Photo by Unsplash+
by Karen Zlotnick
Although I am Simeon’s shadow, I dance alone, and oh, how people stare.
At a Fifties Social in The Hall, Simeon enters to win The Lindy, but I am all Tap, and the next month at his Eighties-themed high school reunion, Simeon joins the floor for The Electric Slide while I do The Robot–and slay.
In his long-awaited recital, he is Ballet–gorgeous, really–but I am so moved by Tchaikovsky that I Break.
Backstage after the orchestra has packed up, a reporter who drags his s-es to sound like a snake and wears a cheap pin of the American flag on his frayed lapel, asks Simeon, What would it take for you two to find each other, to sync up?
As if he were telling a secret to a friend, Simeon offers something that is more parable than answer. A long time ago, in a saw-dusted Boston pub, we danced a quadrille underneath these flickering neon words–LOVE IS FREEDOM.
Karen Zlotnick lives in New York with her husband and their Newfoundland dog. Her work has been featured in Pithead Chapel, jmww, Stonecoast Review, and Moon City Review. One of her stories was nominated for Best Small Fictions.
