May 21, 2012

Jail Bust

 

by Wendy Marcus

December 5, 2010             

 

Two young women carrying shimmery scarves hurried past the mostly gray-haired Silver Sneakers ladies. Exercise class matriarch Estelle, whose pearly coif resembled a football helmet that never, ever moved, leaned in to slyly elucidate, “Belly dancers.” Like it was vulgar.

           

Sally remembered her doctor’s charge. She stepped away from the ladies in the YMCA lobby. “Go on, I’ll catch up with you.” She’d been a University District Y member for about a month. This was the first she’d heard of belly dancers. She walked down the hall and peeked around open double doors into a dance studio.

 

Ack! An aesthete’s nightmare: a roomful of breast-thrusting, hip-pumping, thigh-jiggling amateurs wearing garish coin-spattered hip sashes.

 

One woman had butt-length blonde hair. Several older women, rotund, moved through a series of snaky arm movements. There were jogger-types and a number of tattooed twentysomethings.

   

“Belly dancing changes women’s lives,” exhorted the svelte, young instructor, cranking up the music.

 

Good grief, in the back row, that was an enormous pregnant woman and, oh, an East Indian man, the only male, a black ponytail slithering down his back.

 

Her doctor’s voice competed in Sally’s mind with pounding Egyptian rhythms. “Try something completely different, Sally,” he’d suggested at her recent checkup. “Crossword puzzles may keep your mind sharp, but you’re dealing with aging and mild depression. What’ll really keep your synapses sparking is a new endeavor. Get out of your head. Skydive.” The doctor had gotten a chuckle from her with that one. 

 

Life had been feeling a little empty with the twins ascending corporate computer ranks in the Bay Area and Leonard gone. But, to be told to seek risk? She’d managed Leonard through grad school and his early teaching days, with two tots in tow. When he’d become Professor Zwerin and the twins entered grade school, she’d reentered the work force as an assistant to the rabbis at Sha’ari Tzedek in Seattle’s North End. She’d relished creating a well-oiled front office for the past twenty-three years. Recently retired, she still attended weekly Torah study.

 

“Don’t hold your breath.” The belly dance instructor expelled air with a dramatic whoosh. “Breath solidifies something in our cellular memory. Breathe as you move. You should be able to breathe and talk as you lift your chest.” Sally tried a tiny chest lift from the doorway.

 

“Arms are the intellect of the dance. They signal. They telegraph a mood or image.”

 

Sally tentatively twitched her shoulders back and forth.

 

“Stick out your bum. Pretend you’re using it to wipe honey from the inside of a barrel.”

 

Couldn’t hurt to try the class. There’d be no condescending comments from Leonard to deflect. Honestly…she had to stop couching everything in relation to Leonard.

 

Leonard’s surprising number of out-of-town speaking engagements last year had turned out to be held at the apartment of a reed-like Japanese graduate student. “Really, Leonard, really?” Sally could only say when he’d explained how his sixty-two-year-old body had come alive around warm, firm flesh.

 

Leonard had paced across their living room, his eyes on the sailboats cutting across Lake Washington. “No doubt I’ll be back to beg forgiveness, but you’ll have to let me go now. Keep the house, keep everything.” Sally had lowered her head, too heavy for her shoulders. When it was supposed to have been her turn to get his full attention, he’d had a past-prime, long-past-mid-life crisis. They still hadn’t filed for divorce.

 

Sally caught up with the Silver Sneakers ladies lunching in the nearby bagel shop. She contributed little to the conversation, composing a mental email to her doctor.

 

 

*                                                          *                                                     * 

 

Sally hung out in the back row in a loose T-shirt and leggings, all tempting parts well-covered. Uphoria, the instructor, couldn’t have been kinder. She broke down dance moves into small parts, stepping directly in front of Sally and undulating with intensity and languor. “Relax. Let your muscles be moved by your soul -- not your head.” Sally felt it improper to concentrate so intently on another woman’s tuchis, though no one else in the class seemed to care. She avoided looking in the mirrors, dismayed by her flaccid upper arms and by a drooping stomach stretched forever out of shape by Serena and Samara.

 

The Silver Sneaker ladies looked askance when Sally explained why she wouldn’t be joining them for coffee and bagels after class anymore. At your age? Estelle’s face read.

 

Sally made new friends: Mary with the long blonde hair; Candida, who now brought her baby to class in a car seat; the East Indian, Rajiv, who often stood next to her in the back row. A rose among the thorns, she teased him. He did not appear to understand her joke. Very little joke, she scolded herself.

 

Rajiv gave off exotic smells. Even from several arm’s-lengths away, she could smell garlic, cumin, or cinnamon on him, marijuana once or twice. Other times, a pungent curry smell draped him like a cape. Rajiv, whose clothes could best be described as University District scruffy, often stashed a guitar under the dance studio’s coat rack.

 

At the end of class one Saturday, Sally’s stomach embarrassed her with the sucking noise of a whirlpool. Rajiv turned to her.  “I know that sound. Hungry?”

 

Sally either blushed or experienced a tremendous hot flash. “Dancing works up an appetite. I used to go for bagels after my exercise class, right before this one.”

 

“You like dal? My uncle’s place is around the corner, the Bengal Tiger.”

 

A powerful stimulant, uncertainty. There was the smell of Rajiv’s sweat, his thick, blue-black hair. Such smooth, smooth skin. He was about the same age as her girls. Sally mumbled a polite assent.

 

Entering the restaurant, Rajiv tossed off non-English comments to a waiter. “I work here sometimes,” he whispered to Sally. She sat down quickly, studying the menu, embarrassed at his attention to her chest.

 

“That’s a cool necklace.”

 

Her fingers went to her neck. “Oh, it’s a hamsa. The open palm is a Middle Eastern sign for protection. Supposed to be the hand of God, warding off evil.”

 

“I worship the God of Startling Acuity.”

 

Acuity wasn’t a word Sally would have thought Rajiv knew. It made her think of an intellect gone loony. Lots of thinkers gone haywire floated around the University District. “I’m unfamiliar with, uh, this faith. What are its precepts?”

 

“To see how long you can go without being offended.”

 

Sally took dilatory slurps of her soup to avoid responding to Rajiv.

 

“What’s in a name anyway? There’s the God of Potential. God as Holiness. You have to be attentive to what God feels like for you on any given day – the same god could have multiple personalities and names…or be broken down into lots of lesser gods – god parts.” Rajiv snapped his fingers. “Doo, doo, doo, duh-doo. I’ve had the same song stuck in my head since I was four. Do you know the way to San Jose? I don’t mind, it’s a good song.”

 

By today’s standards, ancient prophets might well be considered mad, Sally told herself. The very topic had been discussed in Torah study recently. She hoped she wasn’t mistaking youthful and unguarded for mentally ill.

 

Rajiv came up wallet-less, so Sally covered the bill. Suspicious, she stopped by the restaurant a few days later for take-out, and wondered aloud when Rajiv was working next. The East Indian man behind the counter crossed his arms. “Rajiv doesn’t work here.”

 

“And let me guess, it isn’t owned by his uncle?”

 

The man gave her a long look. “Rajiv is a member of our family the way all of us are members of the greater human family.” The man pointed to his temple and made a little twisting movement with his finger. Rajiv crazy? Or, a mooch? Sally resolved to be more careful with whom she dined.

 

“Pretend water is dripping off your hip,” Uphoria burbled the next week in class. “That’s a maya.”  Undulations followed. “We want to make them as ooey-gooey as possible.” Uphoria rolled her belly in and up and out. Sally peeked at herself in the mirror. Oy, she looked like she was trying to shake a spider out of her shirt.

 

“Travel and ululate.” On tiptoe, the students followed Uphoria, two fingers in front of their open mouths, tongues waggling maniacally -- female fire alarms. Tiny finger cymbals, zills, were handed around. The cacophony of different rhythms hurt Sally’s ears.

 

In April, Uphoria called for volunteers to perform at the upcoming University District Street Fair. Sally considered it briefly. Not yet. Not with all those young things in skimpy outfits showing off firm breasts and taut stomachs. Rajiv didn’t stay after class for the street fair choreography either. He and Sally chatted as they headed down the hall. She liked this part of her time at the Y as much as she liked dancing and Silver Sneakers, even if he always asked for bus money or a couple dollars to “get through the week.” She’d written him a few modest checks, too.

 

“Gotta hit the showers,” Rajiv said as they parted at the hallway’s end -- she out to the parking lot, he to the men’s locker room. Sally wondered if the YMCA was covering his membership costs. It occurred to her that Rajiv might not have a permanent address. That the YMCA might be the only place he could shower. She noticed how, in May, he still had a winter coat with him.

 

*                                                                 *                                                             *

 

 

A glorious thing to have to squint in Seattle. On a brilliant June afternoon, Sally watched Mary, Candida, and other belly dance classmates perform on a perilously sagging platform. The University District Street Fair swirled around the dancers, bursts of sun reflected in their sparkly costumes. Every few feet of University Avenue provided a new smell -- kettle corn, Thai food, falafel. Fair-going young women adhered to a dress code of halter tops, mini-skirts, and flipflops. Uphoria, on-stage, smiling and sweaty, waved her hands above her head, thanking an enthusiastic crowd which had brought movement up and down the street to a stop.

 

Guitar in hand, Rajiv sidled up to Sally and draped an arm over her shoulder. “When are you going to get up there?”

 

“I’m too old to be ogled.”

 

"Gotta get past the God of Self-imposed Limits.” Rajiv’s clothes, hair, and body gave off a smoky smell. He picked up his backpack, too full to zip, calling over his shoulder, “Come ogle me. My band’s busking in an hour in the Bengal Tiger’s parking lot. World fusion.”

 

Sally did not know what world fusion was. She did recognize the sicky-sweet odor of marijuana emanating from Rajiv’s open and departing backpack. Seized by a giddy recklessness, Rajiv in her nostrils, she set off for a dance shop on the Ave recommended by Uphoria.

 

In the store, she was beguiled by diaphanous scarves, sequined bodices, glitter, and glitz. She purchased a black hip scarf, tastefully outlined with a few gold coins. Not like those gaudy lime green or magenta eyeblinders sported by others in the class. She glanced at her watch. Time to find Rajiv.

 

Sally threaded her way back to the Bengal Tiger parking lot, hip scarf tucked into her purse, a delicious secret. Shirtless and gyrating, Rajiv and four other young men pounded tablas and humped guitars. Entranced by his velvety abdomen and mahogany nipples, Sally waved stupidly when he noticed her. He blew her a kiss. Heads in the crowd looked back to see who had caught Rajiv’s attention. Would that Leonard had strolled by just then.

 

The next Saturday, Sally missed Silver Sneakers and belly dancing, due to her 60th birthday. Serena and Samara flew north for the weekend to help celebrate. “Still my poodles,” Sally gushed, hugging them tightly at baggage claim. They had Leonard’s (formerly) black, kinky hair and her big, caramel eyes.

 

The girls chattered and laughed all the way to the restaurant where Leonard joined them for birthday dinner. The easy way they included him in their light-hearted conversation and crinkly-eyed smiles wounded her, but Sally kept those thoughts tucked away until Leonard left. Then she cried. “I’ve become invisible. You three have these unspeakably exciting lives, and act like…I’ve gone to pot.” She saw the girls startle. “Not that kind of pot,” she half-smiled. Serena and Samara suggested maybe she hadn’t evolved-enough-to-still-do-things-together-as-a-family.

 

Rajiv commented on Sally’s absence when she returned to class the following week. His eyebrows shot up at her explanation. “I thought you were much younger. The God of Attractive Elders has endowed you with such a youthful face.” Her stomach did a funny lurch. Nice to be flirted with. Who cared if her snake arms looked like the backstroke?

 

Sally remembered she hadn’t seen Rajiv since the street fair. “Hey, you’re a really good guitar player.”

 

“Yeah? Well, everyone from California plays guitar…the only hard part about playing guitar is keeping girls away long enough to practice.” Rajiv laughed, pleased with himself. “If I started a guitar company, that would be my slogan.”  Of course he would have lots of girlfriends, Sally reflected.

 

 

*                                 *                              *

 

 

Sally stopped coloring her hair. Shorts she hadn’t worn in years fit again. Each morning in front of the bathroom mirror, she undulated, shimmied, and jiggled.

 

In August, Samara and Serena came to town for a few days. After a lovely dinner on the patio, wine helping her along, Sally got up unsteadily. “I want to show you something.” She returned with her hip scarf over her shorts. The girls fell out of their chairs, laughing. She pressed her lips together and stepped over them, beginning a gentle shimmy. The coins’ whispery oscillations became wilder. Her hands plucked at imaginary clouds before they fluttered downward, outlining her shoulders and breasts. Her palms hovered next to her see-sawing hips. The girls sat up, smirks gone. “That’s really cool, Mom,” Serena allowed. “When did you start belly dancing?”

 

"Last fall. I’ll have you know it’s empowering. Women used to dance for women at celebrations.” Sally did a hip bump at Serena. “They’d re-enact what was considered the central event of a woman’s life -- to have a baby…” hip bump to Samara, “…and also to teach young women what labor looked like. Then some sheik turned it into an exploitative lap-dance thing. Schmuck.”

 

The girls giggled. ”Ooh, Mom, getting all feminist on us,” Samara goaded.

 

Sally imagined their thoughts: Mom’s losing it without Dad. “Your father should see me now.”

 

Suddenly the girls were red-eyed and sniffling. What happened? Doubtful that they’d laughed so hard as to be overcome. Leonard’s absence colored everything, dammit. Sally strode back into the house and dumped the hip scarf on top of her dresser. Her wedding band lay in a small ceramic dish there, a mute reminder.

 

The three of them were solicitous of each other for the remainder of the visit. When the girls returned to San Francisco, Sally travelled back East to visit an old college friend, then to Indiana to stay with her sister.

 

When she returned to class after nearly a month’s absence, she was taken aback at Rajiv’s sullen demeanor. He looked skinnier. “Got ripped off, don’t know how I’m going to pay for anything.”

 

Sally knew she should be cautious. All those girls who interrupted Rajiv’s guitar practicing couldn’t help?

 

After class, she offered him money anyway. “Can your family help out?”

 

"They’re done with me and I’m done with them.”

 

“Why is that?”

 

“I’m the problem child, don’t you know? My older brother’s a pharmacist and my younger sister’s a happily married mother of two – they’re the good kids. I always questioned everything.”

 

“So, you’re really Jewish,” Sally said, trying humor.

 

Rajiv jiggled from one foot to another. He’d stuffed her check into his pocket without looking -- the decency to be embarrassed. Or, maybe not. Maybe he expected it. She would have preferred that he glance at the large sum first.

 

Rajiv hoisted his backpack. “Sometimes I wish I could rewind my life – not to relive it, just to view it. See where it was great and where I screwed up.”

 

One Saturday, Uphoria insisted the students come up with stage names. Rajiv chose Ravishing. Sally thought of a name, but wasn’t ready to share it.

 

“You’ll need names Thursday night,” Uphoria challenged the foot-draggers. “You’re all invited to my show at Taki’s Mad Greek. I’m going to call you up by your stage names to dance with me.” Sally said she’d prefer to stay in the audience.

 

Thursday evening Sally picked up Rajiv on a street corner in the University District. He said it would be easier. She figured he didn’t want her to see where he lived – or didn’t live.

 

The restaurant was packed with noisy customers and an obligatory, elderly cook rasping in Greek at harried waitresses. Service was slow, the souvlaki sizzling, the hummus creamy. Everyone peeled off layers of clothing as the restaurant went from warm to steamy. Sally removed her sweater, uncertain about her low-cut top. A little cleavage couldn’t hurt, she’d thought at home. For whom? Now, she felt conspicuous. Rajiv, standoffish, was primarily attentive to his wine glass.

 

Restaurant owner Taki jumped onto a small stage with his bouzouki, his son behind him on the electric piano. Out shimmied Uphoria, arms fluttering. The whistling and ululating were deafening. Sally felt her blood and heart pulsing in time with the rhythmic clapping. Uphoria’s students, out of their seats, shook with abandon. “I feel so alive,” Sally shouted into Rajiv’s ear, accidentally-on-purpose brushing her lips against it.

 

Uphoria strutted down a restaurant aisle, customers shoving dollar bills into her bodice and pantaloons. When Sally looked to the stage, the next singer, Thanasi the cook, was being introduced.

 

Apron and frown gone, he poured out his soul to the undulating Uphoria in a language Sally wished desperately she could understand. The band ratcheted up the tempo, and Uphoria called for her students to join her on the dance floor. Sally stayed at the table, applauding moves she had once deemed highly suggestive.

 

The band went into a vamp. What was this? Thanasi was heading for her.

 

“You Jewish?” He pointed at her hamsa necklace. “I sing a lot.”

 

Sally shrank back, mystified.            Thanasi threw open his arms. “My favorite country after Greece.”

 

Oh, Eilat. The city in Israel.

 

Inches from Sally’s face, Thanasi crooned Hava Nagila in Israeli-accented Hebrew into a hand-held mic. The belly dancers whirled around them. Sally’s cheeks hurt from smiling: therapeutic ecstasy, no matter how cheesy. The band launched into something Greek again and Sally allowed Thanasi to pull her onto the dance floor. She tried to follow him in an ever-tightening circle, his feet forming intricate patterns she never grasped. What pleasure from the warmth of his hairy arm around her midriff. And his ebullient hug at the end of the song!

 

It’s his job to flirt with the old ladies, Sally figured, sidling back to the table for water. Thanasi followed her with an ice-filled pitcher and watched her drink, impatient. Kitchen closed, he wanted her back out on the dance floor with him. “Maybe later,” Sally demurred. “I’m out of breath.” Not from physical exertion, though. Someone desired her. She knew what her daughters would say. No way, Mom, you were slumming at the local Greek taverna?

 

Thanasi drew her close. Sally swooned at the homecoming smell of man. “Are you married?” he asked.

 

Forward of him. “Not really.”

 

“I’m not really married too! So, is your friend a special friend?” Thanasi tipped his head towards the alley. “He’s out back getting high.”

 

“He’s not my friend. We’re in Uphoria’s class together.” Traitor, Sally chided herself.

 

When Rajiv rejoined the long table of dance students, Sally looked at his glassy eyes and went parental. “Rajiv, I’m ready to go home. I can drop you off.” She chatted with Thanasi at the counter while Rajiv knocked back the rest of his wine before silently following her outside. Could at least have thanked her for paying his bill.

 

Sally beamed at him over the roof of her car. “I have a date for coffee!” Feeling fizzy, she chose to ignore Rajiv’s uninterested “hmm.”  She gave a small snort. “Funny, though, I hear Leonard in my head: ‘You’re attracted to a Greek cook?’”

 

“So make your voice louder.” Rajiv’s snide tone popped her in the nose.

 

Sally’s tongue meandered around her mouth, as if tasting something for the first time. Rajiv was right. “So wise, for one so young.”

 

“Where do you get off being so condescending?” Rajiv grimaced.

 

Sally dropped down behind the steering wheel, briefly hurt. Then, defiant. “You were worried the guy was going to take me home…and you’d have to find a ride.” She wanted a fight.

 

 “Fuck you and fuck your elitist life.”

 

In all her elitist life, Sally considered, no such sentiment had ever been fired at her. Her heart raged. Sparks could have arced off her body.

 

“How dare you? I have paid for you, encouraged you. I have been like a…a…a mother to you – that was obviously ill-advised. And because a man – an old man - pays attention to me, I deserve this kind of language? No wonder you’re estranged from everybody...you with your God of Startling Acuity. More like God of Burned Bridges.” She impressed herself. What command of language, even after several glasses of Nemea.

 

“Mother? Are you kidding? You’ve been looking to get laid the minute you met me.”

 

Sally could not summon up a single word in response. She dropped Rajiv off on a street corner in the University District with a terse, “Good night.” Rajiv hurried away, not bothering to close the car door.

 

No Rajiv at the following Saturday class, or the next. When he showed up in a horribly wrinkled T-shirt three weeks later, Sally wanted to talk with him. Not to apologize. To tell him the Greek was better on the dance floor than behind a mug of coffee. Rajiv stayed on the other side of the room, uncommunicative.

 

Who’s the adult here? Sally nudged herself, and went over to him after class. “Hey stranger, let’s go get dal.”

 

“If you’re paying. I’m broke. I had to sell my guitar.”

 

“Wow, that’s tough. Maybe you can pick up another one at that pawn shop on the Ave.”

 

They ate without talking until Rajiv pointed at her necklace, the same hamsa that got his attention at their first lunch. “You know monotheism is the lazy man’s religion. You don’t have to appeal to more than one god. Where’s the challenge in that?”

 

A glimmer of the old Rajiv. Sally’s relief was short-lived.

 

“You’re just connecting with a bigger movement to give your inner chaos some respectability. Uh, I need a little help getting back on my feet.”

 

Sally cleared her throat, uneasy. Many times she had taken care of expenses for her girls. In a far-away city, maybe some acquaintance had helped them, too. Heck, what was money for? If Leonard could fritter his away on some fortune cookie, she could help Rajiv. “Let’s go check out the pawn shop.”

 

The pawn shop owner directed their attention to guitars hanging behind him. The easy way Rajiv moved through the store gave Sally the impression that he’d been there before. The one he chose cost nearly $500. “Rajiv,” Sally advised, “after this, the bank is closed.”

 

Rajiv did not come back to class any more that fall.

 

“Seen Rajiv?” Sally asked Uphoria. No. No one had at the Y. Sally stopped by the Bengal Tiger. No one there had seen him either. Probably went back to California, she figured, irritated with herself for scanning the dance studio each time she came to class. Rajiv was gone. Over and done. Young men were like that.

 

 

*                                             *                                              *

 

 

Daily downpours overwhelmed the gutters. The days began dark and got dim for a few hours before getting dark again. Sally supposed Rajiv was strumming his guitar – her guitar -- somewhere on a California beach. In more glum moments, watching the rain pour off the roof, she imagined him huddled under a blue tarp or waiting in line, soaked and shivering, for a bed in a homeless shelter.

 

She’d started handing out canned goods at the University District food bank. A good thing to do and something to get her out of the house, she’d said publically, knowing full well she hoped to run into Rajiv or someone who knew of his whereabouts.

 

The dark winter was nearly over and her ache over Rajiv’s disappearance receding when Leonard called. Yumiko was returning to Japan and he didn’t want to keep the apartment. “What’s the status of the guest bedroom?” he asked Sally, striving to sound casual.

 

She collected herself before saying, “I could use help cleaning out the gutters. They’re full of pine needles.” Let him wait. She’d give him an answer when she was good and ready. The same day, Sally came home from the food bank to a stranger’s accented English on her answering machine.

 

“Mrs. Sally Zwerin? Hello, this is Nabina Gupta, in Danville, California.”

 

Not far from the girls in San Francisco, Sally noted.

 

“Our son has spoken highly of you, and I hope you might do us a favor. Rajiv is in King County Jail again.”

 

Again? Sally pictured downtown Seattle’s foreboding, gray edifice with its pencil-line windows.

 

“He is refusing to communicate with us, and we are worried about him. He is charged with being in possession of a stolen car.” Nabina sighed. “It’s drugs. We won’t give him money until he enters rehabilitation because he will just use it for drugs, you know. It breaks my heart. I want to cave in and provide bail, but he won’t listen to us and he’s an adult. I just want someone to look upon his face and let him know we care so much about him.” A choked pause. “I’m asking as one mother to another. Could you go visit him?”

 

Sally played the message again, a third time. Her checks, she figured. They must have gotten her phone number from the checks she’d written Rajiv.

 

Sally called Nabina.

 

“Yes, we cashed checks for Rajiv once or twice when we visited him in Seattle as he had no bank account. I took down your information just in case…” Nabina’s voice trailed off.

 

“He seems like such a smart young man,” Sally soothed.

 

“Then you see how it is.”

 

In her sixty years, Sally had never been in a jail. She cringed at going alone. She called Leonard, not knowing who else to ask. Even a flawed tool has its uses.

 

“Sure, I’ll go down there with you,” Leonard said. “Brace yourself. It’s a pretty depressing place. Robs the spirit.”

 

Leonard picked her up after belly dance class, icy rain spitting across the windshield. “You look good,” he pronounced, surprised more than polite. He leaned over to kiss her – on the lips! Sally smelled cologne. Leonard had never worn cologne in all the long years she had known him.

 

Sally left her coat with Leonard in the jail waiting area and trudged over to a green-tinted glass booth, where she filled out an application to visit a prisoner. Before going through the metal detector, she dumped out the contents of her purse into a plastic bowl. The security guard, a huge black man, picked up the zills. “What are these?”

 

“I forgot I had them…just came from my belly dance class.” Sally gave him a weak smile. A year ago she would never have admitted to such a thing. “They’re tiny cymbals you play while you’re dancing.” The guard pushed the bowl at her. “Oh yeah, sure. You go, girl.”  She poured everything back into her purse.

 

Another guard motioned to a thick door next to the booth, and she pulled hard on the handle. Her heart raced at seeing six glassed partitions with small counters and phones, and a bald young man with Rajiv’s face behind one of them.

 

“Your beautiful hair!”

 

Rueful, Rajiv ran a hand over his smooth pate. “Yeah, head lice. Had it shaved.”

 

They spoke of inconsequential things until Sally took a deep breath. “Being brutally frank is the only way I think I can do you any good, Rajiv. I was so sad to hear your story, because I care about you.” Rajiv shifted in his chair, face vacant.

 

“You may not want a lecture from a second mother, but you can't continue to live like this without ending up dead. There are so many great things you could do with your life.”

 

Rajiv looked into his hands. He looked at the counter and at other inmates easing into chairs behind the glass. Gazing over Sally’s head, he rolled his shoulders. “I always end up on the bad-ass end of everything. Friends turn out to be bad friends. Deals turn out to be bad deals.” He leaned close to the glass. “We all got issues. I can’t quit certain habits. You can’t belly dance in public.” Sally recoiled at his smarmy wink.

 

No mountains split, no rocks shattered when Salome, aka Sally Zwerin, reached for her purse. Fingers trembling, she unzipped it and slid on the zills. A white-hot Rightness coursed through her. She breathed quickly – like the shallow pants of childbirth – and lifted her arms and head, rising nobly beyond her 5’4” height. She undraped a chiffon scarf (really the shoulder strap of her purse) and let it fall carelessly to the floor. Her hips challenged gravity with sensuous downward dips that immediately caught a guard’s attention.  She set up a ringing rhythm with the zills.

 

Rajiv’s face split into a you-win half-grin.

 

Salome, mindful that an offering to the Goddess of Retiring-Hearted Menopausal Dancers would be in order later, shimmied her shoulders at Rajiv, in the direction of surprised jail visitors, and at the security guard coming her way. She pouted silkily to the waiting room, grapevining to the left, then to the right. Arise, she urged her body. Weren’t prayer and calculated muscular impulses one and the same? Pray with your feet. To appreciative whoops from the visiting area men, she stuck out her bottom and wiped away at an imaginary honey barrel.

 

The guard was next to her. “Ma’am, you’ll have to stop that.”

 

“Nonsense. It’s what everybody here should be doing.” She wiggled across the room until the guard grabbed her arm. She whirled away, clanging and clacking her zills, the visiting area crowd clapping in time.

 

Ha! Let them arrest her for raising a ruckus. She was Salome, around whom no less a personage than King David might have leaped. He’d danced with all his strength as the Holy Ark was brought into Jerusalem. Dancing was in her blood, in her genes, ennobling even such a godforsaken place as a jail.

 

The guard, Sally’s purse in his arms, propelled her forward while another held open the door to the jail waiting room. Leonard, mouth agape, stood up at such unfettered movement from Sally. She breezed past him, “You may take me home now.”

 

 “Dotty old woman,” Leonard murmured with a self-exculpatory shrug at the security guards. One guard handed him Sally’s purse while the other, arms akimbo, watched Sally swish out the jail’s front entrance. Leonard picked up his newspaper and hurried after her.

 

“Hey, crazy lady, where’s your shopping cart? Your black plastic bags?” He yelled over the sound of her zills, redirecting the attention of passersby from the dancing woman. A few incoming jail visitors hooted. Catcalls went up from a group of young men and women waiting at a bus stop adjacent to the jail plaza. Leonard came closer to Sally, softening his tone. “Don’t you want your coat? It’s freezing out here.”

 

Salome, vaguely aware of cheering around her, pirouetted to greet her admirers.

 

 

 

Copyright Wendy Marcus/The New Vilna Review 2010. 

 

Wendy Marcus’ debut short story collection, Polyglot: Stories of the West’s Wet Edge, won the 2009 Serena McDonald Kennedy Award from Georgia’s Snake Nation Press and a 2010 National Jewish Book Council Fiction Award. Polyglot has been nominated by Seattle Public Library for a 2010 Washington State Book Award. Marcus has performed and taught for the past 26 years at Temple Beth Am in Seattle’s North End, where she serves as music director and editor of Drash: Northwest Mosaic, a literary journal.