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“You mean it? That would be so great.”
“Who’s that?” Matt asked.
“I’ll go put on a shirt.”
“You’re with some half-naked guy?”
Chloe laughed. “Not exactly.”
“What exactly?”
Chloe decided to ignore the proprietary tone in Matt’s voice. There was no point in disturbing the delicate truce they’d established by reminding him that such things were no longer his concern. Being Matt, his temper was bound to get the better of him occasionally, but he’d been making such an effort. Better to humor than upset him, she decided, especially when there was nothing to get upset about. “I’m at my mother’s,” she explained. “Believe it or not, she eloped to Las Vegas, and this kid who lives across the hall from her just offered to help me get her stuff together.” She broke off when she realized Matt was no longer on the line. “Matt? Matt?”
“Something wrong?” Ethan asked, reappearing in a maroon T-shirt with a gold Harvard logo.
“Looks like we were disconnected.” Chloe returned the phone to her pocket. “You go to Harvard?”
“I’m smarter than I look,” he said.
Chloe laughed. “I’m not so sure. You really want to do this?”
Ethan shrugged. “Got nothing better to do.”
“Well, then. Let’s get to it.”
They spent the next two hours packing things up and throwing things out.
“The place looks much bigger once you get rid of all the junk,” Chloe marveled, plopping down on the now cleared-off sofa bed in the center of the room, and wondering what to do with the well-worn sheets. She could throw them out or offer them to Ethan. He’d already volunteered to take the dishes, the towels, and the old portable TV. What he didn’t want, he said he’d take to Goodwill. “Looks like we’re almost done,” she told him, amazed by what they’d accomplished in a relatively short period of time. “You’ve been a godsend. I can’t thank you enough.”
A suitcase crammed with her mother’s costumes and clothes stood at the door, holding it open, allowing some much-needed air into the apartment. She’d take it to FedEx in the morning, she decided. She was too tired to do it now. There wasn’t a part of her that didn’t ache.
“What do you want to do with these?” Ethan asked, pulling a large cardboard box out of the closet and withdrawing several small statuettes.
“What are they?”
“Dance trophies,” he said, offering them up for her perusal. “About a dozen of them. First place in the tango; second place in the waltz; first place in the jitterbug. What’s a jitterbug?”
Chloe laughed. “Believe it or not, that’s before my time, too.” She took one of the trophies from Ethan’s hand and studied it. Thousands and thousands of dollars spent to win a trophy that was worth maybe five dollars at most. Still, when was the last time she’d come first in anything? “I didn’t realize she was that good.”
“She’s great,” Ethan said, joining her on the bed.
“How do you know?”
“I went to see her once.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. A few months ago, a competition at the Park Plaza. One of those Spanish dances. She invited me and a couple of my friends. We thought it’d be good for a laugh, you know. But she was genuinely good. I was impressed. You’ve never seen her dance?”
“No,” Chloe said, rotating her neck from side to side, hearing her joints creak. Her mother had never invited her.
“Your neck stiff?” he asked.
“My neck, my shoulders, my back.”
“Turn around,” he said. “They tell me that I’m very good at this.”
Chloe swiveled around on the bed, as Ethan’s hands moved to massage her shoulder blades. “Oh, my God. That feels sensational.”
