George had decided to bring her to the dance floor when he caught sight of her dancing alone behind the basement bar. He rarely saw her dance when she was sober, and anytime she did, it was done with a distaste for the moves and the music that he’d found unattractive. But now as she was filling up shot glasses and tipsily singing along to Harry Belafonte playing on the boom box, she looked happy enough to try.
“Come on Dana,” he said cheerfully, and took her by the hand, leading her to the small patch of carpeted floor in front of the speakers that the other party guests designated for dancing. Already on the floor were four or five girls who held the promise of a dance no matter the song or the partner. Some of them were holding red cups over their heads so the contents wouldn’t spill, but the others who were freer with their arms practiced steps they learned in the ballroom dancing classes. Everyone sang along with the chorus,
“Shake, shake, shake, Senora, shake your bodyline / shake, shake, shake Senora, shake it all the time…”
Another girl placed one hand on George’s hip, keeping her drink hand in the air. George suggested that she put the drink down somewhere and when she left, George watched the rest of the group. Their dancing was not particularly inspired, he thought, just the average party girl steps, swaying and movement of the hips. Dana was moving her hips with each “shake” and her round face kept getting pinker. He felt the hands return to his hips, gently steering him closer to the crowd. The song ended then. Weak applause drifted around the room, and the dancers dispersed. The girl holding his George’s hips stood on her toes and murmured in his ear,
“I’m getting another beer. Do you want one?”
“Yeah sure,” he said. He wasn’t sure if he really did, since he’d had a decent amount already that night, and was becoming bleary eyed and slow. But as host, he felt obligated to lead by example. The girl kissed his neck and disappeared upstairs. Dana had returned to her chosen seat behind the bar and was reading the labels of the fancy liquor bottles. He approached the bar, swaggering and swinging his arms in a half serious show of authority.
“Do you want a drink?” she asked. She was looser than she was at the start of the party, George noticed. The reluctance she showed earlier at the flip cup game was beginning to fade. She grinned at him and spread her hands out on the bar like an old timey waitress.
“None of that,” he began. “You need a drink,”
“I don’t want one,” she said. Getting Dana to drink more than she planned could be like pulling teeth. She’d stopped caving in to peer pressure as readily as when she was new to the group. When she was new, she would have done anything to please them. Making Dana drink her first screwdriver was one of George’s proudest moments as host.
“I want a drink!” shouted Dana’s roommate Marissa, leaning unsteadily against the bar.
“What would you like?”
“Surprise me,” Dana turned back to George and shrugged.
“What does Marissa want?”
“She wants…a cosmo,” said George.
“Did he say cosmo?” shouted Marissa over the music. “I don’t like those.”
“She doesn’t like those. Could you make her a gimlet instead?” George felt a small wave of fatigue wash over him and he sighed.
“I’m kind of on my last legs here,” he said. Dana smiled and patted his shoulder.
“That’s okay, maybe you should sit down.”
“You need a drink,” he tried again.
“But I don’t want one,”
“You haven’t had nearly enough yet,”
“Didn’t you just say you were tired?” Dana buzzed. “Have a seat, I’ll get you some water,” He squinted at her suspiciously, then pointed at her and grinned, like the last one to get the joke. She’s a clever one, George thought.
“I see what you did there,” he slurred a little. “Well if you won’t drink, you have to dance with me,”
“Okay,” He was surprised when she let him take her by the hand and lead her back to the dance floor, now empty as John Mellencamp sang in the background. He took her waist, and she did the same because his shoulder was too high for her to rest her hand on.
“I didn’t know you liked dancing,” he said. She smiled, a little embarrassed.
They swayed from one foot to the other, making an aimless circuit around the room. John Mellencamp played on.
“Do you need a lover who won’t drive you crazy?” George asked.
“Not really,” said Dana.
“What about Jack?”
“Oh Jack never drove me crazy. Everything was so nice. Even breaking up was nice. There was almost no conflict,”
“So you need a lover who will drive you crazy,”
“Only a little. I’m tired of nice,” she said easily. She didn’t seem to mind being interrogated, so George kept going.
“What I can’t understand is why you like Alex,” Alex was Dana’ friend who had graduated the previous Fall. George would tolerate him when he was around, but he didn’t like listening to Alex talk about whatever protest he was arranging for the coming week, especially the ones that had so many causes smashed into one place. Hearing them all; US out of
“What? He’s nice, he’s smart—”
“Yeah,” interrupted George, “But is he good?”
“Good at what?”
“I don’t know. Life?”
“I think so. He graduated early, he just moved out of his mom’s house and now he’s living the dream at some nonprofit organization. I think he’s happy,” They kept dancing.
“I don’t have any romantic feelings for him though,” she suddenly added.
“You don’t?”
“No. Did you think I did?”
“No!” he said, and then added, “Well, I thought maybe there was potential for that to happen,”
“Oh no,” she said, “That would be too weird. I can’t see myself doing it. We’re too good of friends. Do you ever have those friends that are so good that you can’t think of sleeping with them without feeling a little sick?”
“No, sounds great though,”
“You do, you feel sick because you imagine not being friends with them afterwards.”
What a crock, George thought. She just doesn’t find him attractive. The song ended and the pair separated from each other. Dana began to head back to the bar, but George grabbed her hand again.
“You want to dance for another song?” Dana shot a quick glance at the stairs.
“What about Lindsay?” She began to pull back. George grimaced and shook his head.
“That,” he began slowly, waving the idea away, “is not what this is about,”
“You sure?”
“Yeah,”
“Okay,”
Alone again on the floor, they danced for three more songs until a party guest came by and tapped George on the shoulder. She was sleepy and stumbling and wanted George to find her a place to sleep.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, “I’ve got to help Annie with the futon,” and he followed the young girl upstairs.
Sitting on the edge of the futon, Annie watched George unroll the sleeping bag and she asked,
“Did Lindsay already go to bed?”
“I don’t know, she just went to get a beer,”
“When?” George stopped unrolling the sleeping bag and stood up. It occurred to him then that Lindsay had left the floor a half hour ago. He ran to the front door and went into the driveway. Her car was still there, so he went around the side alley into the backyard, but he didn’t see her.
“I think she left,” the young party guest said when he came back inside, “I don’t see Marissa either.” Getting anxious now, he came back downstairs where Dana was waiting on the floor.
“I think something’s wrong,” he said to her, “Lindsay’s not outside,”
“Is she inside?”
“I don’t know, I looked outside and she wasn’t there,”
“Did she leave?”
“I don’t know, she wasn’t outside!” George was starting to sweat and he kept looking around the room hoping he’d find her with the other guests, but she wasn’t anywhere.
“Did I screw up? Did I do something wrong?” he kept repeating quietly to himself. Dana held his arms and made him look at her.
“We’re going to look for her, okay? We’re going to look around the house. Let’s go upstairs.”
There she goes again, being bossy because she’s the more sober one, George thought. While Dana ran upstairs and started going through the rooms of the house, George sat on the pull out and brooded. Annie had tried to call Lindsey on her cell phone, but she had hung up so now she was talking to Marissa and George eavesdropped on bits of the conversation.
“Where is she going?…well why did she leave?” There was a long pause as she listened to Marissa explain.
“Oh,” she said, smiling nervously. She looked at George, then looked down when he looked back.
“She isn’t driving is she? Oh good,” said Annie, and she hung up. Dana came back into the room and shrugged.
“She’s not here,”
“She left, she’s walking home with Marissa,” Annie said meekly.
“Why?” George almost shouted. Annie flinched a little.
“Marissa said that Lindsay was mad because you wouldn’t dance with her.”
“What?”
“She said she went to get a beer and when she came back you wouldn’t dance with her.”
“I don’t believe this,” said George, “This is horseshit!” He shot a panicked look at Dana, who looked like she was going to be sick.
"Hey, when we were dancing, it didn't mean--"
"No! I know! Not for me either!" Dana interrupted.
"It was just--"
"I know! I know!"
"I didn't do anything wrong did I?"
"I don't think so, but she probably thought what we were doing meant more than it did."
"That's horseshit!" George said again. He stared off at the wall, barely registering the hushed babbling between Dana and Annie. His mind was rushing, but his thoughts were drowning in alcohol. I can’t believe this, he thought. I can’t believe she would drive. Now I can’t dance with any girl besides her? Doesn’t she trust me? I’m so sick of this, I want to break the chair. But I can’t break the chair, because that would scare them, and that’s not being a good host. I didn’t know Dana liked to dance and so I danced with her. I like dancing with her. I wonder if I’ll ever get to dance with her now. She always does this, she always thinks I want to cheat on her. I’m so damn sick of it.
“Goddamnit!” he yelled.
“Calm down!” said Dana, “You’re not helping,”
“She’s just being irrational,” said Annie. “She’s a girl. And she was pretty drunk,”
“Did I screw up somehow? Is this my fault?”
“No, but I was worried that this would happen. We were dancing kind of close,” Dana admitted.
“I don’t believe this!”
“I’ll try calling them again,” said Annie with a yawn. She opened her cell phone and scrolled to the last number dialed. Suddenly the phone rang in her hand and she screamed and dropped it. Turning red, she picked it up and answered it.
“It’s Marissa,” she said after a moment, “she wants to talk to you,” Annie handed the phone to George.
“What the hell is going on?” The voice on the other line was serene.
“Calm down man. Everything’s cool, I called her a cab home. It should be here in like, five minutes,”
“Why don’t guys just come back here?”
“She’s not feeling it right now. Trust me, you want to wait for her to cool down before you two patch things up. She’s pretty pissed,”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“I know. This isn’t about you. She’s drunk, she’s stressed and she’s insecure. I know because so am I. She thinks you’re settling for her. I know it’s dumb, but try not to take it personally. And don’t try to see her until tomorrow,”
“I don’t want to see her,”
“Good, because you’ll just make it worse. You had more than she did,”
“This is horseshit,” George said, defeated. He felt Dana’s hand patting his wrist and looked down at her face. She was holding her hand to her ear like a phone and making the “gimme” gesture with her other hand. He gave it to her.
“Hi, Marissa? It’s Dana. How is she doing?” Listening to the faint voice on the other line, she closed her eyes and grimaced.
“Listen, tell her I’m sorry, tell her I’m so sorry. I didn’t know she’d be upset. I didn’t do it to hurt her,” George watched her go on, explaining, apologizing for things that weren’t her fault just so no one would be mad at her. He almost began blaming her because she was apologizing so much.
“I need a shot,” he said when she finally hung up.
“Yeah, me too,” she said, grabbing a small fistful of her hair. They went downstairs to the basement bar. George went through the liquor cabinet and pulled out an almost empty bottle of Captain Morgan and he poured out two shots. The rest of the party guests were quiet now, feeling the end of their buzz. George and Dana raised their glasses, nodded at each other, and drank them down.
“I liked dancing with you,” he said.
“I liked dancing with you too,”
“One more song,”
“Isn’t that what started this?”
“Trust me, it isn’t,” They were silent for a moment.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Okay, fine,” He got up to leave. “I won’t embarrass you by asking again,” He went upstairs.
“What was that?” said another guest at the bar.
“Nothing,” she said, “It’s a non-story,”
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