The Kitchen Dance (chapter one)

 The Kitchen Dance

by Geri G. Taylor 

Thick humid air filled my lungs and I stifled the urge to cough.  My shoulders convulsed and sent pulses of pain directly to the slice in my arm.   Blood dripped from the wound with a steady plop that mimicked the thud of my heartbeat.  If she could not hear the groan of the ceiling supports objecting to my weight atop them, she could certainly hear the echo of my fear.

     ‘If I live through this,' I thought to myself.  ‘I'll write it all down.'  I repositioned myself against the narrow studs supporting the walls, the pain along my side unbearable.  I took another shallow breath.

"How can you still live in that place?" The voice of my best friend sang with the sharp beats of my heart.  "You know it is not a safe area.  I worry about you every day." 

I never worried; or more likely the case, I never cared. Roosevelt had been with me, but he was not with me now.  I was feeling faint from the loss of blood.  Images of Roosevelt and my life flashed in my mind like the disjointed three dimensional pictures in a child's Viewmaster toy.  Allen, his name, but not his image, whispered into my sub-consciousness. 

"Allen is MINE!" screamed the crazed woman below me. "Allen is mine!" The butcher knife broke through the suspended ceiling tiles mere inches from my hiding place.

A Year Earlier

ONE

Joule

"Joule?  Honey, you don't have to do this right now." Elaine dragged the empty box past the closet door.

I ran my hand over several hangers of the men's clothing that still held my husband's scent.  "Yes.  I do.  You said you were here to help.  So help."

"Let me get in there.  You can stand out here and sort." Elaine pushed past me in the crowded walk-in closet Daniel and I had constructed creating a dividing wall between the bedroom and living area of our spacious loft apartment.

I stepped from the closet, over the box, into the bedroom area of the loft apartment.  Dull brown packing boxes littered the usually pristine white carpet.  I surveyed the damages and stepped carefully around the maze stopping to create stacks of twos and threes.

Elaine climbed a small stepladder to get the shoes from the top shelf.  "What is this?  A door?  Do you have more storage up here?"  Elaine balanced precariously on top the flimsy step stool regarded the trap door designed to blend into the ceiling.

"No, it's just a crawl space." I told her offering her my hand to steady her perch.  "Hand me those shoes first."

Elaine's curiosity lit as she pushed up the panel causing a thin veil of dust to float down and settle on the shoulders of several of Daniel's dark suit coats. She looked down at Joule and winced her apology.  She stepped to a higher rung and peered into the dark opening.   

"Get down from there." I laughed as I reached up to steady Elaine. "Before you fall."

Elaine replaced the panel and stepped down.  "Sorry." She made a feeble attempt to brush the gray dust from the suits.  "Hand me a clothes brush or something."

"Just leave it."  I suggested. 

Elaine reached up and began handing down several large shoe boxes containing pairs of men's shoes.  "Most of these shoes barely look worn."

I opened a box and glanced at a pair and shrugged.  That was all they were to me now; men's shoes, shoes worn by a man, a man who was no longer in my life. I took a last look at a few pairs of the shoes before setting them in the larger box.  Expensive, fine leather, Italian made lace up dress shoes that Daniel wore with his tailored suits fitted to his broad shoulders, long arms and cut to make his thick waist appear slimmer.  He was a man who appreciated style and it showed in his work.  He enjoyed his clothing more than any woman would and he had twice as many shoes as I did. I sorted through some of his athletic shoes each worn for specific sports; jogging, racquetball, tennis and a pair for basketball all stored in their original boxes their graphics creating a chaos of color across the floor. I opened one shoe box, dull and faded; the lid's corners worn smooth were taped together.  It had been stored on the shelf fitted neatly into the stack of other shoe boxes.  It now held instead of shoes a collection of photos, greeting cards and newspaper clippings.  I lifted out several photographs of this strikingly handsome man in a variety of scenarios.  Then I lifted out a picture of Daniel and me.  I studied the wave of his hair across his forehead and his broad jaw.  My hair was long then, down to my waist, and I was wearing it in an unflattering ponytail for ease.  Daniel had liked it long and loose but it was summer and the feel of sweat soaked hair clinging to my neck just did not appeal to me.  I cut my hair to a short bob two days after Daniel's funeral.

"Joule?  Hey?" Elaine balanced a few more boxes.  "You're about to lose your helper."

I pulled out a newspaper article from the box and exchanged it for the stack of shoes in Elaine's hands.

"Award Winning Architect Shot Down in His Home." Elaine read the title of the article.  "What are you doing?"

"Hand me that scrapbook on the other shelf." I asked her.

Elaine reached for a shelf on the other side of the closet and retrieved a thick scrapbook.  She climbed down the ladder and joined me on the floor.  "What do you have?"  She asked regarding the box.

"Just some things I culled."

Elaine picked up the box of mementos.

I opened the scrapbook and flipped through the pages revealing decorated arrangements of photos and notations celebrating different events in our lives; me, Joule Dalton, and my husband, Daniel Kirkland.  I had kept my name. 

"People can not live their life like a scrapbook."  Elaine's comment interrupted my thoughts.  "It would be nice, but you just can't go through all the things in your life and pick out only the best parts and put it in a lovely scrapbook and set it on their coffee table for all their friends to see.  It would be great if all the bad things could just go in a box on a shelf in the closet hidden away from the world.  It just doesn't work that way, honey." Elaine offered with her deepest felt sympathy.  "The scrapbook is pretty with all its embellishments but it is what you have in that box that shape your life."

I reached for the article, put it in the box on top of the other items and closed the lid.  I set the box on top of the scrapbook and put it back in the closet next to my dust covered camera bag.

Elaine followed me inside the closet and climbed up the ladder to hand me more boxes.  With the shoes loaded, she stepped down and looked over the clothes hanging in the closet.

I closed the box shoes careful to align the top four panels into an interlocking fashion.  I used the last of my packing tape sparingly to assemble the last few boxes while Elaine took clothes off the rack in groups of four or five hangers in each hand.  I continued to load them in the boxes without paying any attention to them. 

Elaine tossed a few more shirts my direction, the dry cleaning bags still grouping them in twos and threes. What, after all, did they mean to her?  She had her rhythm and perhaps her silence was her way of protecting me.  After filling a couple of boxes and halfway through another I began to be aware of the specific clothes going in the box.  I threw a wrench into Elaine's well timed machine when I bent to pull out a trench coat from the pile.  An armload of tossed golf shirts slid down my back. I gathered the coat to my face and smelled it.  His scent was still fresh in my memory.  "He was wearing this the day we met." I walked into the closet.

"Maybe you should keep it?"  Elaine suggested as she stood impatiently with an armload of ties.

"No."

I almost tossed it, along with the other clothes in the box, and then I noticed the stain on the sleeve.  "Do you think I should have this cleaned first?" I showed the stain to Elaine.

"No.  Really, Joule.  You're giving it to the homeless.  I don't think a little stain will matter."

I continued to examine the coat until Elaine reached for it.

"Give it to me.  I will try to get that out."  She offered the ties in exchange for the coat.

I tossed it in the box instead.  "No.  ­That's okay.  You're right.  Give me those."  I took the silk ties from Elaine and felt them slip through my fingers like eels into awaiting box.

Together we carried the boxes down the steep flight of stairs that lead to the warehouse below the loft and piled them by the large warehouse doors.

"Where is Roosevelt?" Elaine asked.

"Probably sleeping." I arched my back stretching out my sore muscles until I found some relief.

"You should get that service elevator fixed." Elaine commented.

"It's on my 'To Do List' 'Laine." I quipped as we dragged our weary bodies back up the staircase.

Early the next morning I heard the chuff of a cold engine.  I looked out my loft's bedroom window for the culprit.  I watch as a dull white delivery truck made its approach.  A cloud of smoke and vapor coughed from the exhaust of the truck as it stopped in front of my warehouse.

An obese burley man I recognized from the soup kitchen where I volunteered extracted himself from the driver's seat, his breath indicating the chill of the early hours.  He opened the rear overhead door of the truck.  The worn gaskets created an irritating screech of metal against metal as the door scraped in its tracks.

His partner, a tall scrawny teen with long dull blonde curls, slid gracefully from the passengers' side and immediately began hefting the overstuffed boxes of clothing sitting outside the large doors of my warehouse.  He selected a box he could manage and disappeared with it in the truck's cargo area.

Oscar, or Oliver, I could not recall his name, only that it began with an O, pushed a large box with the steel toe of his work boot as if the gesture could calculate the parcel's weight.  He was more bulk than brawn and his massive arms did not realize the strength they suggested.  He squatted before a box grimacing as if his knees were protesting the attempt and, using his hands on his thighs to brace his upper body, returned to the supervisory role.

The thin young man returned to the stack of boxes and rubbed his hands against his biceps as if the friction would give him some relief against the cold.  Oliver or Oscar kicked a box which the young man must have accepted as a signal to lift.  The young man stood up straining under the weight of the box.  It had taken both Elaine and me to lift then guide as it slid down the staircase like a child bumping down a snow covered hill yet Blondie managed alone to get it into the back of the truck with much less effort.  This was the heaviest box filled mostly with slacks, some still crisp from the dry cleaners, and jeans rarely worn but faded and frayed as was the style.

Blondie picked up another box, a much lighter box, most likely Daniel's shoes, left in their original boxes that would quickly be discarded at the soup kitchen.  The designer names whose gold imprinted labels would have no more value than the rubber bands that would hold them in pairs.  He handed the lighter box to his supervisor who balanced it on his protruding gut and hoisted in the rear of the truck.  Blondie, working twice the speed of his boss, completed the task while short burst of vapor puffed from his nose and mouth.

Roosevelt, sitting in his padded folding chair positioned close to the boxes, offered no assistance or suggestions.  He simply watched as each box was removed from the stack and vanished in the rear of the truck.  I thought that a casual observer would assume Roosevelt Graham was homeless.  He had a home.  He lived with me. 

Roosevelt, an elderly man, with the appearance of an octogenarian at the least, sat huddled against the cold. The early morning sunlight glinted off his blue-gray eyes, his dry-wrinkled skin, and his frizzy matted hair as he watched the men load the truck.  He wore a dark tweed coat over faded slacks and well worn but polished shoes. 

I waited until after the truck pulled away before I opened the smaller door beside the large retractable warehouse doors.  Struggling with my parcels, I was carrying a long dress bag over my arm, my handbag, and a large bag over my other shoulder; I tried not to spill the cup of steaming coffee in my free hand.  I handed Roosevelt the cup of coffee.

He didn't take it.

"Good morning." I offered cheerfully, "Did they just pick up the boxes?"  I asked as if I were not aware of the commotion taking place below my loft.

Roosevelt did not answer me but continued to watch the traffic picking up on an adjacent street.

"Okay.  There is some ham in the fridge and I picked up some eggs last night if you want some breakfast."  I set the coffee next to him on the ground.

No response.

"I forgot to get some juice at the store yesterday.  Do you want me to get some juice before I go to work?" I attempted.

No response.

"I won't be home until late.  I have a party to go to after work." I reminded him.

Still no response.

"I'll bring you something from Elaine's party." I bribed.

No response.

"Well.  It's pretty cold so don't stay out too long." I expressed with concern.

No response.

"I'll see you later then." I surrendered but Roosevelt still offered no reply.  I walked away.

"I like the mushrooms." Roosevelt, barely audible, mumbled to by back.

I heard him and turned around.  "What did you say?"

"I like the stuffed mushrooms." He enunciated with enough volume to be heard over the hum of commotion building as the world came alive on this winter's day.

"Then I'll bring you some." I offered.

"And some cake." He insisted.

"Of course, I wouldn't forget the cake."

I could not hold back the smile that cut through the cold on my chilled cheeks.  I did not have to glance back as I walked away.  I knew Roosevelt well enough that once I had cleared the corner he would reach down and take the coffee.