Let Me Dance

By Simon Leigh

A very funny account of a couple struggling to make a huge life change. Eddie Butts, a no-longer-young Australian teacher, is desperate to dance. Her handsome husband Stephen is only semi-desperate to hold a job and keep his hands off the eager ladies. She falls in love with the powerful dancing of Toronto’s Angelo, and leaves New Brunswick to work with him in Canada Dance Company. But nobody cares, and no money is coming in. Her preoccupied husband Stephen, a fired Professor from F.U. notices that she’s left him, follows and tries to make a life and a living with her in Toronto. After years of often hilarious struggles, they succeed in keeping the marriage, and Eddie’s dream, alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon Leigh
• Release date: May 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370830930

Simon Leigh

Simon Leigh is a Toronto writer from Australia, now retired from teaching English at Seneca College. Let Me Dance is his “hilarious” new novel, a sequel to his comic novel Wild Women (UKA Press, 2007), which was praised by Paul Quarrington and PODGIRL (USA): “Leigh is a master of voice and this novel should be required reading in creative writing classes.” He received a Toronto Arts Council grant to write Peacock Variations. Short Strokes (2008) is his third poetry book, after The Bleeding Clock and Dying Flowers (both Fiddlehead Poetry Books). His poems have been published in four countries, in journals including The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review, Parchment, The Review of Contemporary Poetry, Rhyme and Reason: Modern Formal Poetry, Descant, and two anthologies. Poetry readings include Parliament Library, Poetry at the Beach, The Junction Arts Festival and Seneca College. Short stories have appeared in Grain, in UKAuthors 2008 anthology and elsewhere. He is now working on an Apocalypse Lite novel called TERMS OF REFERENCE, set two kilometers below ground, coming soon. He is happily married, and hobbies include tennis, bird watching, ski racing and playing valve trombone in jazz and swing bands.

Book preview

Chapter One 1980

Gone wife

Keep it down, mate, I’m trying to read. But the big Himalayan on Stephen Butt’s lap purred determinedly on as he speed-read from the music stand in front of him. Ruby-throated hummingbirds buzzed the flower basket hanging over his head like thirsty angels, ignored. The scope of his looming PhD Comprehensive Exam was All literature in English till 1960 which sounded overly comprehensive; was Herr Doctor Snidely having them on? Stephen had thoughtlessly read everything since 1960, so as summer brightened to the fall he’d settled into the plastic chair on the almost-finished back deck of his and Eddie’s little stone house, with a couple of books: The complete Oxford Guide to English Literature, Volumes 1 and 2, used. He’d opened the first skinny page and begun. This should do it. Up to Hawthorne already.

Turning a page he glanced up at the hummingbirds sipping nectar. Couldn’t remember having had lunch and now surely it’s dinnertime. Unusually quiet.

Eddie?

He went inside with the cat, and the secondary cat, black and determined, took his seat. No sign of his wife or dinner. Behind him a crash and a squawk from the cat who had once again missed the hummingbirds and brought down the music stand. Ah! A note on the fridge. Dinner in the oven?

Dear Stephen I have left you to go to Toronto to study modern dance under Angelo at CDT.

Unsigned; she must have been in a hurry. Her signature, like the girl herself, was always bold and artistic.

He stood frozen. Angelo? Oh Angelo, that big fag we saw dancing in Halifax. He was good, great, like a full-sized Gene Kelly, and Eddie had fallen madly for his powerful dance style. She’d studied under him in Toronto last summer, but only during her vacation from teaching High School biology. She’d never left a note before. This sounded permanent. He screwed up the note and tossed it, to the delight of both cats who played floor hockey with it round the house.

Shut up boys, I’m trying to think, he ordered the cats. But to stop himself thinking he opened a can of their fishy favourite. When the air had cleared, Stephen dined on baked beans with a side order of canned artichoke hearts.

Then he jogged, muttering and bean-burping, down through the Fodderton University campus to the wide St John river and sprinted back up. After a shower, still muttering his best Australian obscenities towards Angelo, Eddie and his life in general, he wiped off the bathroom mirror and stared into it. People had told him he was extraordinarily handsome, but he could never see it. He fell onto the marriage bed.

Fucking Angelo; he couldn’t be a closet heterosexual could he? he demanded of his cats, who, being cats, knew but would not say. With Cat A on his feet and Cat B keeping an eye out for intruders he lay there and listened to his throbbing heart. Nobody locked their doors in Fodderton, and Stephen had made a small sign:

ATTENTION! CHAT EN GARDE

This referred to the third little white cat called Little, who had learned to work door handles and slept outside.

Early next morning he rose from a haunted night, javelin-threw the music stand into the garden, shot-putted The complete Oxford Guide to English Literature, Volume 2 after it but then got back to work.

He was stuck between unknowns. With two shrinking weeks to the exam, he read on as the hummingbirds haloed his head, and suddenly the big day dawned. Stephen, his head buzzing with English Literature, entered the smoky seminar room with the other four examinees (one had actually passed the first time and was gone from sight and mind).

Begin writing now. And they did. Stephen was on his third ballpoint when Cease all writing now chimed like a toll bell.

A stressful week later the Departmental Chair called him in. Doctor Snidely, the only faculty member who sported a long black gown, was now in his element, bearing the information that Stephen so desperately wanted: Pass or Fail. Nor was he going to hand it over lightly.

For many years . . . he began, his rheumy eyes half-closing. A brief history of the University and the English Department’s humble beginnings led into his personal disappointment with the performance of the students of today, and then he began to recount his own student days. One of the nuggets of wisdom Stephen had taught his students was Tell good news fast, tell bad news s.l.o.w.ly but Doctor Snidely had not attended. He now launched into an aside but Stephen had had enough.

Doctor Snidely, did I pass or did I fail?

Oh, you passed, Butts, but—

Thank you. Now I’ll be moving to Toronto to join my wife and work on my Doctoral Dissertation there.

Will I? he wondered. Where did this come from?

U of T has a good library I believe. At least as good as FU.

Oh, one assumed you would be working here—

No, Toronto. My post-grad fellowship will be forwarded there?

Well, one supposes so, but there is the question of gratitude. And just because for some years you were a Professor here before becoming a student with us, do not expect to receive any special treatment or consideration—

Thank you. And he was gone and jogging home.

To celebrate, Stephen bought a fine bottle of Australian champagne, and that evening as he popped it on the back porch a head rose from next door and his neighbour joined him.

Wife still away? said Billy. Stephen nodded, pouring a second water glass of bubbly.

When the cat is away the mice will play, eh? (Be nice, be nice. Billy has a plane.)

So who’s that one with the big, ah— The cupped hands pulsing in front of his nipples completed the sentence.

That’s Julie, wants to be a concert pianist. I’ve been turning her onto jazz. Julie was a student, but not one of his, mathematics, so that was all right. He’d met her on the FU Students’ Union trip to Europe. On the steam train to Russia. They’d slept together on the grimy carriage floor, and at the Hotel Moscow he had boldly invited her into his room for Vodka (a thing that he had never done before), she came with her pillow, and they toured Moscow and St Petersburg together. They were often the only two students on the organised tour bus, which left early, with a guide hugely relieved that she would not lose her job that day. Improbably, Julie spoke a little Russian. It was a wonderful holiday but it ended. Met at the airport he proposed to Eddie, doing the right thing for once in his life. Marriage wasn’t too bad, though she’d cut off her beautiful long auburn hair and rather lost interest in dieting and sex. They were sharing a life together and he couldn’t imagine living without her. Divorce, like suicide, was not something he would ever think about. Divorce was for Americans.

I heard you two the other night, said Billy.

"That was me on trumpet, her on my little Casio piano. Jordu. The middle eight’s impossible to solo on but Julie nailed it. Maybe she’ll feed the cats while I’m gone. I’ll ask her tonight."

Gone?

Toronto, to be with Eddie. Listen Billy, when’s your next trip? Got room for me? Billy looked like a prosperous hog farmer but he cleaned up nicely and was a highly skilled pilot, always in uniform and cap, and teetotal for the previous twenty-four hours. He flew the twin-engined government plane that regularly took the New Brunswick premier to Toronto, to shop or whatever.

Fridays 0800. Don’t be late. Stephen topped up Billy’s glass and foam spilled over.

But Julie could not be found and Friday’s flight came and went. Every day she practiced for four, sometimes five hours on the Memorial Hall Steinway. If he disobeyed her standing orders and came in, she could, without looking up, switch on impulse from Delius to ferocious Boogie, and she made love the same way. But that week the piano was silent and locked.

Now what?

Chapter Two

The wise guy loses the job

Stephen’s recent career changes would take some explaining, especially to himself. Being fired from his appointment as a PhD-less Acting Professor (mot juste) in the FU Business Admin. Department was a low blow but he’d been fired before. Nobody likes a jackass, even—in fact especially—when it turns out he’s right. No market research company likes to be told that its sample sizes are too small to even approach statistical significance. No personnel selection firm likes to hear that its key psychological test is not even reliable, let alone valid. Japanese don’t like to be told that the image of their tools is junk, and that the worst possible choice of name for any car to be sold in Australia is The Cedric. And pointing out the errors and absurdities in textbooks, especially the one written by the FU professor who had hired him, was not a winning strategy. Instead of tenure, he’d been let go and advised that perhaps if he were to get himself an MBA and reapply . . . ?

A higher degree would be fun to get, provided it had nothing to do with the fantasy worlds of economics or business which, he had found, existed only between the glossy covers of the overpriced new textbooks that piled up hopefully in his office. So after taking home the few books of interest, and leaving his In-tray full, he had ascended to the English department and signed up for a PhD in English Literature. One paycheck later he would not be a Professor but he’d soon be called the even sexier Doctor.

Life would be good again. His post-MA fellowship covered the house mortgage, and there was still money in his trumpet case. His first two years of teaching had been tax-free on a Canada-Australia exchange agreement, though he and Eddie had not gone home. Whenever he needed money now he extracted a Canada Savings Bond from the thinning pile under his King Silver Sonic, signed and slid it over the counter of the Bank of Montreal. With Eddie (his wife Edwina) gone the summer before to Toronto, Stephen had taught himself to cook, and one of his curry-powder omelettes with very crude crudités was cooling on the plate when on the Thursday Eddie phoned from Toronto, congratulated him on passing the Comprehensive, and insisted he come at once and attend the Canada Dance Theatre’s annual spectacular. At once? Jimmy’s plane was leaving the next day . . .

Angelo’s new work is fantastic. You’ve got to come, sweetheart, there’s a cast party afterwards at Angelo’s, there’ll be food.

I’ll see what I can do.

He saw what he could do. He tracked down Julie, practicing late for a chamber concert on Saturday night. Creeping into the empty wood-ceilinged Memorial Hall, hearing her glorious Bach he felt his dick stirring like a Pavlovian dog’s tongue. He sat in the dark till the Bach ended. She started it again, but then she must have sniffed or divined his presence, and broke into a stride piano take on Limehouse Blues.

You bastard, she greeted him with.

He had once—once—made the slip of murmuring as he orgasmed, I love you, and since then she had been eager for him to leave his wife so she could move in. To be fair, he had said no, he wouldn’t. Julie was a moody young woman but outrageously sexy. She’d reflected once that, I was fifteen when I found how much fun you could have with men and he had stifled an interest in knowing how many men she’d so far had, but thought it ungentlemanly to ask. He himself had had fifteen wonderful women, but her praise suggested she thought far more. She considered him experienced.

Some are so small it’s hardly worth the trouble, she’d said, climbing aboard with no hint of foreplay. (She said she didn’t know what it was for.) Leisurely enjoying him, and pleased when he held both heavy breasts, or held and suckled one, with his other thumb on her clit, she moved adagio then agitato, climax then recovery then climax, till her knees were sore and he switched on top. Her smiling face after another orgasm was beautiful.

I could do this all day!

Gazing down now at the waves rippling across her breasts with his every thrust, Stephen had a silly thought. If you added together every cock that her vagina had enjoyed and pleasured, how long? A hundred would be about fifty feet of cock. A notched bedpost would have collapsed by now.

You off to Toronto to be with the bitch, aren’t you.

Just for the weekend. Would you mind feeding the cats? Her big blue eyes rolled but she nodded.

His rust-holed MG-B, which he had thrashed round every race-track in Eastern Canada, ground into life and got him to the airport, where Billy was polishing the nose of the government plane. New Brunswick’s Premier was on a run to Toronto to shop or whatever, returning on Wednesday to open Fodderton’s splendid new theatre. Stephen took the co-pilot’s seat after swearing not to touch anything.

They rose into the sun. Billy was good and had flown American hunters to far lakes in the North. They’re trying to make me take a co-pilot, he said bitterly, Some new safety regulation, number of passengers, but I tell you this: the day they make me share the controls, I quit.

Stephen vehemently agreed, fighting to keep his hands off the tempting controls. He’d like to fly planes. The hang-glider he’d flown off a hill outside Moncton had been easy, so he had the basics of staying in the air and landing on two feet.

After a rather slow flight they landed with eerie smoothness at Pearson’s private strip. Stephen shouldered his bag and walked through the cluster of small planes and out, unstopped by anyone. No sign of Eddie, so he took the bus to the train, the train through tunnels—this city is huge--then out onto a fantastic steel bridge under a highway and over a river called the Don to the tram which Canadians call a streetcar, then another one back over the same river, then walked up Parliament Street following his wife’s directions.

Canada Dance Theatre and School was not hard to find. It was an immense brick church with a spire on top. He joined a well-heeled group waiting in the street to be let in, but the double door was locked. Then it crashed open and in they went. Rush seating.

Eddie dashed down the stairs to meet him. She looked fabulous in a long black dress which he worried he would crush as he hugged her hard body, so different from Julie’s yielding softness.

You’re just in time. I did say it’s a matinee performance. They won’t let you in late.

OK if I pee on the stage? In a bucket?

The show began. It was outrageously good. Modern dance is all bare feet, beauty and drama. He held hands with his wife, with squeezes emphasizing the moments of brilliance. As the stage faded to black he leapt up with the others, stamping, cheering and attempting his loud whistle. Afterwards he shook hands with Angelo Decree who hugged firmly, whole body, (bisexual maybe, but certainly queer as a square egg) praised Eddie to the skies and invited him to share a taxi to the cast party at his place. Sadly, Eddie had to stay behind to teach the evening Beginners’ class.

It was on this first night ever in Toronto that Stephen met Harold J. Pleasance, was offered a job and said no. The party was a hoot, utterly non-Fodderton, and after one flute of champagne Stephen felt life returning to his veins.

Some time after midnight he was offered the position of School Manager. Angelo introduced him to a businessman type in a suit, the Company Director was it? Manager? CEO?, and drifted away.

"Thanks, Mr Pleasance, but no. No can do. Absolutely got to get my doctoral dissertation finished by Christmas." (Having first found a topic and written the bloody thing.)

The man’s hand was cold. And the idea was silly. Run a school of Modern Dance? Stephen could dance the foxtrot, samba, rumba and, after two (but not three) drinks, a comically outdated jive, and he’d had a supporting role or two in his wife’s dance shows in Fodderton, lifting damp young ladies and looking significant. But what did he know about running a dance studio?

So . . . I gather you were a teacher of some sort. What subject?

Um . . . I was a professor of Business Admin. at FU.

We’ll have a little talk later on, will we?

Angelo Decree certainly knew how to celebrate a good show: champagne foamed, music soared, girls danced with girls. (In time Stephen noted that most women in dance companies are straight, most men gay, a frustrating arrangement all round.) A ludicrously handsome short young man smiled at Stephen, approached, and with the speed of a striking cobra, pinched his nipples and withdrew. It felt surprisingly good.

A thump and a cheer. The shortest of the men (why are they all so short?) had leapt through the air and landed sitting calmly on Angelo’s big U-shaped couch. The next tried it with an (empty) glass and succeeded. Stephen, after three drinks (but luckily not four), tried it, trampolined—and blushingly scrambled up from the pine floor. Golfers’ clap. Back at FU his students would have pissed themselves laughing while his colleagues turned away scowling and muttering about the need to rid the department of this clown from Down Under. But here he felt liked. They liked him. Why not? Returning grinning to the buffet he held out his cut glass champagne flute, Angelo smilingly overfilled it—and it slipped and smashed on the floor.

Excellent! shouted his host, and, beaming, hurled his own glass down too. Quiet fell. For a moment Stephen thought the whole room was going to follow suit, like some mad Russian drinking tradition, but instead they raised their glasses and toasted…him. Stephen felt wanted. He had not felt wanted for quite a while; not since his wife moved to Toronto the first time and he stayed behind in Fodderton, demoted to student. Teaching was easy but Snidely’s PhD comprehensive exam were brutal. Stephen had never been good at remembering names—had once blanked on Eddie’s—and the heart of academic English Literature is recalling who the hell is who.

He found himself listening hard as Angelo confided that Carlo over there, (that demon drummer from the show?) was having a spot of trouble in the School Manager’s position, seemed to be falling behind— falling over, in fact. And there was some urgency. Their Canada Council Grant application had to be in, and who better than a man who’d been teaching management at university level? And while he talked, his breath wine-sweet, his arm round Stephen’s shoulder, his fingers were gently tugging the short hairs on the nape of Stephen ’s neck. It felt delicious.

Okay, I’ll give it a go, he heard himself say, and watched his hand already shaking Harold J. Pleasance’s well-manicured cold fingers.

Good for you, Stephen boy. What the hell! Just till we get things straightened out, words that would haunt him for his whole, disastrous term in office. Will I be running the show or is there some nebulous we? It turned out that there was a we, but they fought each other to a standstill.

All his last years had been odd, his surprising appointment from his drear Sydney job as a personnel consultant/psychologist, by telegram from Fodderton U. as Acting Professor of Business Administration. (The Department’s Chairman, touring Australia, had made a couple of appointments to justify his considerable expenses.) His discovery that his