Stanley hung up the phone and looked at the address he had just written down. The numbers were shaky. It had been seven days since his last drink and still, the poison rattled his body.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all the way on 158th Street,\u201d his cousin said over the phone. \u201cYour dad refused the job. But I figured for you\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
The ellipses were audible.<\/p>\n
Stanley\u2019s plumbing career was dead as far as Brooklyn went. No one in Greenpoint would hire him. Word got around, whispers among the babushkas after Sunday mass.<\/p>\n
He was late to appointments.<\/p>\n
If he shows up at all.<\/p>\n
Better than walking in on him, passed out under kitchen sinks, next to toilets, bottles of mouthwash drained.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho was that?\u201d his father materialized in the doorway and barked. Stanley flinched. He left the jungle, but the war buried itself in his nerves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing. You startled me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI startled you? Can\u2019t ask questions in my own house because I startle you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone called with a job.\u201d Stanley\u2019s throat went dry with wanting: the astringent sting of ethanol, the chemical tightening of the vasculature, the fade of unthinking joy.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor you? In Greenpoint?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cManhattan.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBuncha cannibals up there,\u201d He waved his hand in disgust and walked back to his room.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Stanley embarked on his long commute the next morning. On the train, someone had a portable Rambler radio. Through the static he could hear a woman\u2019s voice, vulnerable, unaccompanied. She was afraid, she sang, she was petrified.<\/p>\n
It made him think of his father, this man who left behind a continent only to settle in a new country where he frightened himself into a two-mile radius. It was the one thing Stanly knew he wanted for himself\u2014that his own life could be bigger. But in Vietnam, it got so big, it swallowed him and he couldn\u2019t find his way out. He looked down at his bag of tools and flexed his fingers. They trembled and rattled like the subway car.<\/p>\n
Any life he wanted was on the other side of his quivering hands.<\/p>\n
The song exploded. The voice so fearful moments ago was a herald of joy, assuring herself and everyone listening: they would survive.\u00a0It resonated in a way screeching guitars\u00a0 couldn\u2019t, not with his nerves.<\/p>\n
A man in the seat next to him pointed at the source of the music, \u201cYou know that disco shit, that\u2019s for queers and coloreds.\u201d\u00a0He shoved his pointer finger into his mouth and picked at his molar.<\/p>\n
Stanley leaned away from him. The volume of the song increased.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When Stanley arrived at the Aragon Ballroom, he was met by a group of dancers. Dressed in head-to-toe leotard, they were short and tall, Black and brown, slender and plump, hairy and smooth. They absorbed him into their own choreography as they navigated him through the hall.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re glad you\u2019re here,\u201d said one of the dancers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a big competition tonight and this is going to be a full house, honeys.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the toilets keep backing up\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis old-ass building\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Archways stretched the space into architecture normally reserved for churches, where babushkas felt divinity. Stanly felt the same here.<\/p>\n
\u201cTonight is the hands competition,\u201d one of the dancers said, motioning towards a stage with two chairs facing each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cHands?\u201d\u00a0 Stanly shoved his own in his pockets.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to explain, you\u2019ll just have to see it,\u201d one of the dancers said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have time, you can watch us practice,\u201d invited another.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Stanley found his way to the cavernous bathroom. The long rows of toilets let doubt in. Maybe he wasn\u2019t ready for this job.\u00a0 His clammy hands could barely grip his wrench. They were out of practice. He used to search his body for courage, when it was warm and wet. In sobriety, he found only fear\u2014cold and dry. The wrench fell out of his hand.<\/p>\n
He steadied himself against one of the sinks. He was helpless and small in these rows of tile. Maybe he should tell the dancers to find someone else.<\/p>\n
Stanley walked back to the dance hall where he saw two of the dancers sitting across from one and another on the stage. They looked into each other\u2019s eyes. A woman\u2019s voice filled the room.<\/p>\n
The same naked and powerful voice from the train.<\/p>\n
Stanley watched the two people on stage. Sure enough, they danced using only their hands.<\/p>\n
He was transfixed. When the song tugged at his guts, their hands tugged at the light filtering through the giant windows.\u00a0When the song soared with blessings, their wrists rolled and fingers fluttered those same blessings.\u00a0Confident and certain, each pair of hands told the same story. In their own way.<\/p>\n
Voice, dancers, Stanley, together in a Harlem dance hall cathedral. Awash in the early afternoon sun, witnesses to a homily of hope.\u00a0This is how Stanley\u2019s radius widened. He let himself move. The motion was poison leaving his body.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at the plumber! OK, mister. You coming tonight?\u201d one of the dancers knocked their hips against his. Gentle and inviting, his nerves stayed on the train.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s this song.\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s new, but it\u2019s already our little anthem,\u201d the dancer said. \u201cPeople here have seen all the ugliness in the world.\u201d The dancer studied Stan, \u201cMaybe you have, too. We do alchemy here,\u00a0 spitting out sulfur, spinning it into gold. There\u2019s no misery out there that we can\u2019t turn into joy right here. Tonight, we celebrate survivors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stanley returned to the bathroom, got on the floor, and gripped his wrench.\u00a0A version of him, giddy and long forgotten, whistled along with the dancers\u2019 songs. There was something on the other side of sobriety. Something bigger, stranger, and more joyful than what he could have imagined. All he needed to do was get through a day\u2014every day.<\/p>\n
He loosed a pipe to the rhythm of the music outside.<\/p>\n
These were his hands.<\/p>\n
This was their dance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was the one thing Stanly knew he wanted for himself\u2014 that his own life could be bigger. But in Vietnam, it got so big, it swallowed him and he couldn\u2019t find his way out. He looked down at his bag of tools and flexed his fingers. They trembled and rattled like the subway car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":22531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-marjee-chmiel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21975"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22532,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21975\/revisions\/22532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}