Slow Dance in Purgatory

“They were giving him trouble about his mother. She’s a bit….loose, if you know what I mean.” Maggie sighed and didn’t miss the tightening in Johnny’s face and around his lips. He studied the shelf more intently, but Maggie was pretty sure he wasn’t interested in what he saw.

“My momma didn’t have a very good reputation. Some of it was deserved. Some of it wasn’t. Nobody ever gave me any trouble about it.” Johnny’s eyes shifted to hers, and then looked away again, “But Billy took some heat over it. I’ll keep an eye on the kid – Shadrach, right?”

“Yes. Shad. He’s a good kid...a little delusional and obnoxious, but very sweet. By the way, you said you would keep an eye on him when we talked last, but he seemed to have taken you by surprise.” Maggie was teasing, but she was curious about how Shad had crept up on them last Sunday night.

“I seem to be unusually unobservant when I am with you,” Johnny confessed with a self-deprecating grin. “I haven’t had too many conversations in the last fifty years. I guess I was completely absorbed.” Maggie could relate – at least with the part about being completely absorbed.

“Your glasses….are they broken again?” Johnny inclined his head toward her glasses, where one end protruded out of her pocket.

“Yes, and you just fixed them for me, too.” Her tone was apologetic, embarrassed even. Thank you, by the way.” She pulled her glasses out of her pocket and ran her finger along the crack. “I hate them…but I need them, too.”

“I can fix them again.”

Maggie slid them onto her nose, and crossed her eyes dizzily behind the damaged glass. “Don’t you think I can get away with wearing them like this?”

“Absolutely. Peepers suit you.”

Maggie blushed, giggling at the old-fashioned moniker, and uncrossed her eyes. Johnny was a faint blur in front of her. Maggie gasped and pulled the glasses off her nose. Johnny became crystal clear once more. She slid her glasses back into position. Johnny faded almost beyond sight. She reached out with both her hands, feeling for him as if she were blind. Her hands brushed his shoulders and chest and slid up his neck and along the firm line of his jaw. Her fingertips stroked up his sand paper cheeks and hesitantly traced the features of his face.

Johnny sucked in his breath sharply and locked his hands around Maggie’s wrists, halting her tentative explorations. Maggie was immediately jolted from her awed ministrations, and she blushed furiously as Johnny released her wrists. She yanked her glasses off, thoroughly embarrassed by what she had just done. The awkward silence in the library was deafening. The roaring in Maggie’s ears was even worse.

“What…was that all about?” Johnny tipped her chin up with the tips of his fingers, forcing her humiliated gaze from her shoes.

“I can’t see you when I’m wearing my glasses!” Maggie blurted out, worrying her bottom lip nervously. “I reached out to see if you were actually still there, even if I couldn’t see you…. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not.” Johnny’s quiet response hinted at suppressed mirth. “I was just surprised. You have no idea how it feels to be….. touched….again.” He reached out hesitantly and ran one long finger along the smooth curve of her cheek bone.

Maggie’s breath hitched and stuttered, and her skin felt deliciously hot beneath his brief caress. She fought the urge to close her eyes and lean into his hand. His fingers left her face reluctantly.

“The times you’ve seen me. Have you ever been wearing your glasses?”

Maggie thought back and shook her head slowly. “The first time I saw you I’d left my glasses in the dance room. They fell off the night I fell down the dumbwaiter shaft, and I didn’t wear them until you fixed them for me. Then today in the hallway they fell off and got stepped on. So…no. I’ve never had them on when I’ve seen you. It’s bizarre! I should be able to see you better! I can definitely see everything else a lot better.”

“That explains it then,” Johnny reasoned. “Maybe you don’t actually see me with your eyes.”

“How do I see you, then?”

“With a sixth sense, maybe? I don’t know. Maybe when your eyesight is limited your other senses are heightened.”

Maggie nodded her head, agreeing with him. “I remember my mom used to say she had eyes in the back of her head. Maybe it’s the same thing. I believed her forever. She always seemed to know where I was and what I was doing without even turning her head.”

Johnny reached out and took the glasses from her hand. He traced his middle finger back and forth over the crack – back and forth, back and forth, as if he was rubbing the crack away.

“My momma was like that, too. Billy and I didn’t get away with much. She could smell a lie from a mile away. She had her faults, but her mom instincts were tuned right in.”

Maggie remembered what she had wanted to tell him. She hoped she wasn’t going to embarrass herself all over again. She still felt flushed from the liberties she had taken moments before.