Free Life Among Giants by Bill Roorbach Page A

her,” he said clearly.
    No way to hide, I said, “ Th ank you for the binoculars, Tenke.”
    My mother shot me a look. Th ose binoculars. And who was I to call the dancer by her familiar name?
    Sylphide was unperturbed: “Ah, ja, ja —I was thinking you’d like them. Dabney thought them treasure. Sometimes I was thinking he’d pay more attention to me if I were rainbow or robin redbreast or eclipse of the moon!”
    â€œOh, well, I doubt that, ” my mother said.
    We took our seats. Th e piano mounted and mounted, the performer’s heaving shoulders and flung fingers giving us a place to look—mounted yet more to the end of the movement, dropped away suddenly to a ringing silence. Mom and I picked up our teacups as if on cue in the quiet, found the tea on cue to be too hot, placed the cups back in their saucers.
    â€œEclipse of the moon,” said Sylphide absently.
    â€œSmelling smelly smells,” Linsey said, such that I at least could understand it, apparently not taking to my mother’s perfume.
    Abruptly Mom said, “We’re so sorry for your loss. Mr. Stryker-Stewart, I mean.”
    â€œAh,” said Sylphide. “I am sorry for it, too.”
    Exquisite timing, the parlor maid tripped in with a tinkling silver tray of little sandwiches on plates, dropped them in front of us. She poured more tea into each rattling cup. Th e second she was gone, Linsey and I lunged at the food. My mother ignored hers—such was her training—but Sylphide was only a beat behind Linsey and me. And when she saw my mother wasn’t going to eat, she took that sandwich too, gobbled it unapologetically.
    Linsey burped, a signature report.
    Sylphide took no notice but pulled herself up, clapped her hands gaily. She said, “Georges, give us some acid rock for these long-haired boys, ja ?”
    I thought the piano player would be insulted, but in fact he leapt to his feet, comically kicking the piano bench away, threw his hands at the keyboard, the loud opening chords of “Manic Depression,” the great Jimi Hendrix power song, complete with a cruel, raging bass line in the left hand, remarkable. Suddenly I recognized him: Georges Whiteside! From the Dabney Stryker-Stewart Band! Th ose ethereal organ chords on “Love Me Later,” that famous crying solo that half the world can whistle? Th at was Georges! I still thought of him as a teenager, the lucky rocker he’d been on Ed Sullivan years before, all swagger and moxie. Th e guy in front of us had seemed more irritation than anything, a notch or two in High Side service status below Desmond, little pot belly forming, cummerbund awry, leather pants straining at their buttons, hair unwashed in long strings around his shoulders. But suddenly his hands were wild animals again, this way and that up and down the keyboard.
    â€œKate would love this,” my mother stated dryly, unable to love it on her own, struggling up and onto her very high heels, clapping off the beat, clearly feeling she’d lost her moment with the dancer. Linsey vaulted from his chair, spun monkey-style to Georges’s side, patted the famous shoulder happily, then spun through the wide doorway and gone. Th e dancer rose like heat from her chair, glided to me, extended long hands, pulled me to my feet with surprising strength. My mother’s eyes closed to slits and she turned profile, feigned an interest in Linsey’s exit.
    I had my own problems: the skin at the tip of my penis had glued itself to my underpants, tore itself from the cloth incrementally with exquisite, shrinking pain. Sylphide pulled me to her, placed her right hand on my back, started us around the room—she wasn’t going to follow. Linsey came tumbling back in, hooting, chortling, dancing. Plainly, he’d wet his pants. In that, I supposed, we were brothers. I found myself dancing my partner backwards in an ungainly foxtrot, the great ballerina