George Mills (43 page)

Stan David was the orchestra leader at the Delgado Ballroom. David’s was a regional band, almost a municipal one. They played at proms and weddings and, during the week, at the Delgado. They cut no records but had been often on the air. Theirs was the studio band for the local Mutual radio station, and they had been heard behind the victory celebrations in the ballrooms of many downtown hotels a few hours after the polls closed on election days.

David was a small man, prematurely gray and responsible-looking. He looked more like the orchestra’s business manager than its conductor and, when he sat down at the piano to lead his band, he somehow seemed someone from the audience, the father of the bride, say, or the high school’s principal being a good sport. Indeed, he’d joked with the man who’d hired him for the Delgado and who’d commented on the fact that Stan wasn’t dressed like the other players. “I know this town. It’s a conservative town. I’m as much a master of ceremonies as a musician. These people will take more from a gray-headed guy in a business suit than they would from some boob in a yellow show biz tux.”

On the Saturday night of George Mills’s free passes it was not yet an orchestra when Mills walked in. Unaugmented by strings or woodwinds, it was barely a band. They were still setting up.

George glanced at the small group, at their odd displacement on the commodious bandstand, at the gap, greater, Mills judged, than the distance between home plate and pitcher’s mound, between the trumpet and the drummer. He looked at the arrangement of the vacant, freestanding, streamlined music stands like big phonograph speakers, at the sequin flourish of their initials.

Gradually the band fleshed itself out, but the dance floor seemed as unoccupied as the bandstand had, the handful of couples dancing there as reluctant to move next to each other as the musicians. They swayed skittishly to the temperate brass, the long, queer beat of the piano.

George is aware of his new clothes, the creamy fabrics like an aura of haberdash, a particular pocket like a badge of fashion, the vaguely heraldic suggestion of his collar, his lapels like laurels, his cuffs like luck. He strolls across the dance floor and, absorbed in all the flying colors of his style, already it is like dancing. He moves in the paintbox atmospherics of the big glowing room, the polished cosmetics of light.

Chiefly he is aware of his shoes, his elegant socks, his smooth, lubricate soles like the texture of playing cards. Always before the earth has resisted, stymied his feet, and he has walked in gravity as in so much mud. There has always been this layer of friction, of grit. Now he moves across glass, ice, the hard, flawless surface of the dance floor packed as snow. He feels swell.

Stan David, his voice augmented by saxophones and clarinets, by drums and bass, calls the room to attention. He is neither seductive nor peremptory but matter-of-fact as someone returned from an errand. He breaks into their mood seamlessly. “The boys and I are awful glad to be playing for you folks tonight. It’s an important date for us because it’s the first time Mr. Lodt has asked us to do a Saturday night at the Delgado, so first off we want to thank those old friends who’ve so loyally supported our week-night appearances and who Mr. Lodt tells us have been requesting our engagement for the big one.”

Most of the people applaud Stan David’s announcement. George, on the strength of his good mood, applauds too.

“Well, thank you,” Stan David says, “thank you much. God bless you all.” He turns momentarily to the band and brings the song they’ve been playing to a conclusion. It is, George guesses, their theme song, though he does not recognize the melody. Immediately they begin another, softer, slower, as unfamiliar. “While we were jamming,” Stan says, turning back to them, “I noticed a few unfamiliar faces in the room, a few new friends, I hope, I hope.” There is additional, louder applause for David’s familiar tag line.

“You know, it’s funny, the lads and I have been doing gigs in this town since almost just after the war and, you have my word, I never forget a dancer. If a couple comes by the bandstand and I happen to spot them I have their style forever. I can recall all the different partners they dance with and know even the kinds of songs they sit out. That’s what our music’s about, you see——dancing. That’s our bread and butter, that’s what pays the rent. If just listening to music is what you prefer, better get yourself a high hat and a box at the opera. Buy records, a radio, tickets to concerts. Go with the highbrows when the symphony plays. That goes for the chaperones, that goes for the shy. Mr. Lodt thinks so too. He doesn’t want any wallflowers blocking his fire exits. We don’t get paid for our fancy solos and hotsy-totsy musicianship. It ain’t Juilliard here, it’s a dance hall. Now it’s a big floor…What’s that Mr. Lodt? Right. Square foot for square foot the biggest in the Midwest. So there’s no need to bump into anyone. We want you to enjoy yourselves but expect you to behave at all times according to the international rules of ballroom etiquette. If you’ve come to show off or act like a rowdy you might just as well leave right now, I hope, I hope.

“Okay? Okay. Now, you gals who are here for the first time, who came with your girl friends to see what it’s like, it’s a scientific fact, it takes forty-eight muscles to frown and only half a dozen to smile. You guys remember that, too. But
everybody
pay attention——we might just be playing your song when you fall in love!”

George has seen the bar, more like a soda fountain than a bar, more—though he has no firsthand experience of this—like the sinks and Coke cupboards in rec rooms, finished basements. He has a forlorn sense of other people’s families, of uncles and dads in sports shirts, of daughters who babysit one and two years after they have graduated high school, a notion of these girls in baby doll pajamas, rollers, furry slippers, of brothers called out for swim practice, track, even during vacation. They run punishment laps.

But it is the girls who choke his spirit, the peerless globes of their behinds full as geometry, their breasts scentless as health. He imagines their lingerie, the white cotton average as laundry. He knows there are virgins about, feels the concentrated weight of their incurious apathy, their inert, deadpan, ho-hum hearts. And is oppressed by obstacle, the insurmountability of things.

Yet he knows that it is only through some such girl—he hasn’t seen her yet, has merely glimpsed her type gossiping over a soft drink, or dancing with a young man or another girl, not heedless so much as inattentive, not wanton, even when her partner tentatively divides her thighs with his leg, so much as absolved, locked into a higher modesty—that he may begin his life, be freed from the peculiar celibacy that has marked it, his periodic, furious bachelor passions like seizures. But he has seen the beerless, liquorless bar who till now has only wooed with chemicals the chemically primed. There is no jukebox. How may he cope? He is ready to leave. And is actually walking toward the exit and past the gilt chairs that line the margins of the dance floor when Stan David speaks.

“Girls ask the boys to dance. Girls ask the boys to dance. Step up to some fellow, girls, and invite him to dance.”

“You want to dance?” Louise asks him.

“Me?”

“Stan says.”

“Sure. I guess. I’m not much of a dancer.”

“It’s a box step.”

“Oh, a box step.”

“You can do a box step, can’t you?”

“Is this a box step?”

“That’s right. You’ve got it.”

“Like this?”

“You’ve got it.”

“I’m dancing,” George says.

“Louise Mead,” Louise says.

“George Mills.”

“Mrs. Louise Mills. Mrs. George Mills. George and Louise Mills.”

“What?”

“Oh,” she laughs, “you’re not from around here. When a girl tells a boy her name and the boy tells his, the girl gets to say what her name would be if the girl and the boy were married.”

“I’m not really a boy.”

“What a thing to say!”

“I mean I’m twenty-seven years old.”

“An older man,” Louise says. “You’re an older man.”

“That depends,” he says, pleased with his response.

“I’m nineteen,” she says, and he has a sense that things are going well. He’s following the conversation and doing the box step. The song—Stan David and his orchestra are playing “Getting To Know You”—has been going on for almost seven minutes.

“Did you come with someone, George?”

“No. Did you?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“Oh.”

“Do you think I did?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not very flattering. It’s Saturday night. I’m nineteen years old. Do you think I’d come to a place like this by myself?”

“I guess not,” George says.

“It’s still the same song,” Stan David says. “It’s still girls ask the boys, and it’s still the same song.”

“I love your togs,” Louise says.

“My togs?”

“Your clothes, silly.”

“They’re brand new. They’re brand new togs.”

“The boys and I just might play this song right to the end of the set. We might play it all evening. Does this tell you something about the human heart? Anybody can fall in love with anybody if they stand close enough long enough.”

“He always says that.”

“Did you know about this? Did you know there’d be girls ask the boys?”

“What if I did?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to sit down, George?”

“If you do.”

“I’m by myself,” she says, and lays her head on his shoulder. “I came with my folks.”

The cat has his tongue. In a bowling alley, in a bar, she would have had the story of his life by now, the comfort of his theories, but like this, in the dim room, a virgin in his arms, their bodies’ curves and hollows adjusted by the dance, customized by music as by tailoring, he has no words, is adrift in a soup of contrary sensations. He is that self-conscious. He wants to kiss her. But knows that if he does—she is with her folks; where are they?—it would be a declaration helpless and humiliating as the raw need of those chemical-flooded ladies to whom he’s ministered, revealing as a stump. He feels his erection, which he manages to keep out of her way, and glances furtively at the pants of the other male dancers to see if he’s out of line. He is astonished. There are erections everywhere. It’s a logjam of hard-ons.

“Why’d you ask if I knew Mr. David was going to make the girls ask the boys?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it because you thought I’d been watching you? Is that the reason, Mr. Stuck-Up?”

“No.”

The lights in the room are turned up and George can hear laughter, whistles, catcalls, bursts of applause. It’s the people on the golden chairs. They are appraising the swollen crotches of the men. The ballroom has exploded with laughter. The drummer peppers the hall with rim shots, great percussive booms. “All right, all right,” Stan David says, “let’s have some order here,” and the music sweetens, the lights dim. “Hey,” he says when the dancers have reestablished themselves with the dance music, “you like this, don’t you? Sure. We do all the work, background your courting like music in a movie, and you get the glory. Bet you’d like us around always. Be there in the trunk of the car playing your song. Hanging just out of sight, crouched behind bushes while you’re kissing good night. Or strung out on rooftops lining your way when you walk your girl home. Some nerve. Some nerve I say. Change partners! Go on, change partners or we quit playing.——All right. I warned you. You can’t say I didn’t warn you. Lads?”

The music seems snagged, caught on the baton David jabs into the midst of the orchestra. A clarinet breaks off, a saxophone. The drummer quits in mid-phrase. Stan David snaps his baton in two like a pencil. The bass man leans his instrument against the proscenium, takes a folded newspaper out of his back pocket and sits in a chair to read it. Piecemeal, they wind down, the music thins, is gone.

“Come on, will you!” a voice calls from the dance floor. “Strike up the band!”

The bandleader shuts the piano lid. He turns on his bench and folds his arms.

A few of the dancers begin to hoot. It’s as if the film has gone out of synch in a movie house and they are whistling the attention of the projectionist.

“Nope,” Stan David says, “nope.”

“Come on, Stan. Play, for chrissake.”

They start to clap.

Lodt has climbed up on the stage to confer with Stan David. The bandleader shakes his head. Lodt turns to the crowd and shrugs.

George grins at Louise. “It’s part of the show. Is it part of the show?” George asks the nineteen-year-old girl.

“He’s really angry,” Lodt tells the crowd.

“Make him play or give us our money back.”

“I asked him,” Lodt says. “You all saw me.”

“Make him play.”

“He’s the bandleader,” Lodt says. “He’s like the captain of a ship. He’s in charge. He could marry you legal.”

Louise squeezes George’s hand. She is the one who has taken it. As soon as the music stopped George had let go, had taken his arm from about her waist.

“Come on,” someone shouts, “what do you think this is? Don’t jerk us around. We’re veterans here.”

“You’re veterans?” Stan David calls back. “Veterans? Oh, if you’re
veterans,
” he says in mock conciliation, and produces a new baton and gives a downbeat. The band strikes up a march tune and the veterans groan.

“I think it’s part of the show,” George Mills says.

The march is concluded. The trumpet sounds retreat. Stan David plays the national anthem on the piano.

Many of the dancers have lost their partners, couples walk off the dance floor together, a few wallflowers drift off by themselves. George Mills tags along beside Louise. It’s as if he had come with her. She introduces him to her friends, to a girl named Carol, to another named Sue. He meets Bernadette and her husband Ray. He meets the Olivers, Charles and Ruth. Ellen Rose and Herb, her fiancé. And this is something new to him from ordinary life. He can’t recall when he’s met so many people at one time. Or himself been formally introduced. When he was a child perhaps. Vaguely he remembers comments about his growth or the similarities of certain of his features to those of his father. He half expects these people to offer a remark about his eyes or smile, and though he realizes he is no longer tall for his age he would be more comfortable if they took note of his height or remarked upon some other aspect of his physical appearance. It is something to which he could respond, as he must have done in the past, smiling shyly or agreeably nodding. As it is he has no repertoire, is actually uncertain how to reply when someone says “Pleased to meet you, George.” He answers “Pleased to meet you, too,” but it sounds flat to him, foolish. He is uneasy among all these virgins—Louise, her girl friends—uneasy with her pals, the young marrieds. With Ruth Oliver, visibly pregnant, with Bernadette, who does not yet show in her fourth month.