Dancing with the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

run extra patrols by her building, they assured her, and if she noticed anything suspicious she was to phone them.
    Fifteen minutes after their arrival she was seated again on the sofa with her feet submerged in hot water, and they were no doubt a few blocks away looking into crimes actually committed. Probably they were right about the marks on her door. Frustrated vandalism. Not likely to be repeated.
    She withdrew her bare feet from the water and patted them dry with the towel, then carried the pan into the bathroom and refilled it so the water was steaming.
    When she’d placed the pan before the sofa again, she didn’t sit down. She was going to play the Ohio Star Ball video she’d taped from the Public Broadcast System presentation of last year’s finals. It showed only the highest levels of competition on the last night, when Juliet Prowse acted as hostess. But the same glitter and motion would be there during the earlier Novice and Intermediate Bronze pro-amateur competition, the categories in which Mary would dance with Mel.
    As she stood up to pad over to the TV and slip the cassette into her VCR, the phone jangled.
    She picked up the receiver and pressed cool plastic to her ear, standing gracefully with her feet in fifth position, waiting.
    “Mary? It’s me, Jake.”
    She wasn’t surprised. The old pattern was developing, the dance of contrition and forgiveness.
    “You get the flowers?” There was music in the background. And voices. A woman laughed hysterically. Good times rolling. He was probably speaking from Skittles, the bar near where he worked. He’d go there often after his afternoon shift’s ten-thirty quitting time and stay until well past midnight, drinking with his warehouse buddies. “Hey, Mary? Babe?”
    “Yeah, I got them, Jake.”
    He was quiet for a moment. She wondered if he was drunk. Probably at least halfway.
    “Jesus, Mary, I’m sorry!”
    “It said that on the card that came with the flowers,” she told him.
    He gave a short, sad laugh. “Yeah, I guess it did.”
    “Jake, did you do something to my door?”
    “Your door? What’s that mean?”
    “Just what I asked.”
    “Why would I do something to your door?”
    “I thought you mighta forgot your key and tried to get in.”
    “I always got my keys with me.” When she didn’t say anything right away, he said, “Mary?”
    “You hurt me pretty bad, Jake.”
    “How bad?”
    “Bruised some ribs.”
    “Christ! I’m sorry, babe, you know I am.”
    “Do I?”
    “Well, I hope you know.”
    “You been drinking, Jake?”
    “Some. I needed to get a little bit drunk so I’d have the guts to call. Last night—damn! I don’t know what the fuck came over me, Mary.”
    “You never do.”
    “I know it sounds dumb of me to promise it won’t happen again. But I can promise you this, and I swear it on all I hold holy: I’ll try my damndest not to ever let it happen again. I never meant to hurt you that way; I’d kill anybody that’d hurt you. I mean really hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”
    “I know it, Jake.” And she did know it; she believed him.
    “I guess you don’t wanna see me again.”
    “Would you , if you were me?”
    “No, I gotta admit I wouldn’t. Tell you the honest truth, I don’t know why you put up with the shit I hand out.”
    “I don’t put up with it. I’ve quit. You and I are over, Jake.”
    “I hear it but I can’t believe it, Mary.”
    She said nothing, letting him squirm while she listened to the faint hollow hiss of the connection. She was pressing the receiver so hard to the side of her head that her ear was beginning to ache as if he’d hit her there.
    “Lemme come over,” Jake pleaded. “We can talk about it, huh?”
    “No, Jake, and don’t call me back.”
    “Mary! Don’t hang up! Please! Give another shot, huh, babe? You know I mean well. It’s just that I got this . . .”
    “Sickness?”
    “If you wanna call it that. This sickness in me. I hurt people, and