Chapter 1: The Lobby

I was the one with the vision.

A successful author of both fictional children’s books and (once, long ago) childcare volumes designed for young parents, my career was pretty much where I wanted it to be when I entered into the pact with my co-conspirators. My pen name was L.C. Compton, and I had won a few small awards to go with a few decent royalty checks from each of my 25 books. But kiddie books often stay in print for years, and my series of the Peachy Keen Kids had staying power on the bookshelves.

The guys and gals who joined me in the waiting room of Susan Castle’s School of the Dance knew me as Larry (I preferred Lawrence, but it was a losing battle) Childers, and had some awareness of my career, but one of their kids had one of my books in the waiting room one week and no one said a word – including me.

I’m guessing I knew more about them than they knew about me.

Bud Wilson once owned a salvage yard, but his current, trendy calling was that of a picker, or a barn hunter, or dumpster diver or some such shit. All I knew was that he’d buy anything and apparently had a knack for reselling much of it. His athletic deer of a daughter, Belle, would often go with him and actually climb into death-defying places to better inspect an item. He was a great storyteller and his tales of their exploits passed the time for me many weeks.

Chuck Arnovsky was a computer geek. Not too hard to figure since he seldom spoke with us, instead he pecked away on his expensive looking laptop. I peeked over his shoulder once, and he was on the NASDAQ page speculating on stocks, I suppose. His younger son and his daughter, Missy, were both adept at computer language as well, I understood, as both were star students. Missy was almost plain-looking without makeup, but I’d seen her in war paint and she held her own with the other girls on and off the dance floor. His son Todd, as bright as he was, was a jock, plain and simple, who wouldn’t be caught dead here.

If anyone in this group was someone I could consider a friend, it was Doc – Dr. Mitchell “Mitch” Harris. A successful pediatrician, he was actually able to walk away from his practice each week to take his adorable daughter, Angel, to her dance class which was important because his wife, Arianna, suffered from a puzzling form of agoraphobia.

Once a talented student of Susan Castle, she all now but refused to leave her home since she experienced some kind of mysterious near-death experience. By all accounts, her daughter was a star in the making, owning the perfect porcelain complexion, endless legs and the face of an angel, befitting her name.

But she was nowhere near the gold medalist in this group of teenage bunheads. I’ll admit my daughter Stacy was a looker from the get-go her mother’s eyes and the face of her beauty queen she got from grandmother on my side. Her dancing ability was a mystery, a gift from God that had no viable connection to either side of the family. My mom loved to dance, but was as coordinated as a one-legged epileptic. Some things just happen, although I suspect her mother, my ex-wife, would have gladly been a dancer given the chance.

But Jacy McKinnon was the girl all of we dirty old men had eyes for when she walked through the lobby and out the door with her little sister, Mike, or more properly Michaela, who was likewise the belle of the junior group, and their devoted dad, Det. Mickey McKinnon, Daytown PD. McKinnon was there with us much of the time, but he was always absorbed in conversation on his cell phone or checking e-mails on his own laptop. It was apparent that he was involved in numerous active cases, and it did not take much eavesdropping to understand that he worked vice and sex crimes.

I was curious; but he was largely unapproachable. He would acknowledge a hello, but never had time or inclination for small talk or chit-chat. But the Internet is a wonderful thing; one night at home, I found his secret or, at least, his burden. His wife, Stormie (a spitting image of her daughters) was raped and left for dead when Jacy was an infant. In fact, she was kidnapped and held by person or persons unknown for about a week before she was freed mysteriously, but only after something unspeakable happened. To what extent she remained scarred, I couldn’t say, but you have to wonder.

Jacy’s mom recovered, eventually, but Stormie McKinnon was frail and was only an occasional presence at dance class. Covered head to toe almost like an Islamic devotee, she, too, was not inclined to converse.

At any rate, our daughters were among the senior students of the aforementioned Susan Castle, a former Rockette (pictures don’t lie, and her wall was covered with them) who also was classically trained a couple of decades ago. But for all her glamorous past, she was still pushing 60 and looked it in the face. Her leotards, however, spoke to a well-maintained dancer’s body and the girls were devoted students.

“I’d do her,” Bud muttered often enough.

“Which wrinkle would you fuck?” Chuck said without looking up from his laptop.

“You not getting enough at home?” I needled the scavenger, thinking of Sara, the still-hot redhead he married.

“At least you wouldn’t have to worry about knocking her up,” Doc chuckled from behind his People magazine.

“Hey, she’s still double-jointed,” Bud said defensively. “She might be fifty-something, but she can still put her legs behind her ears.”

“Who told you that?” I asked, actually curious. “Or is that a recurring fantasy of yours?”

“Belle told me,” he replied. “The girls were showing off their flexibility one day and she was able to do it just the same as them.”

“You saying all of our daughters can do that?” Doc asked. “Arrgh. That’s an image I don’t want or need in my head.”

McKinnon made a harrumph sound off in his corner that got everybody’s attention. He added nothing more and we fell into silence until the lesson ended.

I don’t really know how close our daughters were inside that studio, because when the lesson ended each day, each of them came out separately and never acknowledged the others. We came and went our separate ways each week with nothing more than a nod or a wave or a See ya.

This day, Stacy came out first, dressed in a stylish sun dress and a set of lifts designed to accent her world-class legs. As someone who failed to comprehend the subtleties of women’s fashion, I never understood why she and the other girls insisted on not wearing their school clothes after dance class, especially since they changed into their leotards and toe shoes as soon as they left our sight. As an additional puzzle today, Stacy wore just enough makeup to make Daddy nervous. I got a heart-warming smile and a chaste kiss on the cheek from my only surviving child.

Chapter 2 »