Not Exactly a Love Story (23 page)

“I think the chemistry is good,” I said. There were two
angelfish trying to maintain some stability in the quivering bag. “They’re beautiful.”

“Go drop the bag in the tank. Their water temp has to adjust before you open the bag.”

“I remember.” I tossed my backpack into the car.

Dad took a closer look at me. “You got into another fight?”

I pulled one shoulder up in half a shrug. “I was moving a filing cabinet and the drawer slid out.”

“Nothing’s broken?”

“It doesn’t look that bad, does it?”

“Swellings are worse in the morning. I think. Same drawer that hit you before?”

“Not a word to Mom. Mr. B covered for me.”

This wasn’t quite enough to relieve Dad’s mind. “Is it over with now?”

“I think so. I hit him back this time. Big surprise to both of us. Why are you here so early? You don’t usually drive at this hour, do you?”

“I took a different shift. I’ve got a small part in a film. Three lines.”

“Cool.”

Mr. B was coming out as I took the fish in, on his way to a practice. He saw Dad, said good morning, and shook hands. From the bay window, I saw there was a little eyebrow action from Dad, probably questioning whether the trouble with Biff was really over, and Mr. B made a little punching motion and clapped him on the shoulder.

“They look like they might get along,” Mom said as she came up behind me. I agreed, although I didn’t care to get all aren’t-we-all-one-big-happy-family about it.

“Do me a favor? Open the bag and let them out in an hour or so, okay?”

“Sure.”

When I got back outside, Mr. B and Dad were laughing together, and then Mr. B was on his way. It was sort of a relief that he was. It was fine with me that Dad and Mr. B didn’t have to be enemies, but I wasn’t ready to stand around being the son and the stepson at the same time. Not yet.

Dad saw me coming and said, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, son. How’s about I join you for a turn around the track?”

He drove me to the school, not talking much. When we got out, we avoided looking in the direction of Mr. B and the team. We walked around the track, partly because Dad hasn’t been becoming a runner, but more because I didn’t feel we were doing this so I could show my stuff. About the second time around, Dad got up his nerve.

“I don’t know how you’re going to take this, Vinnie. But I’m seeing someone.”

“You’re entitled. You don’t have to get my okay.”

“I felt like I needed to.”

“You don’t need to. Do I know her?”

“It’s Mona.”

“Mona the meddler?” I asked, to seem surprised.

“She’s a nice woman.”

“She is! I like her. I feel like we’ve always known her, right?”

“Lately she started bringing over these posters to put on the wall,” Dad said. “I asked her to hang around, have a bite to eat. We got to know each other without all the noise.”

“Other people looking on.”

“I know this is hard on you. But I can’t wait until you’re too old to care what I’m doing with my life,” he said, with just a trace of impatience.

I said, “I’m glad you’re happier.”

“I’m glad your mother’s happier,” Dad said. “Frankly, I think I’m happier. I want what’s best for all of us, and it may turn out, someday, that right now we’re in the painful process of getting just that.”

That hung in the air between us for what seemed like a long time. And I can’t say it didn’t get to me. I finally formed a response to it. “I hope you know, I won’t be feeling sorry for you anymore.”

Dad laughed and said, “God, that’ll be a relief.”

I expected to find the locker room empty.

“Hey, Gold, you joining the track team?”

This from a wiry senior. He was already on the team, and even though the dean had introduced me to him, I was uncertain how good a reception I was going to get.

“Better the track team than the buffalo boys,” I said, hoping he didn’t have a wider brother on the football team.

“Good thinking,” he said. “My brother’s going to be the
time to beat. Dancing made him strong. Fast. Not all those ballerinas are lightweights, you know.”

“Daniel,” I said, grinning.

“Yeah.” Some kind of big-brother protectiveness came into play. “You don’t think ballet is sissy, do you?”

I laughed. “I won a quickstep competition a couple of years ago.”

“Quickstep?”

“Ballroom dancing. I hope there’s room for more than one of us on the team.”

“Oh, yeah, but he’s going to be the star.”

“We’ll see.” I slipped the bundled-up mask out of my backpack and into my gym locker. It started to unroll, but I yanked the sweater out of my backpack and covered it up. I left both items in the locker.

When I was thirteen and fourteen, I went out trick-or-treating with a black satin cape Dad got from a bit part he did in a movie. I didn’t go so much for the candy as for the excuse to swoop around in a cape that made me feel a little wild. Bold.

Juvenile stuff, I know, but between you and me, I keep that cape hanging in my closet. Sometimes I even put it on when I’m just in my room or something. Probably a touch of theatrical blood in my veins.

That night, I pulled out those black leather pants that happened to be terrific now that seriously cold weather had set in, and matched them with a black silk shirt I wore for
dance contests. The cape no longer brushed against my heels like the first time I’d worn it, but it hung below my knees. Good enough.

I stood close to the mirror and slowly turned my face from side to side. Not too bad. A faint discoloration. The fat lip was only a little pouty. I cut eye holes in a strip of black T-shirt fabric and tied it over my face like a headband. I was slick. Symbolic.

Zorro.

I cut a few moves in front of the mirror. More than were strictly necessary to know if the cape worked, which it did—it shimmied, it swirled, it draped, like great hair.

And then I headed out.

Mr. B’s school keys were on his dresser. Although I would no doubt get home before he and Mom did, I just slipped the marked book room key off the ring, leaving the key ring lying there where he’d left it. I thought it over and removed the bar dogger that would open the gates that stretched across the ends of the corridors after hours. He wouldn’t miss the keys even if I had to wait until tomorrow to return them. Mr. B wouldn’t bother with anything but his car keys until Monday. The man was regular as a prison guard.

I left my coat in my gym locker. It covered the mask and sweater,
still hidden inside. I put on the cape, tied on the strip of black mask. I got a few glances in the locker room, but no comments. There were a lot of white suits vying for the
Saturday Night Fever
look; there was a Lawrence of Arabia and a cowboy.

“Butch Cassidy?” I asked the cowboy.

“Sundance Kid,” he said. “That’s who got the girl.”

I nodded.

“Zorro?” he hesitated a moment. “I don’t remember him getting the girl.”

“Maybe not on TV,” I said. “In the movies, he did.”

“Cool.”

The gym had been transformed. Everyone entered
through double doors that had been framed with a big heart shape outfitted with red and pink balloons.

Inside, disco lights flashed to the Bee Gees’ beat. There were balloons clinging to the ceiling and long streamers dangling, some with glittering paper hearts that reflected the lights, others with red glass beads sparkling.

Garlands were strung around the room to draw the eye to posters of famous movie romances.
Gone with the Wind, Love Story, Annie Hall
, and
West Side Story
were the ones that caught my eye. And the DJ was dressed in a white suit, his dark hair shiny and styled like Travolta’s.

The floor was already filled with dancers.

I didn’t see Patsy.

I made the rounds of the room, checking out the dance floor. Most of the girls wore sequined cat’s-eye masks, but they were costumed in everything from frilly period gowns to slinky black dresses.

The guys wore black eye masks or strips of black silk tied Zorro-style, like my own. With most of them, their pants and shirts were, on the whole, harder to figure. Open collars and rolled-up cuffs could have meant anyone from Humphrey Bogart to Ryan O’Neal. Some tried for more romantic silhouettes, wearing loose-sleeved shirts and tied-back hair. There were a surprising number of guys with capes, long and short.

Biff walked in. He was not wearing Patsy on his arm. No mask, either. A sheepish look seemed to be all the costume he believed he needed.

I’d just finished paying for a soda when Patsy came in with somebody I didn’t recognize. She was a surprise. Her hair was pulled up into ponytails over each ear. She wore Bermuda shorts and a little top. Her arms were bare. Alabaster and bare. I just love girls’ arms, so thin and straight.

She turned to her friend, the boy next door to her Gidget, and grinned. He loped off, making a beeline for a girl wearing white tennis shoes and a wide pink skirt with a black poodle appliqué. I took a step in Patsy’s direction, but Brown Bunny got there first, with a couple of other girls in tow.

So I made it my business to circulate, stopping to say hi to several people I recognized and to compliment a caped highwayman on his costume. Daniel nodded to me as he walked Melanie to the dance floor. I crossed paths with Biff on my rounds. We didn’t speak, and he didn’t pretend not to see me. We more or less pretended not to know each other.

I lounged around with my soda in hand while Patsy danced a few, including one dance with Biff. She didn’t make a point of snubbing him, anyway. He didn’t hold her hand on the way to the floor. He didn’t look at her once they were dancing—he simply leaned from side to side like a wind-tossed palm tree—instead, he was looking around the gym, making sure everyone saw him with her. Sort of Biff enjoying being Biff. He made no connection with Patsy.

As for Patsy, her heart wasn’t in it. I thought she definitely had her eye on me. Whenever I let my eyes drift in her direction, she looked away from my general vicinity.

Biff stopped swaying long before “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” finished, said something to her, and left her standing on the floor. Patsy drifted in my direction. She stopped only a couple of steps away, and asked, “Errol Flynn?”

I shook my head. “Tyrone Power.”

I tried to think of something to follow this up. Zorro had gone all strong and silent on me. Patsy kept her eyes carefully trained on the dance floor.

She asked, “Did you come with anybody?”

“I didn’t know if I’d come. I don’t really have a group to hang around with. So I didn’t ask anybody.”

This got a nod.

I noticed her socks. They were these cute girl socks—the ankle section was a dog’s body; the folded-over part was a puppy’s face with a tongue hanging out. I wanted to laugh, but it felt wrong at just that moment.

I said, “Dance?”

“Sure, I’d like to,” she said.

I stepped away to get rid of the untouched soda, my chest tight with anticipating the dance, the girl. I had hopes of getting something faster to dance to, something to burn off my nervous energy.

She waited indifferently as I came back to her, now hardly acknowledging my invitation to dance. But this didn’t bother me—I had a feeling I knew this side of her from talking to her late at night, the hope that she wouldn’t seem too clueless, or in this case, too eager.

I took her hand and led her to the edge of the dancers. I
got lucky. An Eagles song, “Take It to the Limit.” Hardly anybody but a dancer knows that’s a waltz. I drew Patsy up against me like I didn’t think she could find her way, leading in true ballroom fashion. She looked at me in surprise.

Her hand slipped beneath the cape up to my shoulder, I could feel the skin of her bare arm right through the silk shirt. I felt my belly tighten but let a smile play across my lips as I drew back to look at her. I saw the curiosity in Patsy’s eyes, highlighted by a twinge of apprehension.

I swear I could feel her heart beating as I whirled her onto the dance floor. She stayed right with me. I felt something—some pressure in my chest—let go all at once. Easing back. I was happy, the way dancing always made me happy. Patsy looked confident, and for a good reason—Patsy could dance.

The magic came.

Next, we drew “Devil with a Blue Dress.” I released her and started to move to the beat. She did too, and she was sassy, sexy. Fun. The waltz had warmed us up, left us with a calm, focused energy, a boost of creativity. When I moved in closer, she matched her moves to mine, as if she’d found a pattern in them, and she began to anticipate them with complementary moves of her own. We danced within inches of each other.

A group of observers formed a roomy circle around us, but we hardly noticed except to make use of the extra floor space as we segued into the next piece of music, Grace Jones
singing—no question of whether we’d stop dancing. The magic held. We were enjoying ourselves. We were having fun.

On the last notes, I spun away from Patsy. Corny, but effective. A few kids actually clapped, the disjointed applause made us aware that we were still being watched. Made me aware of ol’ Biff standing there with two sodas in his hands.