Adrian pulled off his shirt.
I dropped a lime.
Then I dropped my paring knife.
The man was built in a way that defied the usual categories.
He wasn’t gym-built, with the inflated, oversculpted proportions that looked impressive coated in baby oil or in mirrors. His was built from use rather than vanity, the kind of body that came from physical labor. Dancing, and the particular genetic generosity that distributed muscle evenly and without excess, had made his shoulders broad and his waist narrow. His skin was smooth and deep and marked with exactly one tattoo, a line of script along his left rib cage in a font too small to read from where I was standing but that I was suddenly very motivated to get closer to.
He stepped onto the bar stool.
Then onto the bar.
And the bar changed.
I’d seen good dancers. I’dbeena good dancer, before the knee, before Tampa, and before the half second that Peter had named. I knew what technical skill looked like and what performance looked like. I also knew what the rare combination of both looked like when it showed up in a single body.
Adrian Voss didn’t dance with that rare combination.
Hewasthat rare combination.
He didn’t dance on the bar.
He dancedwithit, using the surface and the edges and the limited space as elements of the performance rather than constraints on it. His hips found the beat with the kind of locked-in precision that you can’t teach, the instinctive connection between music and muscle that separates people who dance from people who are dancers. His body rolled and isolated and articulated with a control and a looseness that made the control invisible. What you saw wasn’t a man executing choreography, but a man who hadbecomethe music and was letting his body be the instrument it played through.
He smiled while he danced.
But it didn’t look like a performance smile or the look-at-me grin that most go-go dancers deployed as part of their toolkit. It looked like a real smile, warm and unhurried, the smile of a person who was doing something he loved and who wanted you to enjoy watching him do it. His smile said, “I’m having fun. Come have fun with me.”
It was an invitation, not a display.
Jacks had stopped pretending to polish glasses.
Jacks had stopped pretending to do anything.
He was standing behind the bar with his hands at his sides, mouth slightly open, watching Adrian Voss dance three feet above him with an expression that I’d never seen on Jacks’s face before. It was anexpression of pure, unmediated attention that had nothing professional in it whatsoever.
I elbowed him.
He didn’t react.
I elbowed him harder.
“What,” he said, without looking at me.
“You’re gawking.”
“I’m observing the audition.”
“You look like a golden retriever watching a tennis ball.”
“I’m evaluatinghistennis balls.”
I snorted. “You’re practically licking his Modelo, Jacks, and we already decided that would not be allowed in Barbacks.”
He closed his mouth, picked up a glass, and resumed polishing.
Adrian finished, the music faded, and he looked down at Finn with the confidence of a man who knew exactly how good he was and didn’t need anyone to confirm it.
