Stuart Kaminsky - Dancing in the Dark

I shrugged and drank my Pepsi.

About six months ago, give or take an hour, I had promised Anne I would stop dropping in at her apartment at all hours of the day or night, would not call her unless I had a real emergency, and would stop sending her poetry which, she said, was “obviously not written by you.” I had, with the agony of a four-year-old who can’t sit still for dinner, stayed away.

“You’re looking good, Toby.”

“You’re looking beautiful, Anne.”

“Thank you.”

A skinny waitress in a wilting Betty Crocker of a uniform plunked our lunches in front of us and hurried away. Anne had vegetable soup and a salad. My hot pastrami came with a stack of fries. I should have been happy, but I knew something was about to be served that I wouldn’t like. I took a bite of the sandwich. It was hot and piled high with thin slices of spiced meat. It didn’t taste half bad for Los Angeles pastrami.

“How are Phil and. .” Anne said after a nibble of lettuce.

“My brother is fine,” I interrupted. “His wife and kids are fine. Sheldon Minck is fine. I’ve got about four hundred dollars. My back is holding up well. I’m seeing the cashier at Levy’s. Her name is Carmen. She reminds me of you, without the smarts. I’m still in the boardinghouse. I still go to the fights when I can and. .”

It was her turn to interrupt.

“Enough,” Anne said, putting down her fork and meeting my eyes.

I took a determined third bite of my sandwich and washed it down with Pepsi.

“I’m going to get married,” she said.

“Congratulations,” I said. “Anyone I know?”

“You’ve seen him,” she said, watching me eat. “I sold him a house. He made me laugh.”

That hurt more than the news that Anne was getting married. I had made her smile a few dozen times when we were married, but no laughs. And I was sure there had been no laughs with her second husband, Ralph.

“Open the envelope and read the winner’s name,” I said between furious attacks on phase two of the sandwich.

“Preston Stewart,” she said.

I didn’t feel like eating any more. Preston Stewart was a contract player at M-G-M. Preston Stewart had been in about two-dozen movies and had starred in two low-budget ones, one a Western, the other a melodrama. He was blond, good-looking with lots of teeth, and, worst of all, he had to be a good ten years younger than Anne.

“Toby? Say something.”

“I heard on the radio that the Chinese have begun translating the Encyclopedia Britannica. News came straight from Chungking. Middle of a war with Japs running all over their country and they’re translating an encyclopedia. You can’t beat people like that. You can only kill them.”

“Toby, please,” she said, gently but firmly.

“What am I supposed to say? I said congratulations. I love you. I want you back. I’m never going to get you. You’re marrying a kid movie actor with. . with teeth, lots of teeth, big white ones. And he can make you laugh.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, pushing her salad around with her fork, not eating.

“And that’s why you called me?”

“I thought I should tell you face to face,” she said.

The skinny waitress was back.

“Everything okay?” she asked, not much caring and reaching for my empty plate. The fries were gone. I had eaten them without knowing it.

“Fine,” I said.

“Coffee?”

“Another Pepsi,” I said.

“Just ran out of Pepsi. Coke or Royal Crown.”

“Coke,” I said.

“Coffee,” Anne said, looking at her watch. “Black.”

The waitress nodded and headed through the door to the kitchen.

“Would you like to know about Preston? It might make it easier if you knew what a. .”

“No,” I said, holding up a hand. “I don’t want to know how kind, loving, rich, and funny he is. Call me a sore loser. Call me childish, which you’ve been known to do. My guess is I’ll avoid Preston Stewart movies for a year and then I’ll start going to all of them, looking for signs of decay or melting, wondering how you two hit it off in bed and if he’s still keeping you laughing down on the beach in your tans.”

“I didn’t think you’d be this bitter,” Anne said.

“You caught me by surprise. I didn’t have time to fake it or tell a bad joke or two. The truth just came out.”

The waitress was back with my Coke and Anne’s coffee. She put the check in front of me. Anne reached over the table for it.

“I invited you to lunch,” she said.

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Let me come out of this with a little dignity. The bill’s only two bucks and change.”

Anne sat back, looked at her coffee, tucked away a wisp of hair behind her left ear, and looked back at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You deserve a break. I hope Preston Stewart is it.”

“Thanks, Toby,” she said.

“When’s the wedding?”

“Soon. When. . if you ever feel better about this, I’d like you to meet Press.”

“One condition,” I said. “I don’t have to call him Press.”

Anne almost smiled.

“His real name is Asher Cahn.”

I nodded and finished my Coke. Anne hadn’t touched her coffee.

“Thanks for caring enough to tell me face to face,” I said, picking up the check.

“I don’t think it would be a good idea to invite you to the wedding, Toby.”

“It would be a very bad idea.”

Anne dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin and rose. So did I.

“I’m a little late,” she said. “I’ve got to hurry.”

I nodded and got up.

Anne came around the table, touched my hand, and kissed my cheek. I think she was crying. At least I like to think there was a tear or two. Then she was gone.

I left a big tip and was turning toward the cash register when the skinny waitress appeared, picked up the tip, and said, “She dump ya?”

“Yeah.”

“Figures. She didn’t eat and you leave a big tip.”

“You should be a detective,” I said.

“Helps to have a little knowledge of human nature in this job,” she said. “Go get a little drunk. I do when I get dumped.”

“I don’t drink,” I said.

She shrugged and answered the upheld hand of a distant customer.

Less than twenty minutes later I was at the Y.M.C.A. downtown on Hope Street. I looked for Doc Hodgdon or someone else for a handball game. No luck. So I got my stiff light gloves from my locker, loosened them up, and attacked the heavy punching bag in the corner of the gym, near an old guy with dyed red hair who was steadily shooting free throws.

After twenty minutes of punching and a shower, I felt tired and a little better. There was a Loew’s theater a few blocks from the Y. I walked over and saw a March of Time about the New Canada and They Got Me Covered with Bob Hope. It was only a little after four when I got out and closed my eyes against the afternoon sun.

I got in my car and drove to the Roxy, where I saw He’s My Guy with Joan Davis, Dick Foran, and the Mills Brothers. There was also a musical short with Borrah Minevitch’s Original Harmonica Rascals. I remember the little guy, Johnny Puleo, wearing cowboy chaps and trying to muscle his way into the act. That’s all I remember of what I had seen in the dark that day. Joan Davis and Bob Hope had gotten a few smiles out of me but that was it.

The sun was still up but not as bright and there was a chill in the air. I headed home. It was about dinnertime, but I wasn’t hungry.

I found a space on Heliotrope about half a block down from Mrs. Plaut’s boardinghouse, walked down the street and up the three steps of the white wooden porch.

Mrs. Plaut was just inside the screen door waiting for me, arms folded across her tiny twig of a body, clutching what looked like a tattered ream of paper to her slender bosom. Mrs. Plaut was somewhere between seventy-five and ninety, with the constitution of Primo Carnera and the energy of Ray Bolger. Her hearing had long ago begun to fail her, but she more than made up for it with eyesight and determination.