out of the boys by entering their darkened room just a jot, holding a flashlight over our hand positioned to look like a claw. They’d scream, we’d scream, and we’d enter their room and tickle their bellies until they laughed with a combination of terror and merriment. Then we’d go out of the door, turn off the flashlight, and wait for them to be really quiet to begin again. We wore them out, and after an hour of fun and games, we closed the door to Peter’s room. It was just across the hall from Joey’s and my room. What Mommy and Ronny were doing was anybody’s guess. I think there was a soundtrack of something playing. Probably Guys and Dolls or Kiss Me, Kate . Between the pulses of rain, I could hear the music swelling and dropping from above, on the third floor.
The storm was rearranging itself between the twigs and among the branches. Acorns were snapping against the screens and the glass-paned windows and the sides of the house. It was the Indian summer dance of the sycamores, oaks, maples, and the big tall elm right outside the window by my bed. I hoped Daddy was all right. It was unusual for him not to come home. Probably because of the storm. I put “Moonglow” on the turntable of my portable phonograph and as I got undressed into my nightie, Nora was in the bathroom with the door closed. I turned on the music and danced in front of the full-length mirror, appreciating how pretty I looked. I rocked. I turned up the volume so the music could be heard over the storm outside. I rocked some more and put the 78 on again. The toilet flushed and Nora came out of the bathroom. She was wearing a loose, shimmery white pair of shorty pajamas. She saw me in front of the mirror, so I toned my dancing down so it looked less like a performance and more casual, just as Mommy had said about singing at dinner, it’s just something we do here .
Nora was stunning, and something in her was a little too sinful to know what to do with. She said, “Look at this, watch me dance. Eric and I danced at the cookout on the beach the last night of camp. We did this fox-trot to the slow dances, but the rumba and samba and the lindy to the faster ones. He picked me up like this.” Nora was smaller than I, but she raised me just slightly off the floor. “Then he let me fall, but his arms were there to catch me and we did this dip. It was so neat. I love him and I’ll bet we’re going to go all the way pretty soon.” I was horrified but didn’t let it show. Even I had my limits!
She started to get into the right rhythm of the song and she pulled away from me, doing a dance she might have learned from Rita Hayworth in The Lady from Shanghai . Then she took the scarf that was on the end of the bed and waved it through the air and around my head as though it was a feather. She had been so quiet, and now she had come to life. I followed her lead in what I supposed was a reenactment of her dances with Eric. She was looking directly at me and smiling with a reassuring look I’d never experienced with any boy I had ever danced with. It was heady, and as the song was coming to an end, I imitated Kim Novak’s move with her hips and arms in Picnic . Oh, wasn’t it fun to be a movie star? I put my palms together and crisscrossed them, brushing them up and down as the strings soared. My arms partly extended and my neck leaned back, allowing my head to move seductively. Nora watched me and tried to copy me. She and I led each other and, as in a perfect dance, communicated viscerally.
The light went out on a large thunderclap, and the lightning was so close to the thunder that it must have struck the house or maybe the elm, the tallest tree on the property. The music that seemed to have brought the storm on slowed and then stopped, and there was only howling. The storm said: Come dance with me. Nora and I bumped into each other, but not by chance. We fell back on the bed. Her hand moved explicitly under my nightie, and she startlingly,
The storm was rearranging itself between the twigs and among the branches. Acorns were snapping against the screens and the glass-paned windows and the sides of the house. It was the Indian summer dance of the sycamores, oaks, maples, and the big tall elm right outside the window by my bed. I hoped Daddy was all right. It was unusual for him not to come home. Probably because of the storm. I put “Moonglow” on the turntable of my portable phonograph and as I got undressed into my nightie, Nora was in the bathroom with the door closed. I turned on the music and danced in front of the full-length mirror, appreciating how pretty I looked. I rocked. I turned up the volume so the music could be heard over the storm outside. I rocked some more and put the 78 on again. The toilet flushed and Nora came out of the bathroom. She was wearing a loose, shimmery white pair of shorty pajamas. She saw me in front of the mirror, so I toned my dancing down so it looked less like a performance and more casual, just as Mommy had said about singing at dinner, it’s just something we do here .
Nora was stunning, and something in her was a little too sinful to know what to do with. She said, “Look at this, watch me dance. Eric and I danced at the cookout on the beach the last night of camp. We did this fox-trot to the slow dances, but the rumba and samba and the lindy to the faster ones. He picked me up like this.” Nora was smaller than I, but she raised me just slightly off the floor. “Then he let me fall, but his arms were there to catch me and we did this dip. It was so neat. I love him and I’ll bet we’re going to go all the way pretty soon.” I was horrified but didn’t let it show. Even I had my limits!
She started to get into the right rhythm of the song and she pulled away from me, doing a dance she might have learned from Rita Hayworth in The Lady from Shanghai . Then she took the scarf that was on the end of the bed and waved it through the air and around my head as though it was a feather. She had been so quiet, and now she had come to life. I followed her lead in what I supposed was a reenactment of her dances with Eric. She was looking directly at me and smiling with a reassuring look I’d never experienced with any boy I had ever danced with. It was heady, and as the song was coming to an end, I imitated Kim Novak’s move with her hips and arms in Picnic . Oh, wasn’t it fun to be a movie star? I put my palms together and crisscrossed them, brushing them up and down as the strings soared. My arms partly extended and my neck leaned back, allowing my head to move seductively. Nora watched me and tried to copy me. She and I led each other and, as in a perfect dance, communicated viscerally.
The light went out on a large thunderclap, and the lightning was so close to the thunder that it must have struck the house or maybe the elm, the tallest tree on the property. The music that seemed to have brought the storm on slowed and then stopped, and there was only howling. The storm said: Come dance with me. Nora and I bumped into each other, but not by chance. We fell back on the bed. Her hand moved explicitly under my nightie, and she startlingly,
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