Move to Strike by Sydney Bauer Page B

such a long Saturday’s work, but she did not show it – no, she stood tall and graceful, her slim body defying the spread of ‘late middle age’, her legs still toned, her skin supple, despite what life had dealt her and the heavy price she’d paid for refusing to
ever let go
.
    She closed her eyes, slowly, deliberately, and imagined a different group before her – Roxy on her right and Gigi on her left, Marilyn diagonally in front and Cindy far stage left. They were doing the stardust number – the one with the pink flamingo headdresses, the crystal knickers and the long cords of fake diamonds wrapped around their bodies just so. And their smooth skin shimmered with every move, their pert breasts barely flinching as they kicked and spun and glided across the stage in heels so high they seemed to defy gravity. And she counted off the steps – one, two, three – and relished in the memory of the show-stopping finale and the inevitable deafening applause.
    â€˜Miss Deirdre.’
    She heard the words, but refused, at least for this moment, to recognise their owner as she willed the memory to its wonderful conclusion. And she saw his face then at the back of the crowded room – the tall, skinny ‘unlikely’ one who had caught her eye and, despite all the advances, all the offers and proposals from movie stars and business tycoons and other men of means, had stolen her heart with the genuineness of his smile. And they were happy, and life was good, until their twosome became a three-some and their whole pretty picture got shot to Goddamned . . .
    â€˜
Miss Deirdre!’
called Susie Bonkowski – the blue-eyed, buck-teethed brunette in the second row. ‘Are we almost done? It’s after four and our moms are waiting.’
    â€˜Yes, yes of course,’ recovered McCall, smiling at the attentive seven-year-olds before her while wondering which ones would make it, which ones would not, and which ones would think they had, only to find out that life had pulled a swift one on them after all.
    â€˜You may go,’ she said as she curtseyed to her class. ‘Good afternoon, children.’
    â€˜Good afternoon, Miss Deirdre, and thank you, Miss Deirdre,’ they replied – a singsongy response in appreciation.
    And then the pitter-patter of their ballet slipper-shod feet, the music of their after-class laughter, the cumulative whoosh of their quick excited breaths filled the room only to dissipate quickly, painfully, as they opened the door and the outside world sucked them from her once again.
    She grabbed her wrap and changed her shoes and bolted the double hall doors behind her, deciding to walk the fifteen blocks home rather than wait for the bus – stretching her journey from a pathetic twenty minutes to a decent, time-consuming forty-three.
    After she opened the door to her second-storey apartment, she did what she always did when she came home for the night. She moved straight through the entryway and into the living area towards the treated pine coffee table where she picked up the remote and filled the room with noise before the loneliness of the present and the memories of the past took their shot at embracing her with all the cold determination they could muster.
    And she left the TV on as she took her shower and defrosted her dinner and settled in for the long dark hours of nothingness. She watchedthe dramas and the late night news, taking a bizarre form of comfort in knowing there were other lonely souls, other unwitting victims of life out there suffering, just like her.
    And then she saw it. The headline story. And it all came back to her – just like that. There had been a murder – in a fancy brownstone, in a fancy suburb, in a fancy city some thousands of miles away. The TV celebrity was being taken away in handcuffs, his murdered wife removed like a clump of meat under a bright blue tarpaulin, the kids sheltered by some