“Light strand! Light web, really. Which you two will untangle as soon as possible. We’ll start tonight. I’ll get you a key.”
“And what, you’ll just sit in the corner and channel Degas?”
“I wish,” she says. “But people rarely experience these kinds of visitations with spectators around. The point of this is for you two to combine your abilities, not for me to become the Berlin Wall of hypnopompic hallucinations.”
I turn to give Beau an apologetic look, but he’s already staring at me, concern evident along his brow. “All right. Tonight, Cleary.”
Beau picks me up in the middle of the night again, parking his truck up the street like he did before. There’s that same electric feeling that there always is between us when I get in the car, the same lag when he looks down at my spandex dance shorts and bare legs. During the day, the tension between us shrinks to a manageable intensity, but at night it’s practically unbearable to be close to him but not touching.
The highway’s deserted, and when we reach NKU, the parking lot is too, except for a green-and-tan Subaru covered in bumper stickers bearing political slogans and Rorschach inkblots that all basically resemble a person giving the peace sign. I see Alice’s silhouette by the building’s front doors, and she lifts her arms over her head, waving at us. Beau parks, and when we get out into the intensely hot night, I feel some relief from his magnetism.
“Hello, hello,” Alice says vaguely, fumbling in her pocket. She pulls out a key ring, jiggles one key in the lock, then pulls the door open. She hands me the keys. “Now, the gold key unlocks the studios. It should work on any of them, so just choose your favorite. Be out by six A.M., and make sure you lock up.”
“That’s it?” I ask as she starts across the parking lot.
She holds her arms out to her sides. “That’s it. Make me proud.”
The building is frigid and dark, the air conditioning set so high the vents blow my hair and give me goose bumps as we make our way down the hall.
We let ourselves into the first studio we come to. The lights stutter on, illuminating gray vinyl floors, two mirrored walls, and a scraped-up wooden piano beside a rack of sound equipment. Beau walks across the room and sits down at the piano, tapping out “Happy Birthday” with one finger.
“Beautiful,” I say. “A true work of art.”
He smiles down at the keys and adds his other hand, picking up a slow, quivering song that deepens the chills along my neck. He drops his hands into his lap and looks up at me. “You gonna dance?”
I walk to the middle of the floor and sit down to stretch. “It’s cold,” I say.
“Want me to warm you up, Cleary?”
“Somehow I think that won’t end with me dancing.”
“No, probably not.”
I stand up and meet Beau’s gaze in the mirror. “This is incredibly awkward.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m dancing for an audience of one. Who does that?”
“Strippers?”
“Okay, I’ll just pretend I’m a stripper. That’ll make this so much easier.”
He nods. “Or you can picture me in my underwear.”
I cover my face and laugh-groan. “I think you’re going to have to close your eyes.”
“Shyest stripper I ever met,” he says.
“And how many strippers have you met, Beau Wilkes?”
“Not too many,” he says. “A few dozen.”
I groan again, walk over to stand behind him, and cover his face with my palms. I feel his mouth shift into a smile under my hands. “That better?” he asks, starting to play blind.
“I’m going to turn the light off too,” I say.
“Fine.”
“Fahn.”
“Fahn.”
“Please keep your eyes closed,” I beg.
He grips my wrists lightly and pulls them down in front of him, against his stomach. I lean around his shoulder to look into his face and see his eyes scrunched closed. “Thanks,” I say. He presses one of my palms to his mouth, and my whole body warms as I unwind myself from him and go to the light switch. “Keep them closed.”
“You’re the boss.”