The dance hall at Dusty Junction had been empty for forty years. Somebody inside was counting, “One, two, three, and mind my foot.”
Maribel stopped on the porch. Her niece Sol raised her camera.
“You hear it too?” Sol whispered.
“Unless your camera has learned to complain.”
They had come for the town’s annual evening visit. A caretaker unlocked the few buildings still safe to enter, then left a lantern at each door. Sol was making a short travel film. Maribel was keeping her company, which sounded much better than saying she had nowhere else to go on a Saturday.
Her divorce was six months old. Friends kept inviting her to dinners with an extra man. She had started telling them she enjoyed doing things alone. Now she felt obliged to enjoy them.
Inside, moonlight lay across a clean wooden floor. A tune came from the corner, though there was no player or instrument there. Two chairs moved away from the wall.
Sol lowered the camera. “That’s new.”
“We haven’t been here before.”
“New to chairs.”
A woman appeared between the chairs. She wore a red skirt and looked as solid as the lantern. A man with a narrow mustache appeared behind her, reaching for her hand.
“Chester,” she said, “I have had eighty years of that turn.”
She stepped away before he reached her. “Forty,” he said.
“The last forty count twice.”
More people appeared around the room: boots, skirts, open collars, bright faces. Their feet made no sound. Maribel could see the floor through their shadows.
The woman in red looked at Sol’s camera. “Put that down, love. We don’t show up in it.”
Sol checked the little screen. It showed the two empty chairs and Maribel staring at nothing.
“May I film the room?”
“If you want an empty room. I’d rather dance.”
Sol put the camera in her bag.
“I’m Flo,” the woman said. “That’s Chester. He was my husband. He thinks the arrangement still includes every dance.”
“I merely asked,” Chester said.
“You merely asked the last six times.”
Maribel liked Flo immediately, then distrusted herself for it. She did not want to spend the evening taking sides in somebody else’s marriage.
Chester bowed toward her. “Would you care to dance?”
“I don’t know the steps.”
“I do.”
He offered his hand. Maribel reached out. Her fingers met only a patch of cool air.
“Oh,” she said.
“No touching the living,” Flo told her. “We can move a chair. We can’t hold you up. Watch your balance.”
“We can’t leave the hall either,” Chester added. “And when the music ends, so do we. For tonight.”
“Then don’t waste it explaining,” Flo said.
Maribel stood beside Chester. He showed her three steps forward, one across, and a turn. She tried them. For a moment she followed him easily, the tune holding her feet together.
At the turn, he moved in front of her. She went the other way.
“No, no. My wife always—”
He stopped. Maribel did too.
Across the floor, Flo was showing Sol a fast little step. Sol stumbled, caught herself, and laughed. Flo laughed harder.
“Start again,” Chester said.
Maribel tried. This time he told her to take smaller steps, then larger ones, then to keep her arm higher though he could not touch it.
“You look very well,” he added, as if that settled everything.
Maribel let her arm fall. “Thank you. I’d like to move.”
“We are moving.”
“You’re moving. I’m being arranged.”
Flo gave a delighted snort. Maribel looked away from her.
“That wasn’t for you,” she said.
Flo raised both hands. “Quite right.”
Chester stood stiffly. Around them, the other dancers kept passing: some in pairs, some trying little hops alone. Maribel had assumed they would all dance one way because they had been dead so long. A man near the wall was inventing a move that involved his hat and seemed certain to fail.
“Can we try a circle?” she asked.
Chester frowned. “What kind?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She called Sol over. Flo followed without being called. Maribel placed herself between them, leaving space where joined hands might have been.
“Three steps in,” she said. “Three out. Then turn and see who you get.”
“You can’t get anyone,” Chester said. “You can’t hold hands.”
“We can look.”
They tried it. On the first turn, Maribel faced Sol. On the second, she faced the man with the hat. He tipped it, threw it up, and caught it on his nose.
“Meant that,” he said.
Sol bent double laughing and missed her next steps. Flo danced around her. The circle became an uneven wheel, people joining where they could fit, leaving when they wanted.
Chester watched from beside the chairs. Nobody pulled him in. Flo was too busy to glance over.
At last he came to the edge. “Which way?” he asked.
“Toward the person you’re looking at,” Maribel said. “Then back.”
He joined. The first time he reached Flo, he bowed. She nodded and spun on toward the man with the hat. Chester went the other way. When he reached Sol, he made a silly high step. She copied it badly.
The music quickened. Maribel was hot, breathless, and nowhere near graceful. Her niece was facing her again. They tried the high step together and bumped knees.
“Sorry,” Sol gasped.
“Do it again. I nearly got it.”
The last note stretched across the room. Flo’s skirt grew thin. Chester lifted a hand, and the moonlight passed through it. Then the room was empty except for two chairs, a lantern, and two living women.
Sol’s shoe tapped the floor.
Maribel answered with hers.
They tried the high step once more, in the silence, and made such a noise that the caretaker came running.
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