Dance, Lust And Them

Chapter 2

 “Alright ladies, let’s take a fifteen-minute water break before getting back to work!” the choreographer said before clapping her hands.

 Lisa smiled at Janelle before walking off with the others to the break room. Feeling out of sots, Janelle hung back and looked around the studio. She noticed the mirror was two-way, as the opposite side now had the light turned on and there were several people working inside. They fiddled with buttons on a switchboard and she noticed there was a microphone hanging from the ceiling. She hadn’t noticed that the studio did both audio and dance production.

 Suddenly, she was joined in the room by another presence. It was none other than Vance Quick. He was tall and wiry with a beard and cornrows. He wore a pair of golden glasses that reached the tip of his nose and Janelle noticed his eyes were dark brown. He walked over to her and smiled a toothy grin.

 “It’s nice to finally meet you,” he said, extending a bony hand. “I’m Vance Quick and this is my studio.”

 “I’m Janelle Richard,” she replied, shaking his hand. “Thank you for having me.”

 “Whoa there, you’ve got a firm grip for such a little lady,” he joked.

 She smiled. “I ate my vegetables when I was a kid.”

 “Mm. I always hated vegetables…” There was a moment of hesitation that passed between the two of them, during which Janelle and Vance examined each other’s bodies. The first thing he noticed about her was the golden cross hanging around her neck. It seemed that whenever she was nervous she would fiddle with it, wrapping it around and around her finger.

 Janelle noticed that Vance was wearing a three-piece suit. He was so slim and tall that it looked comfortable on him, the material loose around his chest and legs.

 “I like your necklace,” he commented.

 “Oh this old thing? I got it as a birthday present from my mother a long time ago. It’s made of gold, so it hasn’t rusted, though I should probably stop wearing it in the shower.”

 “Your mother must mean a lot to you,” he said.

 “She does. She actually passed away when I was very small.”

 “I’m so sorry to hear that,” he said. She noticed that his tone was genuine, unlike the other kids who just seemed to pity her. Just because her mother had passed away didn’t mean she wasn’t strong. But if she could turn back time, she’d definitely tell her mother not to go out in that rainstorm.

 She regretted it every day of her life. Her mother hadn’t gotten groceries yet that week, as she was waiting for her unemployment check. She’d been fired from her teaching job because they were cutting funds in the history department, and her mother was desperate to cut corners. Janelle’s father reassured her every day that she would find work, but that didn’t seem to be happening.

 She’d kissed Janelle goodbye on the forehead before heading out to her car and driving off in the rain. It had been a legendary California storm, one where the ocean blew in strong and everything smelled like a jungle. The rain had been thick, and visibility was low. Janelle’s mother didn’t notice a truck coming her way from the opposite end of the road. When she turned the corner on a blind drive, it was already too late. The police later told Janelle’s father that the car had hit a pothole, her mother swerved, and the truck had driven straight into the passenger side. She’d died on impact, is what the police report said.

 “You see, my mother was always the one that told me to become a ballet dancer. I never dreamed of going into hip-hop, mostly because I went to a mostly white school that treated me like I was straight out of the ghetto.”

 She went on to explain that she’d taken ballet lessons in middle school, back when her mother had a job. She’d learned point, and her feet still had some scars from blisters and deep cuts around her ankles. She told Vance it was one of the many reasons she hated wearing open-toed shoes, as they revealed how messy her feet look.

 “I bet they look charming,” Vance said. “A few scrapes here and there give your body character. I’ve got a pretty large scar on my left forearm. I like to tell people I got it from a knife fight, though in reality it’s from when a pipe burst in my downstairs bathroom.”

 “Why didn’t you just tell people the truth?” Janelle asked, though she thought she knew the answer.

 “Where I’m from, you don’t want everyone finding out you were helping your mother wash the bathroom floor. They would have beat the life out of me before calling me weak or something worse from their plethora of insults.”

 Vance went on to explain that he’d grown up in the ghetto, in a neighborhood nicknamed The Grid. It was a connected network of small houses that were rented to low-income families. Because they were all clustered around each other, the kids and parents became close friends. As the parents grew older, and came into debt, the kids grew closer and got into more trouble. There were fights on a daily basis, either over drugs or over women, and many of them involved stab wounds.

 Vance tried to stay out of trouble. He told Janelle he’d bike off in the middle of the night to spend time at the local library. It was twenty-four hours, and six floors high. He enjoyed sitting among the reference books in one of the quieter sections. It was where all the college kids came to study. There were small glossy desks lined up against a window and the carpet was a dark shade of mango. Everything smelled both clean and papery, giving off the impression that Vance was existing within the pages of a book. He would lay under one of the desks for hours, flipping through book after book of information. He studied everything from zoology to cryptozoology.

 “Why didn’t you go to college?” Janelle asked.

 “I couldn’t afford it. Of course, I might have been able to get a scholarship, but I could barely afford the SATs. But it’s never been about college, not really. I believe that education should be free to the public, from infancy onward.”

 He explained that if he were ever the president, he would make all colleges free and he would fund the teachers extra for all their hard work.

 Janelle laughed. “You know, you remind me a lot of my mother. She always talked like this, about fully funded programs and the future of the education system. She told me to follow my dreams, whether it involved the arts or academia. I guess it’s clear which one I chose.”

 “Why can’t the arts and academia be merged? You always hear arguments about science and art being on opposite ends of the spectrum, but what about when the two are merged together?”

 “What do you mean?” Janelle asked.

 “In order to make better art, you have to be knowledgeable about the world around you from all aspects. That includes scientific research. A lot of the things I learned were just from reading those enormous reference books all night long. I’m pretty sure I hurt my eyes, though, which is why I’ve got these wizardly glasses.”