Page 405 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 375

had never penetrated. He knew he was not one of us. He knew we all
knew each other too well, as sure as he knew exactly what was happening
to them both. I can’t say I saw it exactly, but I feel certain I saw his eyes
involuntarily dart fully to Ryan sitting bolt upright next to me. Always,
I’m certain, Kick was peripherally aware of Ryan, whose escalating Energy
beamed out through the bald screen of his high forehead across the rows
of seated heads.
Behind us, a woman leaned forward and whispered, “Will you all
please behave!”
Kweenie giggled. “Have a taste of your own medicine,” she whispered.
Ryan could not keep his eyes on the stage. Would not. Tried to. Could
not. He borrowed Kweenie’s opera glasses. He made the set piece com-
plete. He could not not do it. He raised the glasses to his eyes, studied
the healthy glow of Hepburn’s skin, translucent with the dignity of age,
of a life she herself lived through an undying love for Spencer Tracy, as
part of a Famous Couple; then, slowly, with a great deal of discipline, ever
so slowly, he turned his head with the glasses tight against his eyes, and
swept them over the dark backs of heads until he was close up on Kick’s
brightly lit face.
Ryan sat perfectly still, reading the golden face that never moved. Not
once. Not during the long instant of the one look Ryan allowed himself.
In that moment, I felt the surge of the long riptide of wild passion.
Suddenly I understood.
Passion.
That was the name of the Energy they had so long conjured between
them. It was passion. I felt it, felt what it must have been like between
them: hot, horny, stoned, roped, muscled, oiled, posing, rapping, strok-
ing, screwing, sucking, sniffing, licking, hugging, lifting off together.
Not that Ryan moved or even shuddered. Quite the opposite. Actresses
did not drop their lines. Trains did not roar into tunnels. Waves did not
crash on the beach. Trees did not bend and sway under the force of the
wind. Lightning did not flash. Thunder did not crack. Dogs did not howl
in the night. Crops did not fail.
Nowhere, that is, but in Ryan’s heart.
I felt his palpable Energy. I felt Kick’s. It was passion and more than
passion. Something there was beyond human reason between them. A
laser of burning intensity connected them. I felt Ryan rising up, flying up
toward the ceiling of the theater, floating over the heads of the audience,
as if he had fainted or died or both and he was enduring an out-of-body
experience once again. Ryan was on a long leash, but no one, particularly

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