Body and Soul.

“I want you to leave; I don’t want to see you again,” she said angrily.

“I hate you.”

A stifled sob rippled through Emily’s body, her face pressed into her hands, her legs pulled into her chest. She could hear nothing but the steady beat of her heart inside of her chest and the words echoing around her skull, across the void she was working so hard to create between here, now and the real world outside- words, conversations and images that it physically hurt to recall were fighting the darkness. The wound in her heart was tender; the voices grew louder.

Her dark hair pooled about her shoulders, shielding her face from the outside world as she closed her eyes tight and tried to fool her body into thinking that it hadn’t happened.

“Don’t lie to me. I saw you.”

She was afraid to relax; the blackness stopped her from seeing him. Another sob coursed its way through her body. Rippling muscles, jerking movements and taut skin. Emily’s breathing deepened, her body heaving as she tried to control the grief.

“I saw you with her; I saw all of it, Goddamnit!”

“I never thought you’d leave me,” she whispered into the quiet, her voice barely registering over the sound of rain against a tin roof somewhere overhead. The room around her was dimly lit, yellow and cast in deep, stretching and sprawling shadows. The armchair was velvet, soft against her bare legs and arms, but stifling. Too warm.

“I thought what we had was special.”

“Why did you throw it all away?”

“All that we had worked for?”

Emily held her breath, counting in her head to push away the images; his face pressed against her own. She wanted to push away the sounds of her own voice in the darkness, his voice vibrating against her skin. Another deep breath followed the momentary deprivation of oxygen; her whole body shook with the effort. She knew- could feel it in her bones- that if she let the fear, those cold salty tears, fall from her body now and into the light, it would not stop.

“Was she worth it?”

“Was her body perfect? Flawless?”

“Like you always dreamed?”

“What about her soul?” Her voice sounded weak against her ears, yet still unwelcome in the hush that muffled her body like a thick invisible blanket. She clamped her hand over her mouth, forcing the flow of words to stop like she had done the tears. “Stop Emily,” she told herself forcefully, raising her head from her knees and taking another deep breath. The air was a little damp, cool against her throat as she swallowed sharply. The shadows flickered continually, her heart beat to a rhythm she could no longer hear, and even that one simple sound was enough to send her crazy with grief.

“Why are you getting so working up about it?” she asked herself, wiping her eyes with the tips of her thumbs. “Why not just let him go? He wasn’t worth it; he was never worth it.”

“You always ruin things. Everything you touch turns to stone. They used to call you Glitter Finger, you were so damn popular with the ladies-- I suppose you still are.”

“I just can’t get him out of my head!” she growled and clamped her fingers over her ears, focusing on the steady rhythm in her chest that was growing stronger. ‘Dance,’ it told her, ‘dance like you’ve never danced before. Push the pain away, step out into the light, throw away everything but the movement’. The heartbeat she knew so well, had listened to for entertainment and advice on many occasions, was right. It was always right. Dance.

She climbed to her feet, stretched her limbs and pulled her arms over her head in a well-practiced exercise. A bar of music floated through her body as the stereo in the corner of the abandoned-warehouse-cum-dance-studio came to life, a heavy beat dipping and rising along with her own steady arm movements. She closed her eyes, opened her ears to the sounds around her, and let her body go.

“You used to dance good,” he said. “You used to dance real good. Why do you need to prove to them that you can dance good? What happened?”

“You,” she answered his silent question aloud, breathless as her legs spun beneath her and her torso twisted and turned. She lifted her face skywards, gazing through the glass above into the starless night sky as the music skipped a beat and her body paused.

“What happened between us?” he asked. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing happened to me, baby, it’s you.” Her voice grew louder as the music grew faster, her feet pacing across the floor in an unpracticed spontaneous rhythm.

The whirls and motions of the dance forced Emily to relax, her shoulders dropping slightly so she could move with more freedom and passion. The music was soft, tinkering, like the rain outside. She considered, for a moment, opening the large front doors of the warehouse, to let the rain in, but decided against it as she heard the rain grow heavier against the windows and roof.

Her breathing grew more arduous as her body moved, her mind whirring around in circles as the events of that evening, and the many evenings and days before, threw themselves onto her brain and left their imprints standing bold, lit up like Hollywood in the darkness around her.

“Mind, body, soul,” he said one evening. “Aren’t they what you preach?”

“Body and soul. Neither without the other,” Emily replied.

“Why do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“Make every-damn-thing so philosophical. Nobody gives a damn about Soul when they gots a nice body to look at.”

“At least that’s what you think.”

“I guess body won this time,” she panted, throwing herself to the floor, arching her back and bringing her face to the sky once more. “I guess equality and balance mean nothing when they’re invisible.” She jumped back to her feet, the nimble steps beginning again as Emily’s ballet-slippered feet sketched outlines across the hard wooden floor. The floorboards creaked now and then, but on the whole were solid as she threw herself from one side of the room to the other, tossing her body like that of a rag doll into rolls and flips. All the while her mind was whirring, processing the pain, and her head was spinning with the past.

“I think we should start seeing other people, Emily. I don’t know if I can handle the ‘dancin’-is-my-life’ part of you. You’re talented, I know that, but you practice too much. That ain’t the person I fell in love with.”

“Then you didn’t fall in love with me. Dancing is my life, I can’t help that; you should be happy for me to have found something that I so truly enjoy!” Emily threw up her hands in frustration. The restaurant around them seemed to grow quiet, as if in anticipation. “I don’t have talent without practice, I can’t perform without talent, and so I practice. Don’t you see? It’s all there, all linked, like Body and Soul: one without the other cannot function correctly, cannot be so truly beautiful as them both combined together-”

“Not that crap again,” he sighed. “Why can’t you be like other women? Why can’t you have a normal job, a normal life? Why can’t you be like you were when I met you?”

“Flipping burgers?”

“It was better than me never seein’ you baby. You dancing so much makes it hard for me to figure things out; I don’t even know you any more.”

“You never knew me, baby. You only ever saw what you wanted to see.” The song ended, the tape winding down, but Emily wasn’t finished yet. Sweat lined her forehead, her hair was plastered to her face and her cheeks were flushed, but one song was not enough; she needed time. Without looking she flipped another tape into the stereo, a slower one that enabled her to form her pirouettes to perfection, and moved back to the middle of the room. The tears had dried now, her body calmer than it had been in days- since the last dance, since the last argument before that evening- but she knew she was far from fixed. Moments flickered before her eyes, visible in the glowing room as though they were alive, happening now, rolls of film projected onto the walls.

“I heard you got an audition, at the school- the Academy of Dance- is that true?”

“Yes. Tomorrow.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to, not yet. I wasn’t ready.”

“What am I supposed to do then? While you’re off dancin’?”

“Normal stuff,” she said with a shrug. It was mid-afternoon; he had just picked her up from work.

“Sit around waiting for you, like always?”

“I can take my bike, I always offer to take it.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“When are you going to let me grow up?”

“When you grow up,” he answered with a snarl. “I just wished you’d told me, that’s all. I’ll support you, y’know. I know you got talent enough for them- those big shots- but I don’t see why you gotta go there to prove it for.”

“I haven’t got to baby, I want to.”

“You’re full of bullshit. You know that? I don’t know what I ever saw-”

“I don’t know what I ever saw in you.” The final steps of the dance completed, Emily sunk to the floor, her legs spread wide and her upper body folding inwards, gravitating towards the floor. Her breath was heavy, her lungs on fire, and her mind in pieces. She curled in on herself, kneeling on the floor in a helpless wave of sadness and pain, and let her mind open, the force of the dance blowing it wide.

“I saw you with her; I saw all of it, Goddamnit!”

“Trust me baby, it’s not what it looks like.”

“What else can it be?”

“Trust me baby, I can explain.”

“Don’t give me that. Don’t lie to me. I saw you. Together.”

“What choice did I have?” he shouted, his face pressed close to hers, his body pushed against her skin as though he were trying to gain access to her heart, just so he could rip it out all over again. “What other choice did you leave me? You were never here! You’re never around when I need you, when I want you! Jesus Emily, I’m a man- a human man of flesh and blood. I have desires! What choice did you leave me?”

“Body and Soul,” she answered numbly, her whole body shaking with shock and sadness. “Body and Soul together, as one. Without the two there can be nothing, nothing so beautiful, or pure, or strong.” Her eyes were glazed, her heart thumping loudly in her chest in a rhythm she had never heard before. “What choice did I leave you?”

“I’m only one man, what could I do?”

“What could you do?”

“You could have waited for me.”