Marry or Burn by Valerie Trueblood Page B

it was always getting her into trouble.” Then, so as not to place her in his mother’s generation—for he is roughly her own age—he says, “And now they’re all the rage again.”
    She decides he’s not the wedding consultant after all. “Which side are you on?” she says.
    â€œWhich side . . . oh, the bride’s. I had the pleasure of working with her at one time.” The tray of champagne is tilting their way. He dances her away from it, bracing her firmly as his steps lengthen. The brooch catches again. “Uh-oh. Here.” He pauses, and one hand secures her back as two long fingers of the other press her collarbone, lightly, while with the others he bends a tiny wire in the setting. She is flushed from the exertion and from having to arch backwards because of his height and stick with the conversation and keep her balance in a sequence that began simply but has grown more unpredictable as he feels her follow him. They start again, whirling a path through the crowd. “My daughter says it’s junk, but I don’t know, these don’t look like any pearls I ever saw, they could be real.”
    â€œI wouldn’t be surprised. Are you going to sell it?” he asks in a friendly way.
    She almost trips. “Why do you ask me that?”
    â€œForgive me, I’m thoughtless, I was joking.” But he isn’t a smiler. He has her close, where without her glasses she can’t really see him. He seems to steer her with something small, maybe the wrist bone. “I must be carried away, dancing with the mother of the bride.”

    â€œHow do you know, you weren’t at the wedding.”
    â€œI wasn’t?”
    â€œYou were here in this room when we got here.”
    â€œWell, I’ll confess. I said to myself, ‘The prettiest dress. Eyes bluer than the bride’s.’ And I heard you speak to Mr. Weller there, the young groom, and I thought to myself— Voila! West Virginia!”
    â€œWell, what about you? You’re just as bad. You’re not from here, you’re from down south.”
    â€œSo I am.” With his mustache and sad eyes he could have been another of those soft-spoken Southerners you ran into in boarding houses, always polite, showing you some pocket watch or worn-out leather book they carried around. He could have been, if you didn’t notice the halfway-mean pride that belonged to certain males looking to tease you into something—she was surprised to recognize it—and a kind of barely-held-onto patience.
    He spins her into the center of the parquet floor, three times, so that she lies this way and that like a dress displayed on an arm. “What took you from West Virginia to Baltimore?”
    â€œThings happened,” she says, trying not to show that the burst of energy is deserting her and she is losing her breath. “I had enough of the place. My sister—how do you know where I live?”
    With both arms he holds her in, against the strong outward pull of his wide steps in the turn. “I suppose I know everything about you,” he says.
    â€œI guess my daughter turned into a talker.” Out of the corner of her eye she keeps seeing the white dress of her daughter, wide skirts sloshing up and back. Even in this first dance, the dance to complete the wedding and start the new, married life, her daughter is keeping an eye on her.
    â€œNo.”

    â€œShe worked for you.”
    â€œYes, she did.”
    She tries to lean back to look at him, but with his forearm along her back and fingers to her ribs he keeps her where she is. By now she needs her breath and doesn’t try to speak.
    Her ears are ringing so that she can’t hear much more than the big double bass thumping. That she could feel even if she went deaf. The man seems calmly, even selfishly, attached to the idea of circling the dance floor with her for the length of this waltz, so long-drawn-out