TERPSICHORE'S FIRE
11. "I LOVE NIKKI VINCE."
Emergency - paging Doctor Beat - Emergency
Doctor
I've got this feeling
Deep inside of me
Deep inside of me
I just can't control my feet
When I hear the beat
When I hear the beat
Hey, doctor
Could you give me something
To ease the pain
To ease the pain
'Cause if you don't help me soon
I'm gonna lose my brain
Gonna go insane
I just don't know
Don't know
How I'm gonna deal with you.....
Miami Sound Machine
The middle of November and along came Nikki's eighteenth birthday. The legal "age of majority" and the voting age. The thing is, she didn't tell me until it was several days passed, so I never got the chance to buy a card or a present or anything. She didn't bother having a big party, a special cake or a big night out with the girls to celebrate or anything like that. I guess that for some people a number to your age and a date on a calendar doesn't really mean very much. I didn't have anything grand on my eighteenth either, but I did have a grand party with a disco and a DJ in a hired hall on my twenty-first.
On another Saturday evening we planned to go out dancing at another of the big Eighteen Plus area group dances again. I am afraid that my memories about this one are somewhat vague, I don't remember which group was hosting it or exactly where the venue was located. All that I can remember was that it was probably the furthest one we had ever travelled to and that it was somewhere on the edge of London, probably in an outer suburb. I do remember that it was in a very unusual shaped building and that it was very crowded. As frequently happened on these occasions, I arranged to come round deliberately early so that Nikki and I would have plenty of time to chat, to kiss and cuddle, and of course to do a bit of warm up practice dancing in the study room beforehand. Turning on the power button on the stereo system, she lifted the top lid ready to receive a large disk of black vinyl. After she had very carefully placed the needle on the arm at the start of the record I asked her to hand me the sleeve so that I could see what she was putting on and read the details about it. It was a large LP sized sleeve, but not for a 33rpm album, but for a 45rpm twelve inch dance single. I smiled a little to myself when I saw what it was; Dr. Beat by Miami Sound Machine. So, she had finally managed to retrieve it in the end I thought. But there was something else that immediately grabbed my attention. Starting in the top left hand corner and running along the open edge, somebody had written the words; "I love Nikki Vince" with a blue biro. I was curious as to whether it had been scrawled on there by some past boyfriend or by a friend of her brother's. When I asked her about this she just shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly saying that she had absolutely no idea who might have scribbled it on there. I thought fair enough, and with that the mystery admirer remains unknown to me to this day.
"Come on!" She said, pulling me up out of my chair as the record began.
"Dr. Beat has started and I want to dance to this." I obeyed and springing to my feet we did some of our usual warm up steps. Because of the style of this record, with its' pounding beat, she tried out some new sequences of dance routines. First she stomped her feet on one spot in time with the beat, followed by doing a quick spin. She finished off by suddenly running towards me to do the jump and be lifted high up into the air again. A few minutes later she repeated the whole routine. After a few more records we both began to tire a little, so she took that as her cue to make me a cup of tea to drink while she went upstairs into her bedroom to get ready for going out. I waited patiently. When she came trotting merrily back down the stairs and into the kitchen again she was wearing her little black dress, the one with the beads sewn all over it, and carrying her matching shoulder bag. In her hair she wore a large shiny black toothed hair stay with a dainty little black bow fixed to the top of it to complete her all black ensemble. As always, we slipped out through the back door, around the side of the house and strode excitedly up the shared driveway towards my awaiting car parked out in the street. As we neared the garden gate two strangers came in through it and approached us. Passing by us and going in the opposite direction, they looked at us suspiciously, before heading straight for the front door. Wearing baseball caps and lots of chunky jewellery, they were two teenage black boys, aged about seventeen or eighteen I'd say. I became worried and wondered if they were coming round to see her, and if so, why? So I turned to her and asked about it.
