chapter 28

Eventually, Izzy wentout in search of coffee. Lillian felt light. She rose from the bed and floated around the cottage naked. The lacy curtains barely hid her from view, but so what? She could hear Eleanor’s shock. Decorum! A Black dancer has to… standards… judged differently… But for once her mother’s voice wasn’t front and center. Front and center were thoughts of kissing Izzy at the Lynnwood Terrace, out of sight of the cameras, sneaking around the greenrooms after everyone had left, of pulling Izzy back to bed.

Izzy returned a few minutes later with coffee in hand and a brown paper bag tucked under one arm. She looked endearing, smiling in her puffer coat, wearing Lillian’s tank top, which was gloriously tight on her. She held the two ceramic coffee mugs proudly, like she’d hunted and gathered them for her mate.

“Good news and bad news,” Izzy said.

“Okay?”

“They didn’t clear the roads.” Izzy looked like a kid who’d just learned summer vacation went for another week.

“We have to get out of here,” Lillian said before she could suck it back.

Izzy’s face fell.

“What’s the good news?”

“Tock checked the contract. In the event of natural disaster—this counts—if the contestant is unable to be at the competition, the show will film an episode without them. There’s a whole bunch of stuff about how if our people lose, we can’t go back and complain, but we get to stay here for… a while.”

“I have the company’s dance almost done, but it’s in Benesh Movement Notation. That’s a kind of shorthand for dance moves. It’s like musical notation.”

“I know. And it’s incomprehensible.” Izzy handed Lillian a mug and sat down on the sofa on the far side of the room, which didn’t say much—the room was probably ten by ten—but Lillian felt the distance. Izzy set the bag on a nearby table and pushed it away from herself. Izzy had been looking forward to spending time with her. She’d practically bounded in. And damn it, it would be fun to spend the day having sex. Talking. They could walk along the beach. Izzy could charm the retirees and the Dutch again. They could make a fire in the sooty firepit in the center of the cottages. It wasn’t raining.

But her dancers. This was why she couldn’t get distracted. She had to think about the company.

“Benesh Movement Notation just takes careful study,” Lillian said for no reason except Eleanor would say that.

“Okay.” Izzy wrapped her hands around her mug, pulling into herself a little.

Truth: Benesh really was incomprehensible. Many of the best choreographers didn’t use it. They’d use movement patterns, counts, music, placement, and film instead of a notated score.

“Okay, it’s really hard,” Lillian conceded. “Imani is the only one who can read it, and it takes her hours. I can’t send her the choreography.” Lillian rubbed her hand over her face. “She doesn’t have time to interpret it, and then it’ll be on her if they mess up. But it’s on me.”

If she had her undeveloped app, she could just upload her notation or sketch out the moves without notation, sharing it with the company in real time. But her app was an idea and a book full of sketches.

“And I need to rehearse them. I need to be there for them. I need to show them what I’ve written.” And she needed to kiss Izzy and hold her face between her hands. I want to spend the day with you, but I have to get back. Lillian struggled into her pants, not bothering with underwear. Not that there was anywhere to go, with or without underwear. She paced across the room. “I didn’t tell them about Reed and Whitmer shutting us down, and now I’m here. I didn’t prepare, and I didn’t support them.” I put what I wanted first. “If they lose, they’re going to find out the next day that they don’t have jobs, and the whole time I was… I was…”

“With me.”

“What are you going to do with Velveteen Crush?”

“They’ll figure it out. Members of Velveteen Crush usually do our own acts, so we’re all ready to choreograph a dance or design an act. Can your people rehearse without you?”

“Rehearse what?”

“Their own thing?”

How did she politely tell Izzy that in ballet, unlike burlesque, the company did not make up their own dances?

“This is my fault.” Lillian sat down, still topless.

Izzy looked patient, like someone who knew the answer and was waiting for a friend to come to it themselves.

“How is a landslide your fault?” Izzy asked.

“You said we should turn around.”

“You work twenty-four seven and you wanted to walk another mile on the beach.”

“I don’t work twenty-four seven.”

Izzy raised an eyebrow. “When was the last time you took a walk in the rain before that?”

“It doesn’t rain in LA.”

“In all the places you tour? New York? London? Any rain there?”

Lillian listened for a note of irritation in Izzy’s voice, but she didn’t hear it.

“Okay. I never walk on the beach. That’s the point.” I don’t fuck up. She was on the stage at the Lynn Bernau School of Dance recital. Perfection is not enough. She was in the bathroom throwing up as the dance masters scored her. She was in the courtroom waiting for the judge’s gavel. She felt her mother watching her. You must be beyond reproach.

“Come sit.” Izzy motioned for Lillian to sit next to her.

Lillian sat. It felt good to be close.

“I can’t let them down.”

“Let’s brainstorm,” Izzy said. “What can you do?”

A brainstorming session wasn’t going to move a landslide. Maybe if Lillian had another twenty-four hours in every day, she’d have learned to program and written her app. She’d send the choreography to Imani in an easy-to-view file.

“I had this idea for an app.” Why had Lillian mentioned it?

Izzy didn’t look confused by the non sequitur. She nodded. “What would your app do?”

“It’s nothing. An idea for an app is not going to save me.”

“But what is it?”

Lillian hadn’t even mentioned it to Kia.

“I have sketches of the moves, and you’d be able to put them together to show the choreography, but you’d be able to adjust the drawings with a stylus, pull an arm up here, stretch an arabesque penchée.” Lillian folded her legs into the lotus position, which, despite the flexibility required to sit comfortably in it, showed, according to Eleanor, nervous self-containment. “You could make your own collection of personalized clips. I could just compile and hit send. If I had that, I could fix this. Or I could build a helicopter and fly over the landslide.”

“Maybe everyone could contribute their modifications.” Izzy nodded like this was a real idea. “Like the way people add templates to Videoleap. Have you done any work on it?”

Lillian turned her phone over in her hands. This was Izzy’s job. Even with the binary code tattoo, it was easy to forget she was a programmer when she was strutting around in glittery corsets. But she was. And from what little she’d said about it, she was good at it. Lillian couldn’t show her an app idea. Amateurs were embarrassing.

“Can you see something and then unsee it?” Lillian asked.

Izzy put a hand on her naked shoulder, the portrait of empathetic listening, and then asked, “Is there some weird, kinky sex thing?”

Lillian burst out laughing despite the fact that her dancers had no choreography, Imani couldn’t read what Lillian had written, and she was stranded in a cottage that was one tsunami away from washing out to sea.

“If it’s your naked body, no.” Izzy’s lips quirked in a coaxing half smile. “I could never forget that.”

“I’d be offended if you forgot.” Lillian opened the animation app on which she’d saved a 1.8 second clip, the product of an entire LAX to O’Hare flight. A drawing of a woman moving one arm up and down. She held it out to Izzy.

Lillian folded and refolded her legs.

Izzy watched the clip over and over, her lips pursed. She tapped the air above the screen as though making a quick calculation.

“The collaborative part would be hard. You’d need a lot of server space. But the basics… Did you do the drawing?” Izzy asked.

Lillian nodded.

“Is this the only one?”

If she’d shown Izzy the animation, she might as well show her the files. She accessed the cloud and handed the phone back to Izzy, open to photos of her sketchbook drawings. Dancer after dancer. Move after move. Hand position after hand position.

“These are lovely. If I had more time, I could probably design this. I don’t think I could build it in time to send Imani your choreography.” Izzy sounded apologetic, as though building the app were only slightly out of her reach, not a totally fanciful impossibility, just more work than she could whip out in a morning. Lillian would enjoy watching her work, that easy confidence put in motion. She could imagine Izzy’s hands flying over her keyboard the way they’d flown over Lillian’s body. A woman who knew what she was doing.

“You’re sexy,” Lillian said.

“Because I can make an app?”

“Exactly.”

“Yeah right.” Izzy put a hand over her binary code tattoo.

“I am right.”

Izzy looked back at the phone and kept scrolling.

And then it occurred to Lillian… she photographed all her drawings or scanned them into her computer. Even the picture that Kia had seen of Izzy, fully drawn and shaded, not a sketch but a piece of art. Izzy lying on her side, naked except for her underwear, the shading accentuating the weight of her breasts. Now was the right time to snatch the phone back.

“You have hundreds,” Izzy said.

Izzy scrolled for a moment, then stopped.

“Oh.” She stared at the screen. Bit her lip. Looked from the screen to Lillian. Then her smile widened like she’d been handed the perfect Christmas present. “I’m flattered. Is this from…?”

“Our first night.”

“You said no scones, but you drew my picture.”

“I like to sketch, and you’re an attractive model.” Lillian affected an arch tone, then swept in and kissed Izzy on the cheek. “Don’t get cocky.”

“You can’t resist me.” Izzy grinned. “So, anyway, I don’t have time to make your app in the next twenty minutes. If only I had forty.” Izzy’s grin filled with pride. “What if you take some of these drawings—probably not this one.” She flashed the picture of herself to Lillian. “Send your company a rough sequence. Then tell them to improvise.”

She couldn’t abandon her dancers. Improvise? That was like putting someone on a raft and pushing them out to sea.

“You say they’re incredibly talented,” Izzy added.

“That’s why I have to do everything I can to help them.”

“Tell them you’re giving them a chance to expand their skill set. That’s helpful.”

“It’s my job to do this for them, not to push it off on them.”

“You said you have to do everything you can to help them.” There was that patient, coaxing look again. “What else can you do right now?”

The room felt brighter. Lillian’s body felt lighter.

“Are you going to tell me that all we can do is do our best?” Lillian pretended to scowl.

“People have said that occasionally.”

Lillian pictured Imani’s face when she called and told Imani she had to finish the choreography and lead rehearsal. If she put it on Pascale, Pascale would panic. But Lillian could see the gleam in Imani’s eyes that said, Now we’re really going to have fun.

“I think Imani would like to lead the rehearsal,” Lillian mused.

Hadn’t Imani said she wanted to be a dance master when she retired from dancing?

“See? Perfect,” Izzy said. “She can handle it, and you can handle it.”

“You mean handle not being in control of everything all the time.” Lillian tried to put her scowl back on, but she’d lost it.

“Exactly.” Izzy stood up suddenly. “There’s more bad news.” She didn’t look upset. She picked up the bag she’d brought in under her arm and held it out triumphantly. “All they have for breakfast at the lodge are scones.”

Izzy stepped out so Lillian could work alone. Around noon, Lillian texted Imani and shared the file containing a string of images, mostly drawings Lillian had done before but a few new ones to accommodate the Lie in Wait theme.

Lillian: Change whatever you like. Just make it work.

Imani: Want us to film it and send it to you?

Lillian typed absolutely, then reconsidered. Did she? Izzy was waiting for her. By the time Imani and the dancers filmed the dance, Lillian would, hopefully, have Izzy’s clitoris gently situated between her lips and her tongue. Then her phone would ping. She’d have to watch the video, give feedback. Eleanor had always told her to stay focused. You couldn’t focus on going down on a woman when you were waiting for a text from work.

Lillian: I trust you.

Lillian got up, put on her coat, and went outside. The sky was a bright gray. The smell of pines freshened the wind blowing off the ocean. Everything felt clean. It felt like the day after a show ended. Yes, as soon as one show ended, it was time to start preparing for the next one, but you got one day. One day when you could walk down the street and not feel like you should be rehearsing. For twenty-four hours that weight lifted. The world came back into focus: This is what trees look like. This is what car horns sound like. This is what coffee smells like.

It felt like that.

Lillian found Izzy in the not-so-grand lodge with the Dutch tourists and a few retirees. Izzy lounged in an armchair that looked like years of use had melted it down to twice its original width and half its height. She waved. When Lillian drew closer, Izzy looked up at her.

“Everything okay?” she asked quietly.

“Perfect.”

Izzy beamed and patted the cushion next to her. Lillian hesitated. There was room for them both but not we’re-just-friends room. But they weren’t just friends, so she fit herself in next to Izzy, hip to hip. Izzy put her arm on the back of the chair with a questioning look. Is this okay? Lillian smiled. Izzy settled her arm around Lillian’s shoulders.

“You two are so sweet,” one of the retirees said. “You’ll remember this forever.” He looked lovingly at the man sitting next to him.

Under the guise of kissing Lillian’s cheek, Izzy whispered, “I told them we were on a second date when we got stranded.”

“I guess we were,” Lillian said.

We just didn’t know it.

Had she just said they were dating? Not as in “relationship” dating but as in “not just a second hookup”?

“The manager says there’s a town a mile south,” one of the tourists said. “We’re going to walk in. He says it’s usually too dangerous to walk on the road, but there’s no traffic because of the slides. Will you two join us?” He looked at the retirees. “And you?”

It took an hour to gather everyone, but an hour later five young Dutch tourists, eight retirees, the cottage manager, his two shepherd mix dogs, and two stranded reality TV stars were walking down Highway 101. The lack of traffic should have felt apocalyptic, but it just felt like someone had set real life on pause. The tourists and the retirees tried to name songs that all of them knew, then tried to sing them, to much laughter and bungled lyrics. The cottage manager told a story about a pirate named Vladivostok von Wellington, which got wilder and wilder until everyone was calling, “No way” and “You cannot possibly think we’d believe that.” The manager kept dropping his voice lower as he imitated the fictional Vladivostok.

And Izzy held Lillian’s hand.

Or Lillian held hers.

“Do you know what I’m going to do to you when we get back to the cottage?” Izzy whispered, her words hidden by the sound of Vladivostok threatening to drain the sea and ground every ship before he’d give up his gold.

“Read that seafaring book to me?”

“Or make you read it to me while I…” Izzy whistled a few notes and swung their joined hands, which was the kind of silly, playful thing that would have made Lillian pull away if it had been anyone else. Since it was Izzy, it was wonderful.

The “town” was a rock shop, a café, a garage, and two churches. The café was closed, but the manager went around back to a little house on the property. A few minutes later, a woman opened the café, and half an hour later she was delivering pancakes and fruit salad.

When they were back on 101, heading back to the cottages, to-go coffees in hand, Lillian whispered, “Tell me more about how I’m going to read this seafaring book to you. Is that your kink? What was his name? Roger?”

“Rogan: A Seafaring Journey to Manhood. How could you forget, Lillian? It’s our story.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s not our story.”

“It’s how I’ll always remember you. The woman who led me to Rogan.” Izzy opened her eyes wide. With her cheeks rosy and her puffer coat puffing and her hair blowing in the wind, the blue of her hair looked more like a teenager’s home hair dye than a rebel burlesque performer’s signature look.

“I’m going to make you listen to the whole thing,” Lillian said. “As punishment.”

“Ooh. Have I been a bad girl?”

God, there were so many things Lillian would like to try with Izzy. Would Izzy like to be spanked? Tied up? Lillian never bothered with things like that. It was too much communication and boundary setting for a hookup. Maybe Izzy would enjoy it if Lillian strapped on. That was one of Lillian’s favorite pleasures: to thrust into a woman. It was a pleasure Lillian didn’t get to enjoy nearly as often as she’d like. Bringing a harness and dildo to a hookup was very, very extra, as Kia would say. But with Izzy… they could pick out the size and shape for her. Lillian would be careful to get it right. The strength in her hips exceeded anything a normal person could imagine, and she would use only a fraction of her strength on Izzy. She’d take care of Izzy. It was all so delicious.

Lillian’s thoughts turned her on. She was horny. She needed Izzy and she needed her soon. And even though Lillian could control every muscle in her body, there was nothing she could do to control the desire mounting inside of her, and it was wonderful to be just a little bit out of control and wonderful to know that at the end of this beautiful, breezy walk, Izzy would put her lips around her clitoris and—

Their phones rang simultaneously. Lillian and Izzy looked at each other, then answered. Somehow Bryant had managed to conference call them without a link or a meeting ID number.

“They’ve cleared enough of 101 to get an SUV through,” he said. “DOT gave us special permission to come get you. Be ready in an hour.”