Dancing in Lunar Seas

Dancing in Lunar Seas

Part One

I The Coaster

Allison noticed it the moment she walked through the door, automatically scanning the living room as she nudged her flats from each heel with the toe of her other foot. The glass, less than half filled with the semi-transparent brown of the iced tea Allison had made the night before, stood directly on her walnut coffee table, condensation running down the sides, a ring of moisture clearly visible on the polished wood.

I'm going to kill that girl, she muttered, silently praying that her salt trick would work. If I told her once I told her a thousand times.

She quickly retrieved a handful of tissues she kept in her purse, lifted the glass from the table and wiped the condensation from the wooden surface, biting her lower lip. She squinted her eyes, and a breath of relief almost escaped her lips. Then she saw it, faint but unmistakable: a clouded ring of a water stain on her beloved walnut furniture.

That idiot girl. That stupid, stupid girl. All of nineteen and she doesn't have enough sense to use a coaster?

Allison inspected the rest of the living room for signs of her daughter's depredations, but the sight confronting her eyes subdued her rising anxiety. Everything was in order. Books neatly lined the small, short bookshelf standing against one wall, next to a longer library table, also made of carved and polished walnut; she eyed the cushions of the sofas and armchairs and, seeing them neatly fluffed and layered against each other, sighed, noticeably relieved.

The hand-me-down doilies, like giant snowflakes made of fine thread, knitted by her grandmother and passed down to her from her mother, topped the backs of the sofas and chairs, evidently undisturbed by Kristie's slovenliness. All in all, it was a modest, comfortable room, appointed with modest, comfortable furniture and lamps and curtains, for a modest, comfortable house. The fuzzy ring on the coffee table caught Allison's eye, and the woman walked briskly to the kitchen to retrieve a container of salt.

Damn her, she thought, staring out the kitchen window through parted lace hanging over the small window above her sink. She saw her neighbor's yard, so much better kept and trimmed than hers, and then to her neighbor's house, finer and larger than the small ranch house her father had bought for her after Ted abandoned the both of them, Allison and Kristie.

That was all, what, ten years ago now?

Allison stood on her toes to reach the salt in its tubular cartoon. She had worn a longish, dark burgundy dress to work that day, and the hem of the dress rose above her calves, showing the backs of her knees momentarily before she returned, flat-footed to the cold linoleum, patterned as if tile, of the kitchen floor. The dress swirled around the middle of her calves as she walked back to the coffee table to pour a little salt over the hazy ring where the glass had stood.

Ten years ago she had tried so hard.

Ten years ago she could tell herself she was still young and beautiful, even with an eight-year old child. Ten years ago she could still laugh, a laughter tinged with bitterness, at Ted's selfish stupidity. When he left, he left for good, and the door that closed behind him did not shut near as tight as the door in Allison's own heart against her once and futureless husband.

Allison stared at the little ring of salt on her walnut, a little circle to ward off the evil spirits of blemish, and she frowned in her worry. She pulled her eyes from the table to glance out the picture window, slightly bayed, at the derelict majesty of the big white house across the street, a century old and empty for decades, two stories and a gabled attic of domestic ruination threatening at any moment to cave in.

She couldn't call herself young anymore.

She doubted she could still call herself beautiful.

She had gained weight her frumpy dresses couldn't hide, and she had gained something else too. Something more than weight, a cold and harrowing desperation of life slipping by towards its final cataclysm. She could almost see it, a long train moving slowly but irresistibly as she stood on the platform waiting for it to stop to let her on. She knew it wouldn't stop for her.

She knew she'd have to leap as the train passed, and she invested all her worry and all her anxiety on a leap she knew in her heart she'd never take. She was too old to jump; with her luck she'd twist an ankle, or snap it, or worse trip and fall, landing between the platform and the pitiless steel wheels, crushed and mangled, her eyes dying on the sight of shocked and curious onlookers.

She'd never leap, but she could keep a clean and orderly home. For her. And for Kristie.

Somewhere safe, and nice, and pleasant for the girl to come home to.

Even if the damned girl didn't have enough sense to use a coaster.

II The Night

She tried to stay up for Kristie, the old worry refusing to fade, but here again the habits of creeping middle-age held sway, overcoming Allison's maternal anxieties, and she fell asleep shortly after the late night news.

III That Saturday

The next day saw the usual turn of events, the same repetition of Saturdays since Kristie's return from State. The lake for Kristie and her friends, house cleaning and shopping for Allison. The mother didn't expect the daughter home until late in the night, but Kristie was lying on the couch, already in the old baggy sweats she wore for the night, pointing the remote apathetically at the television when Allison walked through the door, home from the mall, a stubborn holdover from the era they reigned as monarchs of consumption society.

"Back from the lake so soon? How did it go? How's Jenny? How's her mother's rhomboids? Are they still acting up?"

Rhomboids were nothing to sneeze at.

Kristie huffed mid-channel, shrugging her shoulders contemptuously.

"How the hell would I know, Mom?"

The sudden flare-up of her daughter's temper didn't surprise her, but she resented the open hostility in her own home.

"Don't talk to me that way."

The tone in her mother's voice told Kristie not to push it.

"I'm sorry, Mom. It's just that. Jenny."

The tone in her daughter's voice told Allison to nudge just a little.

"It's just that Jenny what, honey?" Her voice softened, showing the genuine concern that instantly arose in her. Not to say anything of the inquisitive greed for any kind of gossip. She set her two gift bags on the coffee table, making sure not to disturb the ring of salt. She smiled at seeing the coaster under the plastic tumbler filled with Kristie's soda. No doubt sugar-free.

Kristie bent her legs towards her to allow her mother room to sit on the couch, the she stretched her legs, plopping her feet on Allison's lap. Allison caressed one of Kristie's feet, squeezing her big toe playfully until she saw the little smile play upon her daughter's lips.

"Stop that," Kristie said.

Allison saw the tears and anger in her daughter's eyes.

"What did Jenny do?"

Allison's fingers stroked the bottom pads of Kristie's foot, just below her little toes.

Kristie just sat there, leaning against the cushioned arm of the sofa, lying on the side of her hip, staring at the nothingness of the television. The water pooling in her eye finally dripped a tear that trickle slowly down her cheek. When it reached the corner of her mouth, Kristie wiped her lips with her two fingers.

"It's Nathan," she sighed. "He asked Jenny to marry him."

"What? But they're so young, they're only nineteen, still teenagers. I hope she told him where he could stick his proposal?"

Kristie giggled.

"She said yes, Mom. And don't be stupid. Of course, they're going to wait."

Allison considered what her daughter told her.

"Well," she said after a moment. "It might not work out. He'll have time to change his mind. He'll have time to think about you again."

"Oh, Mom. I don't fucking care about Nathan. I don't care if Jenny marries him. I hope she gets fat and has twenty babies."

Allison frowned, a little confused.

"But."

"But he never asked me, Mom," Kristie whined, her frustration and self-doubt clear all at once to the mother. "Why didn't he ever ask me?"

Allison reached her arms out and pulled a resisting Kristie towards her.

"Come here, girl."

Allison cradled her daughter's head against her shoulders and brushed her hair with her palm, Kristie's soft hair flowing between the woman's spread fingers.

Allison felt Kristie body shuddering and heaving at her side, but the girl was laughing.

"Course, I would have told the asshole to fuck off, but still. He could have asked."

IV Kristie Gets An Idea

A few hours later saw Kristie lying on her old bed, thankful that her mother had left everything alone after she went off to State. Went off to State. The way they said, both Kristie and her mother, made it seem like she'd left for another country, but it only took a ninety-minute drive to get to the university. They didn't quite live in the boondocks, but the boondocks were pretty close by. A year ago she and Nathan were a pretty big item. A year ago, when Senior year still meant something, Nathan had been practically her world.

She would have said yes.

She would have changed her mind after the first week of college, but she would have said yes.

She didn't want kids. At least, she didn't want kids now or even soon, but she knew Jenny did. It was all she ever talked about last year and the year before last. It surprised Kristie Jenny hadn't ended up pregnant by now. But she was a good girl, Jenny was, and when Nathan asked her Kristie understood. She didn't have a choice. Not really. Not with what she wanted out of life.

So good for Jenny.

Nathan wasn't the worst of them.

Kristie yawned, bored. There was only so much going out to the lake a girl could do, and she wondered if she could make it here, the rest of the summer, stuck in the house with her mother.

Her mother seemed to get worse with each passing month Kristie stayed away, for Kristie stopped finding reasons to go home midway through her first semester. She had changed so much that Kristie almost didn't recognize her three weeks ago when she showed up with her bags, her clothes, and her laptop, all her stuff basically, asking if she could crash at home for the summer.

Allison, astonished, pleased, and worried all at the same time, quickly agreed.

"You don't even have to ask, honey. Of course you can come home. It'll be great to have you around."

Over the course of the following days, Kristie did notice a new gleam in her mother's pale eyes, but dark and heavy bags still hung below, and Kristie worried in her turn.

"Are you still not sleeping, Mom?" she had asked about two weeks ago.

"Oh," Allison had replied. "I only need a few hours."

And Kristie had to admit new life returned to her mother, she walked with a bounce now, and although Allison grumbled about how fat she'd become, Kristie couldn't see much sign of that. Many of her friends' parents, mothers and fathers both, looked awful, just awful, on their approach towards or overshooting of forty. Allison could have looked worse, far worse.

Course, she could have looked better.

She could stand to lose a few pounds around her hips, her face looked to flabby, too puffy - due to her lack of sleep, maybe.

She needs to get out, Kristie thought. She needs to go out. How will she ever meet anybody staying home all the time?

That's when Kristie had an idea.

V A Night Out

Kristie pointed at the brick storefront with a short line of women waiting to go in. A sign showing round moon with a sailing pirate ship protruded from above the door.

"I can't believe you talked me into this," Allison said. "I haven't gone dancing in ages."

The club occupied an old store with a brick façade in the town square, recently renovated to attract students venturing from campus life. Clubs, bars, restaurants, and shops of all kinds faced each other across a razed courthouse that had been converted into a small garden filled with saplings of fruit trees, shrubs, flower beds, and herb gardens.

Allison followed Kristie's directions to park in back. The dark red Caravan wasn't the sexiest car to drive to clubs, but Kristie's Pontiac needed new tires, and a loud noise recently started banging from engine. As Allison followed her daughter to the rear of the club, a new doubt caused a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She knew she shouldn't be doing this with her daughter. At nineteen, Kristie wasn't old enough to drink, to go out, and all the excuses of having a fake ID just raised new anxiety.

"I don't know," Allison said. "You really shouldn't be going into places like this, Kristie. You're too young."

"Be quiet, Mom. I told you. I've been here before. I know the bouncer. She always takes my ID."

"But you shouldn't drink."

"I drink all the time, Mom. Now are you coming, or are you going to ruin our night out?"

VI The Club

Very loud dance music throbbed downstairs, electronic, synth, techno. Allison wasn't so old she couldn't remember dancing to much the same kind of music in her own youth two decades ago. The more things stayed the same, though, the more they changed, and Allison breathed deeply, appreciative of the lack of cigarette smoke that had hung as a permanent cloud in every bar and club she had gone to back in her day.

The stairs leading to the basement club opened on a dance floor, beyond which stood the bar, running perpendicular to the floor. On the far left of the floor stood a raised dais for the DJ backed by a generic laser show. The dance floor was empty; the night was early. The lasers were off, but a pulsating dance music hummed over the club's sound system.

Off one side of the bar lay a small seating area with plush, low seats surrounding low tables in the middle of which a wide glowing lamp stood, shaped like blocks filled with shimmering colored light, some blue, some pale red, some green, some pink or yellow. The club hadn't filled to capacity yet, and the two women found a seating area near the back, farthest from the dance floor.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same, and Allison suddenly noticed the clouds of vape billowing from young women in tight, revealing outfits, halter tops or short sparkling dresses with plunging necklines. Ostensibly the bar frowned on vaping, but it also smiled on money, and as no law banned the former, management cheerfully accepted the latter.

Kristie came back with two cocktails in clear glass with tiny straws and a piece of indeterminate fruit floating at the top. She handed a drink to her mother and swayed her hips, dancing a moment before sitting down. She stared at Allison, who sat rigidly, looking around her in a kind of stupefaction. But she saw her mother's head bobbing to the music, and she felt everything was going to go all right for that night.

VII Cocktails and a Flashback to Getting Ready

The club quickly filled.

Allison had sipped her first cocktail slowly, but when she now lifted her glass to her lips, glossy with bright red lipstick at Kristie's insistence, she looked in surprise at the empty glass.

"Refill?" Kristie asked, seeing her mother's disappointment.

Allison hesitated. She saw the look in Kristie's eyes and nodded before Kristie could complain.

Kristie went to the bar to order two more drinks, turning around to keep an eye on her mother.

It hadn't been easy getting her out of the house, much less go dancing in a college town more than an hour away. Thirty minutes of nagging, prompting, encouraging, and continual pleading lead to the happy result: her mother dressing up to go out. Kristie had to hunt through Allison's closet herself, mistrusting her mother's prudery. It had taken her awhile, throwing out or tossing aside floral dresses with high necklines and wide collars, spurning the seemingly endless supply of dark and heavy shapeless bags she wore when she didn't wear pants suits. Had Kristie found burlap sacks hanging in her mother's closet, she wouldn't have been surprised.

Then she saw it, sparkling and shining in the darkness at the back of Allison's closet: a gold dress. When Kristie pulled the hanger off its rod, she left the closet to more closely inspect the garment, but she knew she'd found it. The gold lamé of the very short dress shimmered like molten gold in the foundries of lust. The neckline plunged in a V almost to the very edge of the hem, and a slit ran down both side of the dress, connected only by thin golden strings tied at intermittent points.

Allison had turned red when she saw the short dress and waved her hands at Kristie, begging to take it away.

"No, Mom. This is what you're going to wear. You're going to look so hot tonight. Now get undressed and put this on."

Allison had started to unbutton her blouse with a sinking heart.

She did not like the way this was going, but she didn't have the heart to say no to Kristie. They hadn't had a real evening together in years, and she wasn't going to let her sourpuss attitude spoil things.

Live a little, girl.

"But I'm too fat for that thing," Allison still insisted. "No way will my, my butt fit into that."

Kristie watched her mother undress until she stood in front of her only in her plain white bra and panties so big, they might as well have been boxers. As big as the panties were, they couldn't hide the bulging thatch of dark fur between her mother's thighs.

The daughter fled from the room.

"Be right back," she promised over her shoulder.

She came back with a pair of black satin panties, very cheeky, and handed them to her mother, who by now stood looking at herself in the mirror, her gold dress gleaming over her upper body, ending just past the bottom curve of her ass cheeks.

"You need to start shaving down there, Mom. Or get waxed."

Allison frowned and shook her head.

"I don't see why. Nobody's ever going to see me anyway."

"Not with that attitude. Now get rid of horrible underwear and put those on," she said. "And take off that ridiculous bra. We're going to let the ladies free tonight."

Again Allison put up a feeble resistance, but Kristie would not be gainsaid, and now Kristie stood at the bar of the club, admiring her handiwork: Allison's dark hair was piled over her head in a messy bun, her wide face sparkled with heavy makeup, smokey eyeshadow, and thick mascara. Large gold-colored hoops hung from her ears, bright red lipstick covered her full lips, and her neckline fell so low, her full breasts, boobs the size of small cantaloupes shaped like ripe pears, threatened to spill out at any sudden movement. The AC in the club was turned on high, and maybe that was the reason for her rock-hard nipples sticking through the thin fabric of her dress like small marbles.

Despite Allison's fear and Kristie's assurance, the woman wasn't fat, but her body's weight, running to corpulence around her hips, came from an earlier era, a quattrocento beauty come to dance in the techno-synth clubs of the 21s century.

Someone nudged Kristie's ribs.

"Oh my god, girl. Who's your little friend? It looks like I'm going to have real competition tonight, love."

VIII DeeDee at the Bar

Kristie spun around to see DeeDee looking up at her with that big smile. DeeDee's makeup glittered and sparkled. She wore long fake lashes, bright glittering eyeshadow spread from her eyes in narrow bands, Egyptian-like. Deep fuchsia lipstick covered her lips, which were a little thin, but pouty and very attractive. Kristie, who stood at 5'5", looked down at the shorter DeeDee, whose platinum hair swirled in a frizz before falling to touch her round, smooth bare shoulders.