A Short Story by Thomas Shess
The night before the second day of freshman dance lessons, Chaz Blinkowsky prayed that Belinda would be assigned to him.
He had not prayed often, and never for a girl.
His mother had made certain he understood there was a God, but Chaz had always regarded prayer somewhat the way he regarded computer troubleshooting: something you tried after the obvious solutions failed.
There was no obvious solution to Belinda.
He had seen her the first afternoon when the girls from Our Lady Who Art in Heaven arrived at St. John Keller High School for Boys for the annual freshman dance lessons.
Forty boys stood on one side of the gymnasium and easily as many girls stood on the other while Miss Daphne, the dance instructor, explained the fundamentals of social dancing to adolescents who would rather have been almost anywhere else.
Miss Daphne, a fifty-four-year-old independent contractor, wore red shoes and clapped her hands when she wanted silence.
“Gentlemen, cross the floor and introduce yourselves.”
Nobody moved.
She clapped twice.
“Now.”
That worked.
Chaz had been paired with a girl named Monica, who was taller than he was and spent most of the lesson looking over his shoulder at someone else.
Belinda had been three couples away.
He kicked himself for not noticing her first.
She was not the loudest girl in the room.
She was not surrounded by friends.
She did not laugh at everything the boys said.
She simply stood there, waiting for the music.
Chaz thought she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.
That evening he went home thinking about her.
At eleven-thirty, lying in bed and annoyed with himself because he could not stop thinking about her, he finally folded his hands. “God,” he whispered, “if you’re listening, could I dance with Belinda tomorrow?”
He waited.
Nothing happened.
He considered adding something more religious.
Nothing came to him. “Amen.”
Then came a voice, a shrill falsetto in his ears—not a voice he expected: “Chester Jacob Blinkowsky.” God demanded attention. “My hands are tied. You are the only Jewish boy in an Augustinian school. Use your prayers for surviving ninth grade, never mind dance lessons.”
Stunned, Chaz asked himself "did you really hear that? Or did mom get to God first?"
The next afternoon, when Miss Daphne began pairing the students, Chaz tried not to stare across the gym.
“Blinkowsky.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Belinda.”
For one astonishing second, Chaz wondered whether God might actually be paying attention.
Belinda crossed the floor toward him.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
Then Chaz stepped on her foot.
“Oh, God. Sorry.”
She laughed.
They tried again.
He stepped on the same foot.
“I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t. You only have two feet and I’ve already damaged half your inventory.”
That made her laugh again.
Miss Daphne clapped from the center of the gym. “Gentlemen, left hand up. Right hand at the lady’s waist. Ladies, help them. Most of them are hopeless.”
Belinda placed Chaz’s hand correctly.
His palm rested against her waist.
That created an entirely new problem.
“You’re nervous,” she said.
“I’m terrified.”
“Of dancing?”
“No.”
“Of me?”
Chaz looked at her. There seemed little reason to lie. “Yes.”
She smiled.
The music started.
They moved.
Chaz immediately went the wrong direction and stepped on her foot for the third time.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m nervous.”
“Don’t be. It’s only gym class.”
“No, that’s not it.”
“What is it?”
He swallowed. At fifteen, Chaz could dismantle a computer and rebuild it. He could write code his teachers did not understand. He could diagnose a failing hard drive by the sound it made. None of those talents helped him now.
“I prayed last night that you’d be my partner.”
Belinda stopped moving.
“You what?”
“I prayed.”
“For me?” She made the sign of the cross.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
There was still time to invent something clever. Chaz had nothing clever. He blurted “Because you’re the most beautiful girl here.”
Belinda stared at him.
“And,” he continued, because humiliation apparently had no natural stopping point, “I was hoping you liked me.”
For a moment she said nothing.
Around them, shoes squeaked against the gym floor. Miss Daphne called out instructions. Someone laughed near the bleachers. Music crackled through the portable speakers.
Belinda moved a little closer.
She adjusted Chaz’s hand at her waist.
“You’re thinking too much.”
“I do that.”
“I noticed.”
“What should I do?”
“Listen to the music. There’s a beat. Move your feet with it. It gets easier once you stop fighting it.” Aloud, she counted softly. “One, two. One, two.”
Chaz followed. His shoulders loosened.
Belinda stepped backward.
This time he went with her.
She moved left.
He managed to move right without kicking anyone.
She turned beneath his raised arm and came back toward him. For the first time in two days of lessons, Chaz was dancing.
Not well.
But dancing.
He smiled.
“There,” Belinda said. “See?”
He muttered, “I think I’m having a religious experience.”
“Don’t push it.” She laughed.
At that moment, the public address speaker in the gym activated. Everyone heard a familiar squeaky falsetto: “Miss Belinda Alvidrez, your ride is here. Meet at the reception area.”
Belinda cupped her hands over Chaz’s ears as the PA voice repeated the message.
For a few seconds he forgot about everyone else in the gym.
Then Belinda leaned closer. The dancing began.
Her mouth was near his ear. “I like you too, Chaz.”
Those were forever words. He would remember them years later. Not simply the words, but the polished floor, the music, Miss Daphne’s red shoes and the impossible fact that Belinda Semma-Alvidrez had said them to him.
They danced through two more foxtrots. Then, at the end, her expression changed.
The smile vanished.
Chaz felt her hand tighten around his.
She was staring toward the gymnasium entrance. A man had entered. He was in his late twenties, broad through the shoulders, compact rather than bulky, with the hard posture of a man who had spent much of his life expecting trouble.
The clothes caught Chaz first. A spotless white T-shirt under an open Hawaiian shirt, the pattern muted rather than loud. Sharply pressed khaki trousers rode high at the waist, the crease down each leg straight enough to have been drawn with a ruler. Dark leather shoes were polished to a dull shine. His black hair was combed straight back and held there, smooth and deliberate. A narrow mustache ran precisely over his upper lip.
There was something old-fashioned about him, something Chaz associated with photographs of San Diego and Los Angeles from another generation. He looked like an old-school pachuco who had survived long enough to become respectable without surrendering any of the menace.
Not the exaggerated zoot-suit version from movies. No long coat, no watch chain, no broad-brimmed hat. This was the later version: cleaner, quieter, older, the same pride and same warning carried in smaller details. Nothing about him seemed accidental. The white wife-beater T-shirt under his open Hawaiian shirt. Even the way he stood. His feet were slightly apart, his arms loose at his sides. He did not lean against the wall or put his hands in his pockets. He occupied the doorway as though he had already decided where everyone in the room was and how quickly he could reach them.
He did not look like a father arriving early.
He did not look like a teacher.
He looked like a thug. Plain and simple.
The man surveyed the gym before he looked at Belinda. His eyes moved first to the doors. Then the bleachers. Then the windows. Then the boys. Then the adults. Then, finally he stared at Chaz as if he had a shooting range target pasted on his ass.
Only after completing that inspection did he look directly at her.
Chaz noticed the sequence.
So did Belinda. The change in her was immediate.
A moment earlier she had been smiling at Chaz. Now she wasn’t. Her shoulders tightened. Her hand stopped moving in his. Even the expression in her eyes changed, as though someone had reached inside her and turned off the afternoon.
“Who is that?” Chaz asked.
Belinda hesitated.
“My bodyguard.”
Chaz thought he had heard her wrong.
“Your what?”
“My bodyguard.” she said in a softer voice.
He looked at the man again.
Her words changed everything.
Until that moment Chaz had thought he was simply some severe relative, perhaps an uncle or one of those family friends adults expected children to obey.
A bodyguard was different. Bodyguards belonged to presidents, movie stars, billionaires and men whose names appeared in newspaper stories involving words like kidnapping, extortion and organized crime.
Fifteen-year-old schoolgirls did not ordinarily have bodyguards waiting outside freshman dance lessons.
“Why do you have a bodyguard?”
“My father hired him.”
“Criminy what for? What does your father do?”
Belinda looked away.
“Business.”
“What kind of business?”
She did not answer.
Across the gym, the man crooked one finger.
Belinda stiffened.
“Belinda," called Miss Daphne, your ride is here.”
The bodyguard flicked his head to one side motioning for her to move to the exit.
Belinda released Chaz’s hand. “I have to go.”
“Right now? We're in the middle of class."
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“My father doesn’t like me being anywhere without security.”
Chaz looked again at the man. He had never known anyone who had security. Not at St. John Keller.
Not anywhere.
The bodyguard crossed the floor toward them. Up close, Chaz noticed a faint scar running from the man’s left ear toward his jaw. “Belinda,” the man said. “Vámonos.”
“We’re still dancing.”
“No. You’re finished.”
Belinda looked embarrassed. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she told Chaz. "I will be your partner/"
Chaz beamed. “Will you?”
She smiled, but only slightly.
“I hope so.”
The bodyguard turned toward the exit.
Belinda followed.
Chaz watched them walk away.
Near the gym doors, the man placed one hand against Belinda’s upper arm and guided her into the corridor.
Not violently. But firmly enough that Chaz noticed.
He later learned, the man was annoyed that he had to come retrieve her at the gym instead of the front office.
Belinda looked back once at Chaz and smiled. Then she disappeared through the doors.
Miss Daphne clapped twice.
“Blinkowsky! Your partner appears to have been recalled. Come here, I will be your partner.
The gym was filled with laughter.
Chaz barely heard them. He froze in the middle of the gym staring at the empty doorway.
A fifteen-year-old girl in a short plaid skirt with a bodyguard.
A father who insisted on security even during a school dance class.
A man who checked every exit before looking at the girl he had come to collect.
Something about that did not fit into the world Chaz knew. He had grown up around accountants, teachers, rabbis, an absent father, mechanics, shop owners, priests and parents who worried about grades.
None of them had bodyguards. He knew almost nothing about Belinda Semma-Alvidrez. But he knew one thing now. Whatever her father did for a living, somebody was afraid of him.
Or somebody wanted him hurt.
Chaz was burning inside. Tomorrow, if someone in the gym claimed Belinda before he could, there was going to be trouble.
