Shoot the Moon

Chapter Thirty - Full Dance Card

They turned me out onto the street with my first two fingers splinted and lashed together. Only those two were broken. The others were just badly mashed, so all in all I was lucky. Junior hadn't completely recovered from his self-inflicted wound and hadn't gotten much into the kick. But my left hand was so swollen I felt like I wearing a catcher's mitt. The upside was that I was the happy ingestee of an oxycontin tablet. I filled my prescription, popped a couple of Vicodin and by the time I reached 77 CPW I felt serene and fully capable of carrying off an evening of post-modern dance. I had to do it to keep the truth from Echo. I didn't want her thinking we were on the verge of being welded into Mickey's oil drum and dumped at sea. Even though we were close.

I had just time enough to change into my tux and hurtle back downtown to the Joyce Theater.

Of course, I was seated next to Benning Dalton; Mrs. Dalton, as usual, was locked away in Connecticut. Sticking my injured hand in my pocket, I chatted him up for all I was worth.

Thanks to Vicodin, I enjoyed the recital more than any experience I can remember. The music seemed to penetrate my body through every pore, the images of the dance seemed to communicate directly with the critical faculties of my mind and it all made a profound kind of sense.

The first piece was Electronika Galactika. The dancers were encased in shapeless stretchy bags of many colors in which they could punch and kick and generally transform interestingly. They were evidently meant to be radio waves hurtling outward through the universe. The music was of course electronic onto which Echo had effectively dubbed bits and pieces of television and radio history such as Hitler, FDR, JFK, Martin Luther King, along with such trivia as game shows and sitcoms. Echo finally appeared in a white form-fitting leotard and suspended in air by one foot. She writhed athletically in various postures while hanging above the other dancers who struck various attitudes of longing and goddess worship. Finally, she ended up standing on the floor while the blobs of modern culture converge, perform a kind of birth ritual in which they struggle painfully out of their shapeless bags, appear in form-fitting leotards of their own (magnificent display of physical beauty) and then, in a pulsing, throbbing cluster, are reabsorbed by the center of all things: my wife. Whew.

It sounds silly the way I'm describing it, but it was exciting and even tragic at the end and the crowd shouted their approval. The next two dances were short comic pieces that featured Echo in smaller ensemble parts. The lights went down to vigorous applause and we adjourned for an intermission.

After the show, Echo took Benning and I to a nice little French bistro up the street from the Joyce. It was here that Echo first became aware that something was up: I had a coke, afraid that the combination of Vicodin and liquor would render me incoherent, or worse, explode my liver. The effects of the drug, however, were beginning to diminish.

Benning had been studying me for some minutes and finally asked, "Are you all right, Jack?"

"Think I might be coming down with flu."

Benning insisted that Echo get me home and into bed. Though my dearest wish was precisely that, I protested that I was fine.

So Benning proceeded to grill me about my activities and my availability to become his indentured servant.

"What exactly are you up to these days, Jack?"

I answered the way my mother used to when she wanted to duck a question about the whereabouts of my father: "That's what the police want to know."

Benning was frozen for a moment, not knowing exactly how I meant that: was I being literal?

Echo had to smile at the look of consternation on his face. Then she said, "Jack can't talk about his business, Daddy. He's a pirate."