Page 29 of Dancing in the Dark

“Yesssss!” She thrusts her hand in his direction. “Zactly! The Tooth Fairy will come, Fifi! Isn’t that so exciting?”

12

SERAPHINA

“Are you mad cos Alfred picked us up from school?” As we come to a stop out the front of Tim’s bar, Mia unsnaps her seat belt and glances up at me with uncertainty. Swallowing, she shows me the real Mia, the insecure, scared, shy Mia I’m always careful to remember, even when she’s loud and climbing walls and, I’m horrified to wonder, faking illness to keep me from talking to another man. “You were happy to see me,” she rasps, “and then you were hugging me so good. But then Alfred pulled up and I didn’t really listen to you when you said no. Now I fink you’re mad.” She blinks, blinks, blinks until her beautiful golden eyes turn glassy. “I’m sorry if I made you mad.”

“I’m definitely not mad.” I cup her face and press a noisy, juicy, lingering kiss right onto the center of her forehead. “I was feeling a lot of different things, baby, because I was happy to see you, then I was worried because you were sick, then a stranger asked us to get in his car.”

“And then I showed you my tooth?”

I pull back and set my hand on my queasy belly. “Uh huh. And then I was really, really worried when I realized you’ve been driving around without a proper safety seat. I promise I’m not mad at you, I just don’t have a lot of practice with little kids, so sometimes I take a minute to jump from one step to the next. Your dad must be really good at it, huh?”

“Probably cos he’s got loads of practice.” Giggling, she leans forward and drags her backpack up from the floor. Dumping it on her lap and tearing the front zipper open, she picks through a massive stack of Monopoly paper money, selects a crisp hundred-dollar bill, and offers it through the gap in the front seats. “Thank you, Alfred. You did a very good job.”

Gasping, I grab her arm and tug her back. “Mia! Honey. You can’t give him pretend money.”

“It’s alright, ma’am.” Alfred lifts his sunglasses and meets my eyes in the mirror. “She’s learning how to do these things, but Mr. Malone takes care of me.”

“I’m learning how to be a baddie.” Mia unsnaps my seat belt and tosses it so the heavy steel catch flings toward the window, then she scoots across the seat and tries to push me along. “You’re s’posed to get out too, Fifi. We’re finished in the car now and I gave Alfred his moneys. That’s the end.”

How does Charlie do this every single day? How does he handle the random wall-climbing, tooth-losing, Monopoly mafia stuff without freaking the hell out?

“Fiiiffiiii? You gotsta move.”

In a daze, I turn and slide out, my feet touching the sidewalk with a gentle brush of my heels, while inside the car, Mia makes an entire production of exiting. Somehow, her shoes touch the ceiling, a bottle of water—in the front—topples over, and a wad of paper money explodes—poof!—and flitters back to the floor. “Ahh!” Mia scrambles across the seat and sweeps it all up again. “Can’t lose that!” she giggles. “That’s why Cato said I had to practice with Monopoly money first.” Finally, she dismounts and lands on the sidewalk with her feet wide, her arms in the air, a stack of cash in one hand, and the strap of her backpack in the other. “He said I’ll get real moneys again someday, cos real baddies always carry heaps, but he also said five-year-olds shouldn’t carry more than twenty bucks, cos we have a bad habit of losing things.” She flips through her cache, her eyes narrowed as she searches, then she selects a fifty and goes to the front door. Tapping on the window, she stands on the very tips of her toes and grins as Alfred accepts his spoils with a dignified dip of his chin.

“Thank you, Miss Fletcher. Your generosity is appreciated.”

“Uh huh!” She drops to one knee and stuffs her money into the front pocket of her bag. Zipping it back up and triple-checking she hasn’t forgotten anything, she stands again and swings the bag onto her back. “Come on.” She grabs my hand and leads me toward the heavy glass door leading into her building. “Sometimes I visit Uncle Tim’s bar after school. Daddy doesn’t mind, cos Uncle Tim always makes me a soda float and we always get our own special seat where nobody bothers us. But I fink we should go inside today. You haven’t seen my new apartment yet, huh?”

“I saw inside last week, remember? That day you moved in.”

“Oh, yeah!” She uses her shoulder and all her strength to push the door open, then with a pained groan and a reddening face, she holds it for me. “Quick! It’s very heavy and it might squish me flat if I let go.”

I hold the frame an easy two feet above her head. Taking most of the weight from her, I step through, then I wait for her to jump free before I release it again.

“You didn’t see my apartment wif all our stuff in it though, did you?” She moves to 1B and allows me a moment to wonder if she has a set of keys, but then she presses her thumb to a tiny pad on the doorknob and has the whole contraption flashing green. “Pretty cool, huh?” She strides through and holds the door for me to follow. “We can use keys too, if we wanna. And we can put a code in if we accidentally chop our thumb off at school.”

I stop in the middle of the entryway and try hard not to imagine a day where Mia might chop something off. “Okay.”

“Anyways, I like using my thumb, cos then I don’t have to remember a code, and I won’t get in trouble for losing the keys.” She closes the door, presses a button, and grins as green returns to red. “You saw my new apartment ages ago when everyfing was still in boxes, but now all our stuff is out. Which is way better. And look!” She drops her bag and excitedly drags me toward a sleek stainless steel fridge decorated with a bright array of paintings. “I did this one at school yesterday!” She points toward a park scene, with weeping tree limbs cascading from the top, and a stick figure girl with short, wavy brown hair and a dress wider than she is by double. “It’s me, see?” Then she shifts her finger to the right and beams. “And you, too.”

My heart. I forget all about loose teeth and Men in Black. I don’t worry about Cato’s apprentice situation, and hell, my nerves about being inside Charlie’s home dissipate, too. None of it matters, because I lower into a crouch and study me. “Oh my gosh. Look at all my beautiful hair. And my dress. It’s very pretty, just like yours.”

“Yuh. It’s a tutu. Like in ballet.” With rosy, red cheeks, she turns and meets my eyes. “I painted you and me wearing tutus, cos we’re both ballerinas.”

“I mean… yeah.” I rest my arms on my knees and exhale a happy sigh. “That’s true. We are.” And since I haven’t been able to set Charlie’s words from Sunday night aside, I tip my head to the side and smile. “Do you love being a ballerina?”

“Yup! Especially cos you’re a ballerina too.”

“Well—”

“And my mommy was a ballerina. I already told you that, didn’t I?” She pauses for a beat and frowns. “I fink I told you.”

“You sure did. And I know she was really good at it, too. Do you…” Careful, Seraphina. Be really frickn’ careful. “You say you like being a ballerina because I was a ballerina, and because your mom was a ballerina. But… Do you like being a ballerina because you like it, and no one else?”

“Yuh! I love dancing at the place. At Miss Debbie’s.”