Chapter 4: Castle

Susan Castle leaned in closely to read the road map that was her leg. Yes; definitely a few more veins than the last time she looked – lines detailing a lifetime of hard road, especially on her million-dollar legs.

At least, that’s what the old black and white sign above her dresser was touting: May Mathis & Castle & Collins – a cool million $$$ worth of leg, dancing for your pleasure. Jo Collins was 20 years in the grave, died of a OD. May, she was sure she was happily married and doted over these many years.

Her desire to keep her varicose veins hidden was an absolute, so she pulled on opaque colored tights, her favorites being the golden-red leotards she currently sported, stylish and flattering on her fit, trim body.

Once a dancer, always a dancer, she thought as she squinted at the sign more time. Used to be able to read it from over there.

But her hit and run figure was now the result of Botox, lipo and a very expensive personal trainer. But she was certain that cheating 15 or 20 years off a body pushing 60 meant adding years to her viability as a teacher.

Of course, Alice knew exactly how old she was, as she once bought the studio from her 70-something accompanist. Alice taught piano, not dance, in the big room during her stewardship, but had retained enough of her skills over the years to pick up almost anything by ear for a student. Now needing a hearing aid, Alice was fighting her doctor’s recommendation that she use a cane or a walker for her day-to-day activities.

Alice’s jarring collision with Larry Childers served to tell her how easily an accident could really lay her out. Just walking up to the studio wore her down enough that she currently sat on the edge of a Susan’s dresser, breathing hard.

“You OK?” Susan asked as she came into her private office, shared with Alice but off-limits to everyone else. She did not expect an honest answer to her question.

“Oh. Can’t complain,” Alice smile as she rubbed an arthritic knee. “As long as I can play, I can cope.”

“I understand,” Susan said. Teaching was peachy, but if she couldn’t dance for an hour a day in front of her studio mirror, she knew her life would virtually be over.

“Susan, there might be a problem,” Alice was saying. “My breast, or what’s left of it, is lumpy again.”

Susan sat next to her old friend.

“This one? Left one, right?” she asked as she cupped it in her hand. “They took the right one before, didn’t they?”

“Years ago. Still had a body – and an ego – then,” Alice smiled and hugged herself as if chilly.

“Can you play?” Susan asked, hating that she could easily feel the lump. “I don’t want to sound selfish. It’s not a problem, is it?”

“No problem. God seems to have spared my hands from the fickle finger of fate,” Alice sighed, rising to her feet. “But I wouldn’t mind us going over today’s lesson in the chairs.”

“Why didn’t you say so? To the chairs, then!” Susan declared, and the two women slipped into matching recliners that were situated before a pair of monitors that Susan used to play back performances and, from time to time, practice. Her chair faced the monitors, Alice’s the opposite director although they were side by side. Each had a switch that activated the internal vibrator and both chairs were duly activated as the women reclined.

“I’m looking at getting new flat screen monitors. The high-def is so much easier on old eyes,” Susan said. “But they’re so expensive right now!”

“Business is good,” Alice said, eyes closed. “Isn’t it?”

“But look at their ages,” Susan said, flipping off her vibrator and sitting upright. “We have no girls under the age of 12. I can’t get any young girls to even visit.”

“I thought that was on purpose, Susan,” Alice said, sitting up herself, albeit reluctantly.

“Heavens, no. Looking more like the end of the line,” she said. “But I have no complaints. We’re going to go out on a good note. The juniors are very strong and you see how special our advanced class is.”

“Well, I’d tell you, ‘never say never, ‘ but that’s exactly what I did, 15 years ago,” Alice said. “Never regretted it, either. By the time your juniors all turn 18, I’ll be pushing 80 hard.”

Susan patted her old friend on she shoulder and was startled how frail and bony she seemed. Saying nothing, she chuckled at the activity she was seeing through her two-way glass at the far end of the studio. Two familiar forms were on the monitor.

“COME ON, Mike! You know to point your toe on that kick!” Jacy McKinnon ordered her year-younger but unmistakable sister Michaela. Known to everyone as “Mike,” Jacy was mechanically going through one of the junior dancers’ drills – one Susan imposed on Jacy’s group a few years before but would never trouble the advanced class with today.

And, if Jacy were perfectly honest with herself, Mike was executing the breathtaking but fundamental move better than any of the other senior girls ever did – maybe even as well as Jacy once did. The McKinnons were her stars – as evidenced by the fact they were here, warming up 30 minutes ahead of everyone else.

Funny, Susan thought. Neither one has ever been late, but I’d panic if either one weren’t first or second through the door.

No parents in sight, either. Alice joined Susan at the monitor to see what might be happening – and like Susan, had to squint to make out the identity of the girls.

“Dad must’ve dropped them off on the way to a double homicide or something,” Susan muttered.

“Heavens!” Alice said, horrified at the notion.

“You know, the other parents call then the Golden Chiles ... Well, maybe frady cat Stormie will show her face sometime today for a change,” Susan said over her shoulder.

Susan knew the former dancer had experienced some kind of trauma. Disrupting picture-book her life, but her fearful glances every time someone spoke too loudly or moved too suddenly actually freaked out some of the younger girls recently. In fact, she hadn’t been back since that day.

Susan quietly left her office and moved through the half-lit studio close enough to hear the sisters through her well-concealed hearing aid.

“Why are you struggling with the cabrille? You were nailing it all of the moves Friday,” Jacy said, arms folded in annoyance.

“I know, I know,” Mike sighed, hands on hips. She added silently, And I’d be nailing them now if I hadn’t been nailing Derrick all weekend.

Truth be known (and more and more of the girls were finding out pieces all the time), Mike’s “boundless energy” as a child dancer had been re-directed in recent months into a routine of no-holds-barred sex with one of the school’s best (and best-endowed) athletes, Derrick Lankford. For fun, she’d also had a bathroom tryst with Derrick’s girlfriend, the school’s head cheerleader. She smiled when the thought occurred that she was the better fuck of the two.

“Let’s try it again,” Mike said, perking back up almost immediately. “Miz Castle is watching us.”

Drawing from her seemingly endless amount of energy, Mike perfectly mirrored her sister’s walk-through of the routine right up to the technically complicated finish. Holding the final pose, both sisters grinned as they quickly caught their breath.

“A sound of one person lightly clapping drew their attention.

“You girls certainly don’t need me!” Susan said. “That was a wonderful routine. Where did you find it?”

“The Internet,” Jacy said, pulling back a lock of her dazzling blonde hair into place. “It’s funny, I can watch video of a routine once and pick most of it up. Mike, too.”

“I agree,” Susan said. “I was trying to be clever. I know exactly what that dance was – I danced it once myself, years ago, and the only mistake I saw was you looking at your sister throughout instead of letting your head swivel naturally. That was intentional, right?”

Jacy nodded.

“I guess it was more of a teaching moment than a learning moment for me there,” Jacy said.

“And a fine teacher you’ll be one day,” Susan said, nodding. She had a unique way of making a compliment sound like a lecture, Mike thought.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Jacy said, blushing. Mike was already moving into her regular warmup drill, a series of high speed pirouettes. Her form held through the intense speed for the day’s biggest crowd-pleasing moment.

Only there was no crowd. Today, it just Dr. Harris and me.

Stacy and Angel, our daughters, were the next girls to appear in their tights, but the rest soon showed up by ones and twos until the entire senior group was in place at the barre, stretching out their incredible leg and back muscles. All wore black tights and all dropped off backpacks twice as large as what any teenager used at school.

Dennie Gallagher and Kay Richards, who Facebook entries called themselves “Friends 24/7,” arrived together, as always. The other parents called their mothers the “Gold Dust Twins” due to their showgirl background. And both daughters were more curvy than Susan’s usual dancers, curly blonde Dennie and buttery brown-haired, quiet Kay shared an upbringing by a single mom, but that was about all they seemed to have in common.

Except for the sex. But Doc and I didn’t know about that as we watched.

“You know what I think of when I see Kay Richards?” I asked Doc in a low voice; once class started, all parents were exiled to the waiting room and I was in no hurry.

“Well, great minds think alike and I’m thinking butterscotch candy,” he whispered his reply.

“Close enough,” I laughed out loud, enough a couple of the girls to look my way. “Butter pecan ice cream, all day, every day.”

It wasn’t much of a leap. Kay’s hair was that kind of honey golden, her normally thick curls relaxed for wrapping into a bun that Susan required for her students in practice. Something especially discomforting for the daddies at practice is that ... something ... about her defined abs draws your eyes naturally down to what was, inevitably, a striking, almost in-your-face camel toe that awesome in its definition.

Kay was much more cheerleader captain than dancer, complete with all the curves and the moves, but was working hard to be more graceful and smooth.

Yum.

Joined at the hip with her this day, like any other, was Dennie. The two, on surface were no kind of match since Dennie was pale and plain (without makeup) as Kay was golden and tanned. But Dennie was the classic, pale elegant dove that blossomed when the music played. Not much to look at in the face but owner of a body made for dance (and the Kama Sutra), her most outstanding feature, one might add, was her mom, Daniela, a former pole dancer and party girl who still wowed us with her long legs and spectacular figure. Those were assets her daughter shared, minus the in-your-face sexuality Kay’s mom, Judith practically oozed from her well-scrubbed pores.

Alas (yes, alas!), Judith was virtually as inaccessible as her daughter, as she was inseparable from Daniela (Dannie) Gallagher, who was as Divorced as Judith was Single. Other eras would have pegged Dannie Gallagher (formerly known as Dannie Fanny and a half-dozen other names, according to the Net) as a gold digger. And in Dennie’s long-absent dad, she’d hit the mother lode.

Susan had long before spruced the ladies’ restroom into a comfy lounge for the bunheads, and the dancers would disappear into it immediately upon their arrival to change into their practice leotard and enjoy a few minutes of respite.

One day, following their class, the two girls joined their moms in the (locked) lounge, emerging 30 minutes later dressed like four of a kind (if whores were a card suit). Yet another day, they would emerge dressed for yard work or house painting.

“What kind of action do they see together, anyway?” I once asked Doc. He said nothing, but felt the need to adjust himself.

“We’ll never know, but 10 bucks says it’s not what we think it is,” he said after a thoughtful pause. I shrugged, and closed my eyes to see exactly what in my mind’s eye I thought it was, thus missing the arrival of our little darlings. Stacy, who felt compelled to get her 3-mile run in every day, dance lessons or not, was in running shorts and sneakers. This day, she was joined by the delightfully hirsute Angel Harris.

Wearing all gray in contrast to Stacy’s school colors, little Angel did not perspire – she sweat like a Greek cab driver, more than any female I’ve ever seen. Indifferent to her predilection, Susan and her classmates politely ignored the massive sweat stains that always saturated her leotard. It wound up being the principal reason parents were not allowed to watch practice and it was a source of humor among the girls only during the rare wardrobe fittings.

But, Angel’s quirkiness did not end there; an ill-fated decision by Doc and his smoking hot wife Arianna (that’s actually her full first name, as far as I was concerned) was to hang a black-and-white photo of legendary dancer Isadora Duncan in Angel’s bedroom as a possible source of inspiration.

But oddly enough, the young girl zeroed in on the obvious fact that Duncan did not believe in shaving. Angel loved to dance, but she abhorred sunlight and loved having hairier legs than her nonplussed father. Add to that a vegan diet and very apparent non-use of anti-antiperspirant made her an odd running mate for Stacy.

“Doc, you realize that we could smell their arrival before we heard them or saw them,” I said brutally.

“Yeah, she’s growing up difficult,” Doc sighed. “Just hoping that she finds someone else to emulate in college. Hell, there are entire sororities that don’t shave. But it means a lot that Stacy is a friend no matter what.”

“Stacy says she’s gotten used to Angel’s ‘soy smell, ‘“ I admitted. “Plus, I think she’s kind of curious how hairy she’ll eventually get.”

“God help me, so am I,” Doc sighed again.

But our spirits and our cocks were lifted at that moment by the arrival of the rest of the senior group. Chuck Arnovsky, genius computer geek, had in tow his brilliant and talented daughter, Missy. Much like Dennie Gallagher, her talents were concealed by an average face and love of athletics; she truly preferred cleats or track shoes to toe shoes. But her IQ – like everyone else in the family (with the borderline exception of her jock brother Todd) – was almost off the Mensa scale. Her mother, Joanie, also a regular here, had the total package, a body to die for and a brain that enabled her to become a millionaire before age 30 with a handful of copyrights and patents on skin care and diet supplements.

Chuck was a troubleshooter and programmer who likened himself to the Bill Gates of Daytown. At least, the Arnovsky’s had the biggest house.

Almost late, and almost always because they had the farthest to come, were Sara and Belle Wilson. Two fiery redheads of different shades, their bickering preceded them through the door.