Room for One More Song

Sunset laid a path of amber across Lake Malawi, reaching almost to the dry sand below the lodge. From the terrace at Cape Maclear, Naomi watched the wooded islands grow dark at their edges while the open water remained bright. A boat crossed the bay, its engine fading beneath the soft wash along the shore. Behind her, someone was taking down the last of the wedding decorations. A paper lantern turned slowly on its cord, showing first its illuminated side, then its shadow.

Naomi had come for her niece's wedding and stayed three extra nights because she had liked the sound of them. Three nights in which nobody would need a safety pin, an opinion on a speech, or the whereabouts of the groom's passport. At forty-seven, she was an excellent aunt and an increasingly reluctant committee. She loved her family. She also loved the warm evening, the cold bottle of water in her hand, and the possibility that she might spend the next hour doing nothing useful at all.

Then she saw Leo move a chair for the third time.

He was on the other side of the terrace, measuring a clear patch of floor with his feet. The chairs formed an irregular boundary around it. He glanced at his phone, took two steps, frowned, and returned to the place where he'd started. Naomi had watched him organize a minibus full of wedding guests without losing his temper once. This apparently empty space had defeated him.

She liked Leo. She had liked him since their first shared ride from the airport, when he had handed her the better of two bruised peaches without making a performance of it. He was forty-five, the groom's cousin, and ran a distribution warehouse in Blantyre. She lived in Lilongwe, where she trained new bank staff. Over four days of family preparations, they'd developed a quiet habit of finding seats near each other. Yesterday, however, he had declined her invitation to dance with such abruptness that she had stopped seeking him out.

Now he looked up and saw her watching. His smile appeared, then faltered. She might have gone down to the beach if one of his chairs hadn't been her favorite—the one with a cushion flattened to exactly the right depth. She crossed the terrace to reclaim it and asked, as lightly as she could, whether he was expecting a large delivery.

He looked at the floor. He looked at his phone. Then he began to laugh, quietly and with obvious resignation.

“I'm trying to become a less disappointing answer to a question you asked me.”

It took Naomi a moment. From his phone came a cheerful recorded instruction to put his left foot forward. She looked at the cleared space again. The chairs weren't protecting anything. They were giving him something to avoid crashing into. He had borrowed the corner from the lodge manager after most of the wedding party left, found a lesson online, and discovered that the man demonstrating it possessed a completely different arrangement of legs.

The explanation softened something she hadn't quite admitted was hurt. She asked why he hadn't told her he couldn't dance. He said that when she came toward him yesterday, in the green dress she'd worn to the wedding, all his useful words had deserted him. He had managed no, and then spent the rest of the evening watching other people be braver.

Naomi set her water on the table. Near the open doors, a sultry woman with sea-green eyes and a wine-red scarf was choosing a chair beside her companion. A member of staff gathered a loose ribbon from the railing. The terrace was becoming an ordinary terrace again, but Naomi felt the evening taking on the expectant quality of the celebration they'd already finished.

She offered to show Leo something simple. He warned her that he had already tried simple and might require a category below it. She held out a hand anyway. When he took it, the familiar ease of their earlier conversations altered. His fingers were warm; his palm was broader than she'd imagined. She placed his other hand at her waist and felt the care with which he kept it there, as though trust had a weight he was determined to get right.

They began without music. Naomi counted quietly, moving slowly enough for him to follow. He watched their feet with an expression usually reserved for balancing accounts. When he stepped on her sandal, she laughed and stopped him from apologizing more than once. She wasn't an expert, she explained. Her older sister had taught her in the kitchen when they were girls, and she still tended to turn the wrong way if she thought too hard about it.

At that, Leo finally looked at her instead of the floor. The movement improved immediately. He noticed and looked down again to investigate, which ruined it. By the time they stopped laughing, Naomi had her forehead briefly against his shoulder. She left it there for a moment, breathing in the clean cotton of his shirt and the faint warmth of the day that remained in it.

She had spent years thinking she knew exactly what pleased her: a good conversation, an orderly house, enough time alone. None of those preferences had changed. Yet standing close to Leo, with the lake shining behind him, she wanted to discover what else might belong on the list. She wanted to hear him laugh in a room without cousins in it. She wanted to know what he read when nobody was recommending anything, what he cooked badly, whether he would still offer her the better peach when there was nobody around to notice.

The lodge manager passed them and, with Leo's agreement, set a small speaker on a nearby table. Naomi chose a song they both knew. No one announced them. There was no audience to assemble, no family expectation to satisfy. They moved into the first few bars almost cautiously, and when Leo lost the rhythm she stayed with him until he found it again.

The light on the lake was thinning. Bands of blue spread between the amber ripples, and the islands had become nearly black. Leo's attention no longer kept dropping to their feet. It rested on her face, sometimes on her mouth, and each time she caught him looking he smiled rather than pretending he hadn't. Their hands settled more comfortably together. The space he'd cleared now seemed much larger than either of them needed.

When the song ended, neither stepped away. Naomi asked him whether he intended to return to Blantyre in the morning. He was staying until Friday, he said, then asked her plans with a care she recognized. She told him she had two whole days left. His hand moved slightly at her back, not drawing her closer yet, allowing her to decide.

“Then don't spend them practicing by yourself,” she said.

He smiled, but this time it didn't disguise his uncertainty. He asked if he could kiss her. Naomi answered yes and rose a little toward him, and the kiss was so unlike the awkwardness of their first steps that she made a small, surprised sound against his mouth. He drew back just enough to look at her. She kept her hand at his shoulder and kissed him again, slowly, with all the encouragement she had thought of giving him since the airport.

The next song began while they stood there. Leo glanced toward the speaker, then at their feet, and she saw him considering whether he should start counting. She shook her head and took his hand. They began to move together, scarcely traveling at all.

Below the terrace, the lake had turned a deep, soft blue. The remaining lantern swayed in the breeze. When someone came to return the chairs to their usual places, Leo asked them to leave a little room. Naomi rested her cheek against his shoulder, smiling where he couldn't see it, and let the music carry them through another song.