattering as an interrogation.

She peeled her ankle warmers down one at a time, unhurried, a woman who knew the schedule and owned it outright. Sweaty bun. A thin gold hoop in one ear. Twenty-six, and after class she did not look younger — she looked like the hour finally belonged to her. Dancer thighs sat hard under the shorts. A line of sweat ran from her throat down into the black wrap, olive skin taking the studio light and keeping it, and her almost-black eyes flicked — in the mirror, not at me — to my bag by the door.

I want it on the record that the plan was to ask about the phrase. The late arm. Before the turn. Ask, learn, thank her, go home, sleep like a responsible adult. My mouth was dry. She kept watching the mirror, and I kept watching her watch the mirror, and the glass doubled everything — her, the barre, the small white lie of me standing in her classroom after hours.

“You're still here,” she said.
“The combination,” I managed. “The late arm, before the turn. I keep—”
“I know you keep.” She turned, finally, and looked at me the way you look at a door that's been knocking a long time. “Last cooldown. The combination… stay and I'll show you. I'll kill the hallway lights.”

There is a version of me — employed, sensible, hydrated — who says sure, great, ten minutes. That guy died somewhere around the second eight-count.

“Okay,” I said.

She reached past me and the fluorescents clicked off, and there was only the studio left: mirrors, barre, two people, and a piano that refused to admit the night had a schedule. We ran the phrase slow, her tempo set by breath, mine borrowed from hers. When I rushed the arm she didn't correct me out loud. She stepped in, laid two fingers at my elbow, and moved it a half-second later, her thumb warm on the inside of my wrist. In the mirror I watched her watch me, her mouth doing something private at the corner. “There,” she said, when the turn finally landed, and her hand stayed on my ribs one beat longer than choreography requires. The track ended. The speaker clicked, considered, and looped it again. Neither of us moved to the top of the phrase.

Continue this scene in Barre Lock →

The kiss, when it finally came, started with her — her tongue first, unhurried, like everything else she'd ever taught me. Teeth caught my lower lip, one small bright piece of punctuation, and I made a sound I would deny under oath. She smiled against my mouth like she was filing it away for next term. Her bun had given up somewhere during the combination; dark strands clung to her neck, and the sweat there was salt and warmth under my mouth.

Her palm came to my jaw, thumb at my cheekbone, steering nothing and everything at once. My hands found her waist, warm through the wrap, where a stripe of skin had been daring me all class. She walked me back a half-step and my shoulder blades met the mirror, cool through my shirt, and the glass took the two of us and held us there, doubled, like proof.

“Still with me?” she said.
“Still here,” I said, and meant it in a way that had nothing to do with the hour.
“Tell me to stop,” she said, close enough that the words landed more on my skin than in my ears.
“I don't want to stop,” I said. “I really, sincerely, embarrassingly don't want to stop.”

Her mouth traced the edge of my jaw, and her hand slid under the wrap and drew the leotard strap down off one shoulder, and the mirror took all of it twice. Somewhere in there I stopped keeping count — of eight-counts, of loops, of every sensible reason I have ever had — because some things you put the pen down for.

The piano came around one more time and neither of us called it. Outside, a bus sighed past on Folsom, keeping the city's hours and not ours. On the windowsill the street key lay gleaming, patient as a held breath, and the manager does his lock check at eleven. Neither of us reached for the door.

For the record: I still rush the late arm. Some corrections, I've decided, are worth attending in person.