Who: Ainslie and Kitane What: Kitane drops into her dance studio Where: Ainslie's dance studio When: Recentish. Warnings/Rating: Nope none.
Unless she was with Theo, or traveling across the city, Kitane liked to walk. She'd spent most of her life walking, first around Zadar and then from one end of the States to the other and to be completely honest, she rather liked it. Even when it was hot as a fire pit outside, like it was today, she still found it enjoyable to wander down the strip.
The dancing studio had caught Kitane's eye before, but she'd never ventured inside. The lights were on today and she stood outside, hovering, considering, before she crossed the street to open the door. Dancing was the other thing she loved, but she had no training, only the simple desire to move her body to music. Even if it wasn't the fast, furious style of the clubs, she wanted to be able to do more than sway when a slow song came on. Determined now, her shoulders went back as she stepped inside and out of the heat of the day.
Ainslie had settled into Las Vegas with no dificultad. It was nothing like home; there were no green mountains and the smell of the ocean did not tickle her nose when she rose to greet the morning, but the place still spoke to her, and she was willing to listen. She had opened the studio earlier in the week, hired a few older women who had long since left the stage behind, and she had begun to work. Trabajo, work, was something Ainslie was not very familiar with, and it was very good she did not need the money the studio brought in, because she charged very little and, often, she charged nothing at all. It was enough to sit there, cross-legs and a skirt to her ankles, and watch the older touristas learning to waltz. The hombres, little old men with hunched backs, grumbled and held onto the little old women in their arms too tightly. The mujers, little old women with faces like wrinkled leather, nagged loudly. Ainslie loved all of it.
But this was not today. Today there were two classes taking place, both visible from the large bank of windows that faced the strip. A belly dancing class, which was being taught by a high school girl who liked to snap her gum, and a tango class, which Ainslie herself was teaching. Her red hair was tucked back in a bun, and the colorful skirt she wore over a black unitard bared ankles lined with golden saints and bare feet. She had just taught the first move of the dance when the door jingled open, and she stepped away and left the dancers practicing.
"Buenos dias," Ainslie told the girl who had arrived, and she looked her over curiously, as if a very strange bird had entered her colorful cage, one where the walls were painted red and yellow. "You come to dance, si?" Her accent was thick, almost guttural Spanish, and nothing like the refrained Castillian of Spain.
The accent was a new one to Kitane, though she'd heard traces of it before. Nothing in great quantity though, so it was impossible for her to trace. "Yes," she answered, almost cautiously, unsure of that little word that the other woman had tagged onto the question. She was pretty, and tall, but what Kitane liked most about her in the few moments she'd gotten to look at her before she came over, was the fact that her feet were bare.
Pale feet, with little golden discs around her ankles, and Kitane wanted to do nothing but kick off her own silver, strappy heels to learn how to dance barefoot from this woman. "Yes," she repeated and smiled, her gaze moving to the tango class that Ainslie had come from. That was dancing that Theo would like and as much as she wanted to go to the other class too, that one would have to wait.
"I want to learn how to dance," she said, quietly, her gaze moving back to Ainslie and away from the dancers. She wasn't dressed for it, not in her jeans and shining silver halter top, or the pretty heels that gave her a couple extra inches to her height. No, when she came back for lessons, she'd follow Ainslie's example, with a skirt and shoes that she could slip easily in and out of. "Do you always dance barefoot?" She asked, innocently curious.
"Not always, no," Ainslie repeated, warmth in her blue eyes and a very blatant, very non-American gaze as she frankly looked over the other woman, assessing. She came from a place where things were not so polite, and where people spoke their minds, and her gaze said as much, frank as it lit on the silver halter, jeans and heels. "There are times when one must be able to dance like this, si?" she asked, motioning to the newcomer's clothing. "Pero I prefer to feel the earth beneath my feet when I have no one to impress, and here the espacio, the space, it is my own." A warm smile followed, the assessment complete, and she motioned to the desk that graced the rear wall of the studio. "Ven. I will get information from you."
Ainslie turned, went toward the desk with the confident expectation that she would be followed, and she perched on the edge, rather than sitting behind the desk itself. This far back in the studio, the scents of the altar she had in the back room filtered through - candle wax, apples, honey and the flickering glow of candles visible as dancing lights on a room down the hall over Ainslie's shoulder. Ainslie reached for the iPad that was sitting on the flat wood, and she pulled it onto her lap and began a new file for the attractive mujer in silver, and then she held it over. "Information," she repeated, handing the electronic device (which requested name, address, contact number, emergency contact, and styles of dance interested in). "My name is Ainslie," she said a moment later, the A nasal and foreign, as if the nombre was not meant for the accent of the redhead.
There was a difference between critical and assessing, and Kitane knew the difference. While most Americans would have shied away from such a frank gaze, she remained still until it seemed complete and she passed whatever assessment the other woman was conducting. It reminded her of home, of when people didn't look at her clothing or how she was dressed, her hair or her make up, but some indefinable thing that only they knew how to find. That was looked at first, then clothing was noticed. The mothers would eye her critically, trying to determine if she could do the work they needed done before noticing that she needed new shoes, new pants, or that it was time for a real bath instead of the sea baths that Kitane loved.
There were times that she still missed the sea, but that had been Anya's home, not Kitane's. Kitane was here, with a woman that had a pretty accent but kept saying words she didn't understand. She didn't think they were English, but they could have been; after all, she was pretty sure Boson particles were English, but they weren't words she'd ever used before.
As Ainslie gestured to her clothes, she looked down and then back up at the taller woman. "I want to learn how to dance barefoot," she confided and followed her back into the sweet smelling room. It smelled good, not like the sea but warm and cozy, like she could wrap herself up in the scent and fall asleep.
She liked it.
And even if she didn't understand all the words that came out, she couldn't stop smiling as she took the iPad – something she was familiar with – and began filling out the information. It was all known to her, until it asked what types of dance she was interested in. There were some she knew, more that she didn't, and Kitane finally selected all of them before handing it back. "I'm Kitane," she said, formally. "It's very nice to meet you Ainslie," she added, just the way Therese and Theo had taught her, but careful of that nasal A.
"Si quieres-" Ainslie began, catching herself and switching to English a moment later. "If you wish to learn to dance barefoot, then you are in the right place. Come to class tomorrow, si?" she asked, taking the iPad back. "Wear something comfortable, something you can move in very easily, and I will teach you," she offered, liking the woman, something familiar about being out of place and far from home, as she sensed Kitane was.
As for payment, Ainslie merely slid off the desk and put the iPad back where it had come from. "You will pay whatever you can afford, si?" she asked, making it immediately evident that the studio did not exist to support itself, which likely explained the eclectic collection of teenagers and older, non-tourists currently learning to tango. "Ten dollars, twenty, thirty for the month. It does not matter. If you do not have anything this time, you pay the next," she said, clearly unconcerned with money.
Ainslie was already moving forward, watching a bus worth of tourists pour out into the hot, Vegas heat. "If you have an enamorado, we do romantic dances in the evening," she added, looking over her shoulder. Kitane was attractiva, and surely she had a lover waiting at home.
Kitane nodded to all the directions, even the ones about money. Though Therese had taught her and Theo usually left money for her in the morning (or a card, but both were always ignored) she still found it to be maddening. Though she found it easier to pay for services rather than goods, and she'd happily give Ainslie money to learn how to dance barefoot, some things were still impossible for her to manage. Like the grocery store, or going out to dinner, and she was infinitely more at ease when Theo took care of those things.
This was something she wanted though, and it would be her money, not Theo's that paid for it. "Tomorrow," she agreed, words faintly colored with her eagerness. "What time? Morning? Afternoon?" Before Therese, she'd only known how to tell time by the general time of day -- morning, noon, afternoon, evening, and night. Exact times had baffled her and she had been late to dozens of appointments because of it, but patience and the ability to put appointments into her phone had helped a great deal. Unlike most that had been raised with clocks though, she was fond of a broad spectrum of time in which to make an appointment rather than a specific hour.
Like evening. Kitane could definitely be there for romantic dances in the evening, but there was another one of those strange words that made no sense to her. It sounded like in am or ahdo, but that made no sense at all. In ham, maybe? But she wasn't sure what an ahdo was. Maybe an otter? Why would she bring a ham or an otter to a dance class? Where was she even supposed to get an otter? Maybe they ate otter where she came from, like Kitane ate rabbit that made Theo mad. Maybe she meant that she should bring snacks. Yes, that had to be it and Kitane's eyes lit up, seemingly glad to have figured out what she was saying, and nodded eagerly. "I will bring snacks!"
Ainslie, like most speakers of the aptly named "Spanglish," did not even notice when she slipped from language to the next, and she did not understand why Kitane was offering to bring - what was this word? - Ah, si, snacks. They did not have snacks on her island. There were hot meals, but there were no snacks, and perhaps wherever Kitane was from was a place with many snacks, si? She decided this was so, and she did not want to turn down the other woman's hospitality. "Si. I am certain the others would enjoy snacks tambien." And she wondered, idly, if there was some law against feeding people in the studio, but if these snacks were not hers, then it could not hurt.
"Come to the morning class," Ainslie finally said, "if you wish to learn to dance without shoes. At ten," she explained, and it would not be a problem if Kitane arrived late. Ainslie had lived a wild, unchecked existence in green places that led to the mountain and the sea. Her abuela had always been punctual, but Ainslie's life, it had not been this way.
Impulsively, Ainslie reached for one of the cards that was on a cheery little stand near the door, and she wrote her cellphone number on the back and held it out to the dark-haired woman. After learning that almost everyone she knew from Seattle had arrived at this place, she felt in great need of a friendly face. It reminded her to look up Justine, who she believed was here, if the forwarding address on the younger girl's old school was any indication. She would do this, contact Justine, and she would cultivate her own amigas; she thought she might need them very soon, if her gut was telling her the right things, and her gut normally did.
Pulling her phone out of her pocket, Kitane quickly entered the time into her calendar. Not that she would forget, but at nine tomorrow morning when she was having breakfast and dawdling, she'd need the reminder then.
The cellphone number earned a little bounce from toe to toe from Kitane because that meant she could text. Or call, but texting was so much easier than writing and autocorrect might have been the best creation in all the world according to her. As often as it infuriated her by changing her words to the wrong words, it had saved her more times than she could count and thus was good. Ainslie's number went into her contacts, but she took the card too, just in case. "Thank you!"
Unable to stop herself, she did another little toe dance and bounced up to hug Ainslie quickly. Just as sudden as the hug had been, she stepped away, waved at her, and headed out the door. "See you tomorrow!" She called back, already mentally going over the clothes she had in her closet. Did she have something she could wear? Something like Ainslie's, so that she'd be dressed appropriately.