The Boardwalk Dancer (one-shot short story)

[zapenstap]

Hello ^_^ This is a short story that I have been working on recently and I would adore anyone who has some constructive criticism to offer. I would particularly like feedback on the ending because I'm having some trouble with the resolution. If you read, please let me know what you think! I would really appreciate it!




The Boardwalk Dancer

By Zapenstap



It was on a pleasant, breezy night that he met the dancer.

He was working as a bus boy at a restaurant along the boardwalk at the time. It was a tiny place tucked between two finer buildings along the broad street, hidden and ignored except by those who had heard of its reputation from friends, or who were desperate and had no other place to go. The lurid paint on the outer wall of the restaurant, the sole one facing the street, was chipping, giving the molted exterior a diseased look, but the inside was clean and well kept and the food was good. It was furnished simply, three-legged stools and straight-backed wooden chairs crowded around square tables with uneven legs, tables that wobbled when too many people gathered around them for a meal due to elbows and purses and plates upsetting the equilibrium, yet always managing to find a balance that would support everyone who came in for a quick meal and a laugh.

The restaurant was nearly empty after eleven, only a few self-named friends of the cook and crew hanging hopefully around the bar while Belduine wiped clean the last of the tables and leaned through the kitchen door to toss the rag in a steaming bucket of hot soapy water in the back. A woman in a red dress at the end of the bar smiled at him indulgently, and he flashed her a grin before checking the clock. He was off.

?Belduine!? the boss hollered from the back, ?Don?t leave that rag on any of the tables!?

?I didn?t!? he called back.

He headed for the door with his wages from the last two weeks stuffed in his back pocket, paid in cash at his request. Mentally, he divvied up his earnings into the places he needed to spend them, and came up a bit short of what he needed. Well, it was often like that. He would figure it out; someone would cut him a break.

?Have I seen you here before??

It was the woman in the red dress who spoke, still watching him from her padded stool at the end of the bar, her smile frozen on her face and her eyes gleaming like glass. He eyed her nervously. She was beautiful, with rouged cheeks, carefully curled hair and heels that made her legs seem to go on forever, but she was ten years older than he at least. A quick glance discovered that there was no wedding band on her left hand, but from his experience, that didn?t necessarily mean anything.

?Um, yeah, I?ve been working most nights,? Belduine replied. He found it difficult to lie to women who looked at him like that, and wondered often enough if that was his problem.

?I?m Clarice,? she said, extending her hand to him graciously. The golden bracelet on her wrist slid down to her forearm as he took her fingers and raised them to his lips to kiss the back of her hand. She seemed mildly surprised at the gesture, but he didn?t know what else to do with a woman like that. This close, even seated, he could see that she was taller than he as well as older, and the poise with which she sat so properly on her stool, as well as the purposeful, yet delicate way she extended her hand, told him that this was a rich, sophisticated woman, rich by wealth and rich by blood. He wondered for the hundredth time what brought women like her to a place like this and what they expected to get out of it.

?Belduine,? he said.

?That?s a funny name,? she told him, and laughed as if she had made a joke, a sound like glass clinking. When he didn?t laugh with her, merely waiting expectantly, she settled her chin on her hand and gazed at him demurely, half out of the corner of her eye. ?I couldn?t help watching you tonight,? she continued. ?You?re popular with the young girls. How old are you??

?Eighteen,? he lied, and wasn?t sure what made him do it. By the indulgent smile she gave him, she seemed to know it too, and preferred it that way. He had known others that didn?t.

?I like popular young men,? she said. ?I throw a lot of parties and they liven up the atmosphere. You should come by my home sometime,? she said, as if offering candy to a toddler. ?I have a pool.?

?Yeah, sure, maybe,? he replied, but only because he didn?t know how to say no. He recognized that predatory look in her eye, the suggestive but not quite aggressive gleam that offered something unclear, but vaguely promising. He grinned because he didn?t know what else to do and again lifted her fingers to kiss the back of her hand. ?Maybe sometime, beautiful,? he said, ?but not tonight. I have to get home.? He glanced at the clock, directing her attention that way before he released her fingers and bolted toward the doors. ?Nice meeting you!?

He slipped out before she had time to look offended. When he emerged onto the wide, open, and empty street, he stopped moving just long enough to take a breath and shake himself.

Get off and get out; that was the way he did things. Maybe that was why people liked him, especially girls, but considering the older woman?s words too seriously would lead to memories he would rather ignore: that unpleasant incident he had buried in the past and strove to forget, and the times of desperation and loneliness since when he had said yes instead of maybe, when he was starved for sustenance and affection, when he would have pleased anyone in any way to get what he needed to survive.

Without looking back, he strode straight across the boardwalk and hurried along the outer edge until he came to the stairs that lead down to the beach. He took them two or three at a time, landing softly on the sand below and ducking immediately under the boardwalk and into the shelter of the darkness.

It was a pleasant night for the time of year; warmer than usual, warm enough for a young couple strolling the beach to wear short sleeves and sandals as they flirted and chased each other into the range of the waves.

From beneath the boardwalk, Belduine watched them with muted jealousy. He didn?t own any sandals. He almost always wore the same old pair of boots, boots that were once black but were so scuffed and weathered by the places he had traveled that they had turned a charcoal gray. He liked them because they had character. He had worn the tread to stubs crossing concrete, pavement, cobblestone, dirt, and mud. He had worn them from city to city and town to town, and even across country where only peak-roofed farmhouses broke uniform landscapes with endless flat horizons. His boots were the only shoes he had, and most everything else he owned could fit into a large duffle bag. He liked it that way. It was easier to move, and easier to keep going.

In those same boots, he now walked north under the boardwalk with his hands stuffed in his pockets. Surrounded by thick pillars of wood and the boardwalk twenty feet above his head, it felt a bit like walking through a dark forest. He walked over sand, rocks and shells alike, somehow never seeming to stumble, and as his pupils grew larger and became accustomed to the shadows, he began to make out more details in the darkness. The sand beneath the planks was littered with trash, cigarette butts and beer cans, usually from disreputable kids who congregated here in the early evenings and hung around until it became too dark to see one another?s faces, but also from decent people who threw out what they did not want to where they hoped no one would look for it.

He brooded as he walked, staring at his shoes as he kicked and shuffled his way through the littered sand. It wasn?t until he turned his sight to the beach beyond for a bit of something beautiful that he happened to notice the dancer.

At first all he saw was a gleam by the sea, a flash of white reflecting the light of the moon where a patch of cloud cover overhead thinned and broke apart over the beach. Then he saw that the flash of white was actually the moving form of a young girl. She was a tiny thing, perhaps an inch or two past five feet, but mostly grown as far as he could judge by the shape of her hips and breasts and legs. Her dark brown hair was rolled up in an exotic bun behind her head, held in place by lace and pins and bows. She was dressed head to toe in white, even her legs and feet sheathed in white tights, the bodice of her dress hugging her upper body like a second skin. Two layers of thin silk made up the skirt of her dress, and these layers rippled and flashed above her knees as she turned this way and that, dipping close to the sand, straightening, rushing across the beach and dipping again so that she seemed to bob and weave through the air like a kite in the breeze. It was this frenzied, continuous movement that caught and held his eye in fascination.

Then he noticed that she wasn?t wearing any shoes.

Feeling awkwardly heroic, he stepped out from under the boardwalk and ran awkwardly across the sand, though the unevenness of the landscape threatened a twisted ankle or a nasty fall if he failed to measure his paces. The beach was cooler than the boardwalk above. With nothing to halt the currents of the air, wind swept undaunted over the beach, blowing the sand into the water and cutting straight through the back of his shirt, nipping at his skin and tugging at his hair. He shivered as he slowed, approaching the girl with tousled dark hair and gooseflesh. The girl?s mad twirling stopped as she noticed him, her cheeks flushed pink from her exertions, and he smiled.

?Hi, I?m Belduine,? he said in the honest, ready-to-please tones that were as a part of him as the boots on his feet. ?Can I help you with anything??

She blinked thoughtfully and he took the opportunity to peer curiously at her face. Her features were as tiny and exquisitely precise as the rest of her, all except for her eyes, which were large and dark and almond-shaped, angled in such a way as to make her look strangely exotic. A small window of blue-black sky framed her head where the clouds had partially parted, and she stood stock-still under it, a few stars winking down at her from above. After a few moments of silence, he looked down to where water had moistened the bottoms of her tights and sand stuck to the fabric enclosing her feet. When he looked up again, he found her staring at him with what he presumed to be every emotion inside her heart etched on her face for the whole world to see and exploit.

?Some boys came by and took my dancing shoes,? she said. ?I think they hid them. I took them off because I wanted to explore and you?re not supposed to wear them outside. The boys said they wanted to see them, and when I let them, they ran off.? She looked at him anxiously, shadows passing over her face as the clouds swallowed up the light of the moon. ?I thought they liked me.?

?You?re a dancer?? he asked her. He had a habit of stating the obvious.

?Yes. Well, I mean to be. They say I am too short for the stage, but I can dance. I?m very good. They all say I am a beautiful dancer. Don?t you think beautiful dancers should dance even if they are short??

He grinned at her. ?I?m sure they should, but I?d have to see you dance first,? he replied. ?Do you want me to help you find your dancing shoes??

?Yes, thank you,? she said, just like that, as if the last boy to come by hadn?t hurt her at all.

Belduine helped the dancer look around the beach where she said the boys had gone; listening to her shrills of glee and cries of despair every time something white turned out to be a shell instead of a shoe, darting to and fro like an undulating flame as she checked every one. He too searched without direction, walking a little one way and then changing his mind to look in another. Together they scoured the shore and managed to overturn every rock, but unless the shoes were buried under the sand, they were nowhere to be found. At length, fearing to see her give up and have to walk home in her wet, sandy tights, he suggested they look along the boardwalk. As they headed up the stairs, they began to talk, she with merry abandon and he with his usual filtering.

?I?ve been dancing ever since I was a little girl,? she told him, sometimes skipping ahead and sometimes bouncing along beside him. ?I?ve always been very easy to teach because I listen and learn very fast. When I was growing up, I danced a few famous parts and I did them so well I was all anyone could talk about for quite some time. I put emotion in my dancing, you see, because I?m very emotional?though maybe you haven?t noticed?and I?m also well disciplined, and they say that?s a really beautiful thing on a stage. It feels beautiful to do it.? She sighed. ?But then I stopped growing.?

?Can?t you play the parts of children?? Belduine asked her, ?Or maybe a fairy??

?Yes, I suppose I could if it?s that kind of ballet, but even then they still prefer tall fairies, I guess because that?s they way it?s always been done. What about you, what do you do??

?Oh, I travel. I?m a traveler.?

She looked at him askance, and it was the most peculiar thing to be eyed that way by a tiny girl in a white, skirted leotard and dirty tights with no shoes. The expression of disapproval looked all wrong on her innocent, child-like face. ?Aren?t you a bit young to be traveling? What about your folks??

?I left when I was thirteen.?

She stared at him with surprise, but after a moment the straight and gently sloping contours of her delicate face seemed to crack, her eyebrows and the corners of her lips turning down and little ripples appearing on her forehead as she stared at her feet in consternation. ?Do you ever miss home??

?No,? he replied. ?It?s not home. It?s just a place,? and after a silent, thoughtful moment, she didn?t ask anymore questions.

Belduine wasn?t sure if anyone had ever reported him missing. He preferred it that way. His father had been only too pleased to see him go, and he was sure his father?s wife would prefer to take her secrets to the grave. He didn?t think about the consequences of those secrets much; only every now and then when he woke up some place unfamiliar, unsure how he had gotten there and with perfume on his skin. One thing always led to another: a glance led to a smile and a smile led to a drink, and all at once he would feel lonely and wasn?t sure how to say no. It was an improvement anyway. Out on his own he learned to work, and steal, and fight, and sell anything and everything that would get him a meal or a place to stay. He was quick to make friends and earn favors and was never embarrassed about charity. He cultivated a philosophy of no regrets.

He didn?t feel the need to explain that he moved around because he had no place to go. Sometimes he slept under bushes, sometimes in the houses of generous folk, but never stayed where he was a burden for more than a day and never in any one place for more than a few months at a time. When he stayed somewhere for awhile, he lived in the lowest affordable housing and worked wherever he could get hired. He didn?t have any reason to keep moving; he just never found a place where he wanted to settle, and it was easier to call himself a traveler than explain that he didn?t have a home.

The boardwalk seemed wider when it was empty except for the two of them, him and the dancer. There might be workers still collecting their thoughts before heading home, and perhaps a couple strolling arm in arm under the streetlights as they gazed out at the beach and the dark, starless sky above the ocean, but if so, Belduine and the dancing girl didn?t see them. As far as he was concerned, they were alone, and he was surprised to find it comfortable and pleasant.

?I think you are interesting,? the girl said abruptly, and Belduine nearly lost his footing at the sober, soulful quality of her voice. She raised her eyes to the sky and smiled. ?I also think you are nice,? she added. ?Perhaps too nice. I think it makes you easy to exploit. It happens, I know. Even so, I would like to thank you for your kindness, for helping find me my shoes.?
?You?re welcome,? he said, mystified anew. ?I think you are nice too.?

It sounded rather inadequate, but she smiled, and the feral fire of her dark, angular eyes set his heart racing. He began reevaluating her figure, noticing the straight lines of her body as she walked, the slightly haughty tilt to her chin, the sweet, supple curves of her breasts and hips and legs. Everything about her was small, but gorgeous, and he thought he might die to see her dance. She might be small, but the energy packed in her little body would fill the stage and light up every inch of the space allotted to her. He was convinced that even the hearts of the rich and powerful would be set aflame by her tiny, precisely directed movements.

?Oh look!? she said excitedly, and he was struck by a sudden pang of dread.

He looked and saw with apprehension what looked like a pair of dancing shoes lying tumbled and forgotten on the lip of the circular fountain that marked the end of the boardwalk. At this time of night the fountain did not spout water into the air, but the fountain lights were on. They shone out of little glass portals set at intervals along the rim of the stone basin, and the girl?s dancing shoes lay half on one of these portals, the light streaming through the glass setting aglow the ribbons that trailed down to the water, for they were the kind of dancing shoes that had the wide, silk ribbons that wrapped around the ankle.

Belduine knew that something strange and wonderful was happening even before he saw the shoes, something that would change his life.

?Let me dance for you!? the girl by his side said eagerly.

With a delighted laugh, she moved past him, like a creature made of wind or water or something equally swift and translucent, something with a power both beautiful and invisible. Before he could call out to stop her or slow her down, she lifted her shoes away from the fountain rim and set them on the ground by her feet. When she stepped into them, it was as if all that Belduine believed to be real was suddenly made dubious by a magic he had never known existed.

The ribbon on the shoes rose from the ground without the girl having to touch them. They climbed up her legs and wound about her ankles, tying themselves tight as she raised herself onto the tips of her toes in one liquid motion. With her feet nestled inside those shoes, she was a creature transformed. Without speaking, she danced, her leg rising behind her body in a perfect arabesque, her back bending to meet the straight line of her leg and her arms rising effortlessly and beautifully to complete the pose. She danced and the sky opened up above her. The clouds broke apart and raced to the ends of the earth as if time had sped up in a moment, leaving a midnight-blue backdrop smattered with the light of winking stars. Under this canopy, the dancer spun in place, her toes kissing the earth as she turned, and when she stopped her eyes caught his and she smiled, arms fluttering, leg extending, hand reaching out to take his.

And then she vanished.

?Hey!? he said, and his voice rang out angrily in the air like a struck iron bell. His whole body shook from shock, his heart trembling inside his chest where it had so recently begun to burn. He stared at the spot where the dancer had disappeared with clenched fists, waiting for her lamenting response, but only the wind answered his cry. It stung his eyes, and he kicked the ground in a vain expulsion of fury, shaking and quivering from the effort. When the swiftest of the pain had passed, he sat on the rim of the fountain in the surrounding silence and looked down at the waters that did not move.

In recounting the story to himself, he wasn?t entirely sure if what he had seen was real or imagined, but it didn?t make any difference. After that night, he went through his days in a constant state of bewilderment, and nothing he saw or heard could compare to the dancing girl. At first, he tried to forget her. He rationalized that somewhere in the back of his mind he knew it was inevitable that she would disappear, that maybe he had even been expecting it, and that?s why he didn?t stop her when she reached for the shoes, or grab the shoes and tossed them away, perhaps as the other boys had done.

Then he changed his mind. He could not stop thinking about how beautifully and freely she danced, owning his whole world for a few brief moments, rendering him motionless and voiceless with nothing but movement to a silent melody. He knew himself to be a boy who wanted nothing more in the world than something wondrous to chase, and someone to call home.

He resolved then that he would find her, however long it would take and whatever the cost. And when he found her he wouldn?t stop her from getting her shoes, and he wouldn?t try to take them from her. Instead he would learn how to dance.

[krzkid]

yay!!! first comment
it was awesome...such powerful writing... the ending has a lingering feel to it, sweet and nice ... although no sadness...did you intend for sadness???? who's the woman??? was she just there???? maybe im too slow

overall...it was excellent!!!!!especially the last sentence!!!!

[zapenstap]

thank you very much! I just edited the piece and added some emotional resolution to the climax. thank you so much for your comments!

[teardropdangel]

I really like his determination and the way one encounter changed his life. He would learn to dance, now would he have done so if he hadn't met her? Was that the moral of this piece?

He knew himself to be a boy who wanted nothing more in the world than something wondrous to chase, and someone to call home.

Or was it depicting his growth? :-?

[Eienvine]

I really liked that! You leave a lot of things for people to think about on their own; everything's not laid bare and shoved into your face. I really like that in writing, when the author trusts the audience to be smart. It was an interesting story and had a very good voice and tone. Great job.