Page 25 of Leveling

Chapter 17

The sun was goneThe last light of day faded as pink hues and lilac glimmers. The night sky slowly darkened as ultramarine, reaching, spreading.

Beckett stood, stretched, and picked up their plates to carry to the kitchen counter. Luna followed. Beckett filled a dishpan with suds and warm water and dropped the dishes in. Luna said, “Let me wash, I love bubbles!”

“Only because you love the bubbles. It is your birthday after all. I’ll dry.”

Beckett and Luna did the chore side by side. Her arm touching his. His hand brushing along her fingertips. Chatting about nothing and everything while they worked.

Finally, Beckett dropped his dishtowel to the counter and deposited the last dish into a box labeled ‘mess’.

Luna dumped the dirty dishwater over the side of the Outpost.

It was fully night now. The corner lights were on, spiraling and turning, signaling that the Outpost existed, jutting up out of the sea, still, and shouldn’t be crashed into by boat or paddler.

Please don’t. Don’t.

Luna was watching the lights spin and frolic in apparent opposition to their intent: caution, warning, command, when Beckett interrupted, “Do you like to dance, Anna?”

“Who, me? Why, you do?”

“Sure, on the mainland we do all the time, and I was thinking you and I ought to, especially under an epic sky like this.”

The sky, while they washed up after their meal, had filled with stars, creating a canopy that out-sparkled the blaring signal lights. He leaned to a stack of equipment in the corner, pushed buttons, and a song began. “Have you heard this?” The sound of acoustic guitar flowed from the speakers.

Luna shook her head.

“This is Blaise Portnoy. He’s popular right now. I saw him live once.” He held out a hand, with such intent in his eyes, that Luna’s heart skipped, then sped up.

“Um, I don’t know how.”

Without dropping his gaze, or his hand, he asked, “Can I teach you?”

Luna had passed the point of being able to talk. She nodded and somehow, though disconnected from the thought processes that usually moved her body parts, got her hand to his.

He swooped his other arm to her waist and pulled her in…close.

She giggled.

With his cheek pressed to her hair and her body hugged, he walked her backwards, out of the kitchen to the middle of the rooftop.

The sky was epic. Beautiful. Stars flung from one horizon to another. Or, because it was difficult to see the horizon, and with the stars reflected on the sea, it was like the whole up and down and all around was encrusted with stars. Music lilted.

Beckett said, close to her ear, “This dance is called the two-step-rock. Just rock back and forth like this.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “One and a two, one and a two. Then you roll out on my arm like this,” he flung her out and away. “Look in my eyes—good—and then one and a two, one and a two. Now wind back to me.”

Luna rolled in, pulling up, wrapped in his arms, her back to his front. A breath of warm air tickled her ear as he said, “One and a two, one and a two.” He switched hands and then rolled her out and away on his other arm. “And one and a two, one and a two,” and then she returned to rock in his arms. “One and a two, one and a two,” he whispered close to her ear, “it goes like this, indefinitely,” causing Luna to feel dizzy in a way that had nothing to do with the twirling.

The song ended and silence filled the Outpost. Beckett lingered, his mouth at the edge of her dark hair, just above her ear, her hands in his, both of them rocking back and forth to the echo of a song that no longer played.

His voice resonating, he asked, “What did you think?”

Without letting go of his hands, Luna raised their arms turning in place to face him, front to front, a wide, electrified, quarter-inch apart. A quarter-inch that caused him suffering, so he shifted forward, closing it by an eighth. Another song began, a slower song.

She spread her arms out slow and down, bringing his with them, mirrored, less speaking, more breathing the words, “I like. Am I doing it right?”

Beckett pulled her close, rocking her in a slow uncomplicated circle. “Yes.”

Luna wrapped her arms around the back of his neck, pulling him in.

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