Come Dancing Read Online Free Page A

way she tended to make loud comments about passersby.
    “I’m really busy with work right now, but maybe later in the fall. My place is tiny, though; I don’t think you’d be comfortable,” I said.
    “Oh, you know me. I can curl up and fall asleep anywhere.”
    I certainly did. “What are you reading this week?” She kept up a steady stream of novels that she swapped with her friends.
    “I just finished one of Joyce Sutter’s. This sea captain meets a young girl whose father owns a sheep farm. He doesn’t want her seeing the captain, but one day she goes for a ride on his big stallion …”
    My mind wandered as she described the plot.
    “… then in the end they get married on the poop deck,” she concluded. “I’ll have to loan it to Paulette; her husband was in the Marines.”
    “That sounds like a good one. Have you had any interesting customers lately?” My eye fell on the piles of paper spread across my futon, awaiting my marking pen.
    “There’s a guy who’s doing the plumbing for a mall in Uniontown. Turns out he was an engineer at Bethlehem Steel before he got laid off …”
    My mother could strike up a conversation with anyone, and lack of knowledge about a topic never held her back. She was the least self-conscious person I’d ever met, which had mortified me as a teenager. I often thought I must have inherited my entire persona from my father. But when I tried to recall specifics, his memory seemed to fade faster the harder I tried to hold onto it.
    “I bet you sold him more stuff than he even needed. Well, I guess I’d better get back to this manuscript.”
    “All right, Julia. Talk to you tomorrow.”
    I tried to call my mother several times a week since I knew she got lonely at night. She wasn’t drinking as much as she used to, but she still tended to have a few too many. She liked to sit on a stool nursing her rum, chatting up anyone within earshot. Buck’s Bar & Grill had been her hangout ever since my Dad moved out when I was in ninth grade.
    As a teenager I’d saved what I could from my after-school job bagging groceries; my only splurge was those contact lenses right before I left for college. To my relief, I got a scholarship to a small in-state school and a job in the campus cafeteria. It was a delicious freedom to live where no one knew my mother, or that I’d been a four-eyed bookworm who never had a date in high school. I made good friends in my dorm and picked up some culture from my French professor, who took me under her wing and taught me which fork to use. I also managed to lose my virginity to a sweet guy who worked with me in the cafeteria. By that point I was just relieved to get it over with, even though no bells had gone off. I’d been so put off by Dot’s flopping around with various and sundry, I’d come to dread the whole process.
    Then in my senior year, at the urging of my English advisor, I applied to grad school and got a full ride at NYU. The month before moving to Manhattan sight-unseen, in my anxiety I ran so many miles I got shin splints. I mused over out-of-date issues of the one NYC magazine our tiny library carried, absorbing the ads and articles. I didn’t understand half of it, but I couldn’t wait to start my brand new life.
    I took a Greyhound to the city in August, my belongings crammed into a used duffel from the Army-Navy store. Seeing the sooty skyline across the Hudson for the first time, I’d had a moment of panic. I didn’t know a soul in this intimidating place—what was I doing here?
    Wide-eyed, I got out at Port Authority and took the wrong express train, winding up at 125th Street. A sympathetic woman walked me over to the downtown side. After asking six strangers for directions, I finally found my dorm and collapsed on the single bed. Once I’d caught my breath, I waded into the moving-in chaos to meet my hall mates.
    I had thought I’d go for a Ph.D., but when I learned about publishing, my plans changed. I knew the entry