The Blue Book

The fifth chapter. Copper.

'Miss?' I stretched out my hand for her. She looked up from her drink, tried to read my face, then thought better of it and her dark lips smiled.
'Hello! Now what could you want?'
'May I? One dance? I'll make sure it'll be a night you won't forget in the first place.' I looked at her with a mixture of hope and I never stood a chance, why did I bother? which seemed to make her determined to prove me wrong. Nodding, she stood up. 'Of course!'
'Yes?' I asked.
'Yes! I'm glad! I just came here for the music, so I'm not exactly dancing-fit, but we'll manage.' She answered. Looking down at her feet I wanted to laugh.
'You're not wearing any shoes.' I said and she lifted up the muddy hem of her dress a bit.
'I couldn't very well take my friends' shoes, now could I?'
'Certainly not. Well thought, don't know what I was thinking.'
Lightly as a creature of imagination her strong hand grasped mine and urbanely led me to a free spot amongst youngsters who surely shouldn't be here, new and old lovers, married ones, and well, various others. They had their hands braided into one another's with the ladies' hands on the gentlemen's shoulders. Just as graciously she locked our hands together and nailed my gaze with hers while I put my hand on her waist. She looked so ... Curious. Curious and brand new. As if she was questioning me in her head without speaking any questions aloud. A minuscule frown above her nose was evident, evident only due to that she was so close.
I was so near, so dreadfully near that I could distinguish every hair of her eyebrow, how her black bottomless pupils dilated, the exact shape of her eye, the precise colour of her iris and how her dark eyelashes were bent so that they touched the dark skin above. She tilted her head with narrowed eyes but still didn't say anything. Still, she was wide open, I didn't feel like she was judging me. I didn't want to say anything. I didn't want her to say anything.
'What's your name?' She said loudly enough for our dancing neighbours to hear, yet to me it seemed as an elf-whisper.
I lingered at the sensation of her breath on me and the sight of her barely visibly trembling vocal cords, to me, the only evidence that she really had spoken.
'Copper.' My voice was low and her face was close.
'Well, Copper, I must say I'm disappointed.'
'Oh, no, already? Usually it takes at least a minute before someone says that. You should get used to always speak your heart with me, so what's wrong?
'You promised me a memory, yes? A good one, and you give me a fake name?'
'I insist that it's Copper.'
The music remained undisturbed by her resiliant unwillingness to believe me while we rocked ourselves in the dependable rhythm of the drums and trumpets and the singing of a wonderful voice.
I raised my hand over my head and she let go of my shoulder so that she could spin round herself and then put back her hidden hand on my shoulder again.
'And what about your last- name?'
'Don't have one, as far as I'm aware.'
'Copper really, tell me.'
Once again the dancing people around us let go of each other and spun, just like before and we followed their lead, I mean, who are we to break the unchangeable pattern of dancing?
'Really, nothing to tell.' I persisted.
'I'll find out eventually.' She promised.
'If you think that, then you are much more of a fool than I originally pegged you for.'
'I'm dancing with you, am I not?' She responded.
'Ha!'
She chuckled against the side of my neck and I knew that this was the part where I was supposed to fall madly in love.
I'm not sure.
'Tell me yours.' I requested quietly, never stopping to lean us from right to left and back.
'Helga.' She whispered.
'Aa... Helga.' I hovered with my nose only a few millimetres above the skin of her cheek. Surprised I noted she remained unaffected.
The music shifted suddenly and became higher, more intense, faster. Dancers around us started to smile, let go of each other and began to twitching their shoulders while stepping their feet. Flirtatious expressions where exchanged and answered, all while the dancers became smilers. The wonderful voice in front of the microphone-device played a dangerous game with her vocal cords but smiled because she knew she would win. She had a strong voice, beautiful, one of those you can't train but must be gifted with.
I grinned at the woman in front of me as the pearl-necklace flew wild around her neck while she shook her body as if she shook all those lonely nights drenched in tea and spirits of her memory, letting the movements whipe the slate clean, banishing sadness from her emotional dictionary. I wasn't late to follow.
Helga's charm wasn't her beauty, it was her gladness and how she made me feel at ease. She had clearly abandoned any and every kind of logic of the way she moved, simply letting raging storms out on the space that were getting bigger and bigger as dancers and smilers backed away to let her shine. Oh, she did. She was radiating. I soon couldn't keep up with her.
'Don't you leave me, Copper!' She laughed and harshly clamping her heel-wearing foot in the poor wood at the exact pace as the drums, relishing in the sound of the brilliant jazz. Evidently she had a perfect sense of rythme even though her movements seemed chaotic and random.
'Oh, I wasn't planning on it, ma cherié.'
'He speaks French!' She gasped, laughing, however she pulled that off. 'Is it so bad that you could be educated?'
'Yes.'
'Teach me!' She demanded.
'And why should I?'
'You can't deny me.'
'That's true. Now say; je suis un grand canard.'
'I'm no fool, it's a trick. I just don't know what you said.'
It took every willpower I had to make my facial muscles stop smiling, still I managed a grim look, grabbed her hand in mine and pulled her closer than ever before, mumbling; . 'If you find out what it means, you must come and tell me, and if you can't, find me and ask me.'
'Either way it seems to me our final song hasn't been played?'
'Definitely not.'
Flashing a flawless set of teeth her soft voice spoke. 'So will you tell me the riddle of your non-existent surname?'
'No, probably no. Almost definitely no. Well, 90 percent? I can't know now that it's you who's asking.'
She seemed disinclined to leave a mystery behind but then it was as if something hit her and she pulled her lips up in a wild smile.
'Bye, Copper. For now.' With that she let go of me and this time not to spin, but to leave. I was just about to change my mind but remembered the unfairness of it if I had. Our connected hands disconnected and soon she was gone.
In the midst of dancing people I stood alone and sighed, tilted my head up, heaved another heavy exhale and finally came to an agreement with myself it was time to vanish.
'Copper, you are an idiot.' I reminded myself and strode towards the exit. A man twice my age helped me with my coat and wished me a delightful evening. Grinning thank you I put a couple of coins in his hand.
'Goodnight, sir.' I said and lifted my round hat while the sound of me walking the steps down the streets of cobblestone erupted the still night.

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