Free The Candle Dancer / The Way That You Found Me by Patrick Holland

The Candle Dancer
Patrick Holland
    It was an afternoon like any other and I did not sense the storm that was coming—how could I have? It was September in Brisbane, one of those balmy evenings so sublime you forgave the city for the summers it subjected you to. Of course, I felt those summers much more in the old days, when I was a poor student of economics. Now I had a middle-management position at an investment bank, did half a dozen trips to Singapore a year, which satisfied my moderate desires for adventure, and had brought a pregnant young wife to a well-appointed little Queenslander in Ashgrove. Three bedrooms, front and back decks; a herb garden; a macadamia and even a mangosteen tree. Without realising it, without preparing for it or even expecting it, I walked onto my front deck with a beer that spring night, my wife in bed, a bit of Polish jazz—perhaps the Stanko Quartet—drifting from my sound system, and was surprised to discover I was happy. I remember looking at my phone in the dim glow of a streetlight. It was after twelve, and happiness had come upon me like an angel in the dark. I smiled. Breathed deeply of air so fresh it seemed ground from crystals. It was then I looked across the road to Victor’s place—he was the middle-aged accountant with the triplet teenage daughters—and I saw him in a second storey window dancing with a candle. His greying curly hair was lit like a halo; his bloated face aglow like some strange redux of the Buddha in an esoteric Japanese shrine. And the dance… like a waltz? But no, that wasn’t quite it… the way he bobbed up and down… the way the candle circled his face… the way he seemed to sing to it. It was like a solemn religious ritual.
    Perhaps all would have been well if I had taken what I had seen to bed with me then. Perhaps, on waking the next day, I would have confused the incident with the night’s dreams. But instead I burst out laughing, and I went inside and woke Jenny.
    ‘I’m sorry, Jen, but you’ve got to see this.’
    She squinted her eyes and scowled at me.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘It’s Victor. He’s dancing with a candle in his window.’
    ‘Dancing? How dancing?’
    ‘I don’t know. Like some pagan rite. Like he’s casting spells. Come and see!’
    And so she did.
    We snuck out onto the veranda together and hid behind shirts drying on a clothes line. I laughed again. Jenny giggled and put her hand to her mouth. And then we realised that the shirts and the dark did not give us the cover we thought, for he had seen us. Undoubtedly he had seen us, and seen us laughing at him. I suppose twenty-five metres stretched between his front door and mine, but there was no mistaking the embarrassed and then hostile look on his face before he blew out the candle and disappeared.
    We shot inside our front door, though it was already too late for stealth. Jen was still giggling.
    ‘What on earth do you think it means?’ she said.
    ‘I’ve got no idea. Though one thing’s for sure.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I can never ask him.’
----
    The next day we both sat in our houses—certainly I did—staring through gaps in the venetian blinds and waiting for the other to come out first to get in his car and go to work. Finally it was a quarter to nine and we had each sweated the other out of his hole. We arrived on the street at exactly the same time. I tried to be discreet, but not noticeably different in manner from any other day. I am sure I did not stare at him any longer than usual. God, did I?
    ‘How are you?’ he asked.
    ‘Great. You?’
    ‘Good.’
    ‘That’s good.’
    ‘Something on your mind?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Sure?’
    ‘Yep.’
    ‘You look like you’ve got something on your mind?’
    ‘Not me.’
    ‘Fine.’
    And I ducked into my car, ignited the engine, set eyes front and drove.
    But when I arrived home that afternoon Jenny said someone—perhaps Victor’s wife—had left a note under her windscreen wiper saying not to park in front