Paddlin' Madelyne Home Ch. 01

Damn. My bluff had been called. Now I had to make some hasty preparations.

I called a couple of dance schools to see if they had a private room and a junior instructor or advanced student that I could rent two evenings a week. It took awhile, but I found a good place that did have a practice room and the choice of a couple of dance partners that could be hired for the two evenings a week I needed. I wrote them a check, paying them in full for the next month - the total of which didn't even begin to cover the amount Maddie was paying me for just a single hour.

Her new dance partners were going to earn his tips, because I certainly wasn't going to get any closer to her than I could help. I was already not looking forward to our first lesson on Tuesday!

*********

Naturally, Maddie was 15 minutes late when she came out to my car for our first session. Ca-ching!

I told her she wasn't hurting my feelings at all by making me wait, it was 'her money' and she could waste it and our time as much as she wanted. Into my date book I annotated that she owed me another $1000 for this day, and we drove to the dance school in silence.

The evening was of course pure hell for the next hour and a half. Maddie seemed furious that I was not going to be her actual practice 'dance partner', despite my frequent explanations that if I was to be the teacher then I needed to see and judge her movements at all times from a different angle.

Her poor dance partner Bob (who actually may have been a technically more polished dancer than I was) was having a harder and harder time keeping a blank smile on his face and we struggled mightily teaching Maddie the simple delights of the foxtrot, my favorite dance. Her feet stepped on his constantly and he had a very difficult time in 'leading her'. I very much doubted he ever wanted to dance with her ever again on any future night, and I had to tip him an extra $200 just to get him to agree to make his next appointment with us.

That sum was still a bargain; I wouldn't have put my arms around her to dance with her for all of the gold in Fort Knox.

The ride home with her was in blessed silence, and she stomped out of the car and slammed the door shut without ever having said a single word to me. That frankly suited me just fine.

*********

Thursday night she was a no-show, and I sat right on her doorstep from 7 to 9 p.m. cooling my heels. I passed the time by appraising her front garden (I didn't think much of it) and her house, which I did like, but that was only natural as it was in a very exclusive neighborhood and probably cost more than I was ever likely to make in my entire lifetime. It did make me feel a little better when I calculated that each minute she was making me wait was costing her $100, for the $1000 normal + $5000 'no-show' penalty.

Right at 9:05 just as I was walking back to my car, she pulled into her driveway. Naturally, I didn't expect an excuse or even an apology from her, but I thought I would make the effort anyway of making sure that she did have my cell phone number so that she could call me if she was delayed by other business.

"Oh yes", she assured me, "If anything 'important' came up she would be sure to give me a call".

With that she went straight into her house without another word and shut the door, rather harder than necessary. I began to seriously debate if any amount of this woman's money was worth even another moment of my time, but I had given my word and committed myself.

**********

The next Tuesday session seemed to go much better (I only had to tip her dancer an extra $100 this time), and the Thursday session (her first with her regular Thursday night partner) went well enough that we started on lessons for the Waltz.

For the next month we continued to make steady progress, and by the 18th of November, Madelyne was at least minimally proficient with the Modern and classic Viennese Waltzes, the Foxtrot, the Quickstep, Rumba and Samba, and the glorious Tango. She seemed to be gaining in confidence and at times actually seemed to be enjoying herself. She was no longer a beginner and hinted (loudly) that maybe I should be now giving her some advanced lessons… personally.

The next Tuesday she again asked if I could be her partner for all of the dances that evening. She was dressed up to the nines and looked especially pretty that evening I thought, and her manners had been quite good all evening since I picked her up, so I agreed. we dismissed Bob early (he still got his normal tip) and we danced through all of the dances at least five times. I think we had been enjoying an especially fun Tango when I noticed that our time had been up for quite awhile. Maddie was now quite a good dancer and seemed to have the enthusiasm to become a very good dancer in the not distant future. She knew the basic steps now for each dance, but from here on 99% of her progress would depend solely on her attitude and inner desire to excel.

She hadn't wanted to be taken home quite yet so we stopped at a nearby Denny's and chatted for a few hours. It was there that she finally uttered her first apology to me, a long overdue one for the way she had treated me at the party. It wasn't an especially good apology, and it was phrased fairly awkwardly, but it did sound at least mostly sincere, so I accepted it at face value.

With this burden off of her shoulders, our conversation became quite pleasant and enjoyable, and I found myself liking her quite a bit more. Maddie was a Civil Engineer also and was a graduate of UT. I had gone to Texas A&M; this gave us another natural rivalry between us, but this one could be a bit more good natured. I think we could have "talked shop" into the early hours of the morning except that I had an 8:30 a.m. presentation to give for my boss and a prospective client the next morning, so we called the evening quits around midnight.

As I took her home, I casually reminded her that Thursday was Thanksgiving, so there would be no practice. Surprisingly, she had forgotten this entirely. Her mother and father were both out of town so she would just be spending the day alone working at home.

Without thinking, I immediately offered her an invitation to come to my stepmother's house for holiday dinner there, and to my considerable shock and surprise, she accepted. Dinner would be around 4 p.m. I told her, and I could pick either pick her up or else I could give her the address to come on her own. She elected to come on her own; she was working on a presentation herself and would be doing some homework. And so it was agreed.

***********

Like my half-sister Heather, my stepmother and I had always gotten along. My birth mother had died when I was just a toddler and Dad got remarried when I was about six, so in many ways she has been the only real Mother I've ever known. She's a great old gal and we try to stay close. She keeps a stern exterior at all times but in the heart she's a real softy, and her advice is often blunt but invariably correct.

Dad didn't live quite long enough to ever see me play in the NFL. He died two weeks before my first rookie game and was buried with his game ticket unused in his suit pocket and a football that I'd had all of my teammates sign for him. Mom on the other hand had never missed a single one of the televised games on the satellite for any team that I ever played for, and somewhere she has stored boxes of VHS tapes of every game that I played even a single down in.

Thanksgiving Thursday 4 p.m. came and went, and there was no sign of Madelyne. At 5 p.m. my stepmother (I'll just call her Mom) and sister started to dish up without her and I called her cell phone repeatedly until 5:40 when she finally answered. She had lost track of the time, but would be right on her way. Her house was only about fifteen minutes away (Mom had a bit of money from Dad's life insurance and lived in a good older middle-class neighborhood nearby) and so I then told folks to expect her around 6 p.m., but it was much closer to 7 p.m. when finally she arrived; of course without offering any apology.

The wonderful turkey dinner my mother had prepared (my sister Heather was incapable of even boiling water) was now pretty much cold, to say nothing else of the other lovely and delicious side dishes which were no longer at their best. Madelyne and my mother did seem to hit it off together nearly immediately and they had lots of fun as Mom told her naughty stories from my childhood to an increasingly amused Maddie, who was now enjoying a fourth cup of my mother's unparalleled coffee and a second helping of pie. But at no point did Madelyne ever offer an apology for her tardiness and making everyone wait for her.

The good humor of the evening had not completely washed away my annoyance at her, and at 9:30 when I was walking Madelyne to her car, I took the opportunity to admonish her gently.

"When you're late for dance practice, that is just your own time and money your wasting, and I don't much care, but tonight your inconsideration also inconvenienced several other folks, who postponed the enjoyment of their holiday feast so that you could join them. That was wrong, and it is not me that you should owe your apology to."

Her eyes seem to twitch for a moment and then she glared at me and snapped,

"My project was very important and I couldn't quit until I was done with it".

Over the last month, I had clearly decided that two different people lived inside Maddie's head. There was the 'Old' self-absorbed Madelyne that somehow always said the wrong thing at the wrong time and lived an emotional roller coaster life of constant ups and downs. On the other hand, somewhere in the middle of those wild peaks and valleys was an interesting young lady we all called Maddie, who was actually pleasant and a lot of fun sometimes to be around.

Tonight Madelyne was back, and I had an instant reminder of why I didn't care for that particular woman at all. I shrugged and gave her a faint wave goodbye as she left.

Awhile later, Mom thought it over at great length before she offered her personal opinion of Madelyne.

"I think I like her, but she's not a 'people person' and don't think she does well in dealing emotionally with people, and she probably gets 'worse' the closer she is to them."

Heather was much less blunt later in private, "What a total self-absorbed cunt! What do you see in that exasperating twat?"

I explained again that we didn't have a 'relationship' or had ever even been on a date together. At this point, and for the next few weeks remaining weeks or so, she was just a business friend, that's all. And for the next two weeks, that's just what it was. We were again quite chilly to each other for our remaining practices together and we shared very little personal conversation.

The evening of December 17th was the night of her big company Christmas Party, and for me it could not have come soon enough. Our last Tuesday practice had gone so roughly that I cancelled the Thursday one.

"Get some extra sleep and pray for the Sandman to sweeten your disposition a little bit at the same time." I suggested as she slammed my car door after I had taken her home.