Emperor. The principal, labeling Tully’s dancing morally reprehensible, called Hedda, who had missed her daughter’s performance. Where had a fourteen-year-old learned to dance like that? the principal asked Hedda. Mrs Makker wrung her big, clammy hands and cried, but Tully was suspended for a week anyway.
The full-length mirror was taken away and Tully was never locked in her room anymore, but it was too late. Tully had grown to love the reaction of her peers and her elders. Feeling that she had a true talent, Tully, in the next three years, proved to the enchanted and drunk patrons of Topeka’s nightclubs and bars, to the students and the rugby players and the farmers, just how prodigious and how wasted her talent was. Tully was sure the punishment Hedda meted out when she found the condoms in Tully’s room would have been a lot harsher had she been aware of the hundreds of dance contests that Tully had won, of the money her daughter had made, of the boys and men Tully had danced with, and more.
And tonight, Tully stood alone and smoked only briefly, barely managing to finish her cigarette before three guys from school came over to her and asked her to dance, all at once; and she smiled and did. She was so breathless afterwards that she even danced with Julie. Cheek to cheek, Tully danced with her friend, knocking into people and bouncing off. And then she grabbed on to Jennifer, but there were now too many guys around Tully who, having recognized her, would not let her alone, and Tully, still wanting to have a word with Jennifer, managed only a quick whirl with the birthday girl to part of Neil Young’s ‘Hey, Hey, My, My.’
Afterwards, Julie got Tully alone for a moment.
‘Tully,’ Julie said, ‘I’m sorry about Tom.’
Tully waved her off. ‘But Jule, how could you have told him anything at all about me?’
Julie looked embarrassed. ‘Tull, I’m sorry. He is my boyfriend. I thought I could trust him.’
‘Oh,’ panted Tully. ‘Don’t you get it? It’s not yours to trust him with.’
Julie lowered her head. ‘I’m sorry, okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Tully, and went back to dance.
After an hour of frenetic dancing, a sweaty and exhausted Tully sat down on the sofa in the living room, soaking up the lights, the music, the smoke, the booze, the guys.
I spy with my little eye something beginning with – ah, but I don’t know his name. She spied the brown-haired guy, dancing with his girl, though dancing was a strong word for what she was doing. Tully did not pay attention to his dancing; she was much more forgiving when it came to the male sex.
Jennifer was talking to her blond footballer in the corner. As Tully studied him, she had to grudgingly admit that with the lights off, strobes blinking, music blaring, cigarette smoke fogging up the room, he did not look bad. In fact, he almost looked kind of…okay. He was tall and broad-shouldered. It impressed upon Tully in some visual, non-specific way that he held his head high, impossibly high, even when he was bending down to hear Jennifer.
The Stones were ‘Waiting for a Friend’, and the brown-haired boy and his girl, deciding to sit this slow one out, snuggled on the couch next to Tully. She watched them out of the corner of her eye. Eventually he got up – to get a drink, apparently. His girl sat still, not turning her head to look at Tully. She sat there with her little skinny doe-like legs uncrossed and close together.
The boy came back with the drinks and sat down, not between Tully and his girl, but rather at the very end of the couch. Well, that’s all right, thought Tully. Now I can see his face.
After a few moments, he looked away from his date and stared calmly at Tully, then politely smiled and once again faced his girl.
He is even better looking than I first thought, Tully mused, sipping her beer, but older than most guys I know. She appraised his groomed slick look, his southern European, round, clean-shaven face. When he talked to his girl he tilted his head and smiled, showing perfect white teeth. When he laughed, his eyes lit up. Tully noticed his Levi’s were ironed (what kind of a man irons his Levi’s!) and even his pink Izod shirt looked freshly pressed. He doesn’t look very tall, thought Tully, but in every other way – Tully smiled inwardly – well, let’s just say I wouldn’t climb over him to get to his date. But it was obvious that the little mouse was not about to let him out of her sight and in fact kept turning around and shooting lethal glances at Tully.
Tully supposed that if she had a hunk like that, she would be throwing lethal glances at everybody, too. Tully was eager to ask Jennifer about him, but Jennifer had not stopped talking to her blond, who by now seemed quite drunk (how come he has a full beer bottle in his hand at all times while the rest of us are still nursing the beer we latched on to at seven?) and was leaning over her, his arm strapped around Jennifer’s neck. Her face, usually devoid of expression, tonight was a happy face. Tully saw it and felt a stab of pleasure and light envy. She looked at the blond’s face and immediately felt something else, too – anxiety, small and sharp.
For there was no happiness in the blond boy’s face; only beer.
Tully sought Julie out with her eyes and found her talking heatedly to a group of people, including Tom. Probably about whether or not the Americans should have been helping the French in Vietnam in the first place, thought Tully.
Minutes passed. Tully did not move from the couch. The boy got up and offered his girl another drink. She nodded. He was about to walk away, but then moved carefully toward Tully and asked if he could get her anything.
Good voice, she thought. ‘Oh, yes, please, a Bud, please, if you can find it.’
‘If that’s what you want, I will find it,’ he said.
He has a good, deep male voice, Tully thought; so what if he’s as corny as the rest of them?
Sitting stonily with hands firmly clasped to her knees, the mouse shot Tully another poisoned-arrow glare. Tully smirked and settled back on the couch, uncrossed and crossed her bare legs, one arm on the arm of the sofa, one arm on its back. Tully sat in this pose until the boy came back, handed her a beer, and sat next to her.
‘Thanks,’ said Tully, and smiled. He smiled back politely.
‘Yeah,’ said the girl. ‘Thanks, Robin.’
Robin! That’s his name! That doesn’t sound too Italian. Tully’s thoughts were interrupted by a guy perching himself on her lap, asking her to dance. Tully gave him a hearty push and he fell off, laughing hysterically, and crawled away. Under no circumstances was she about to get up from the couch. Tully could’ve gotten up and danced – she had wanted to at one time – but here, in this smoke-filled, music-filled, people-filled house, she had found what she had come for.
‘Tully!’ Jennifer yelled in Tully’s ear, crouching beside her. ‘Why are you sitting here all alone? Guys are complaining that you’re not dancing!’
‘I’m not alone!’ yelled back Tully, grinning.
‘Why are you sitting here by yourself, then?’
‘I’m not sitting here by myself!’
Jennifer looked over to Robin and his mouse. ‘Tully, uh-uh! Absolutely not! He is taken!’
‘Ohhhh. Jennifer! Pooh! I want you to be a good host and introduce me to him.’
‘Tully, he is taken.’
‘Be a good host, will ya, Jen?’ said Tully into Jennifer’s ear. ‘Just introduce me.’ And she stared intently into Jennifer’s open face. Jennifer sighed.
‘Robin,’ she said, standing up and walking over to him. ‘I don’t think you know Tully. Robin, this is Tully. Gail, you must know Tully from school. Are you in any of the same classes?’
‘No,’ said Gail. ‘We’ve never met, but I have certainly heard of Tully. Tully Makker, right?’
‘Well, that’s funny,’ said Tully. ‘Because I have never