Elizabeth McCracken - Niagara Falls All Over Again

No: I wouldn’t go to Johnny’s, where the town toughs might be toasting to my father. I’d swing into Des Moines, maybe go to Babe’s (another bootlegging restaurant; Iowa still held on to Prohibition), maybe find myself one of those nice WACs. We’d check into a downtown hotel, a grand one — I chose the Fort Des Moines, in honor of her home base. I wouldn’t bother to call my sisters. Understand: I knew I would do nothing of the kind. I decided to do these things so that I could then decide not to.

So I drove past Greenwood Park, up Grand Avenue to Babe’s, and around the state capitol, past the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, back toward downtown, then north. I went past the Jewish Community Center, where Hattie and I had gone to dances at my father’s urging. As a matter of fact, there was a dance going on that very night; couples strolled in through the front door. They looked cheerful and full of pep. I parked the Jewett and stared at the place. It was as though I’d been talking to my father: Pop, I’m going to Johnny’s Vets’, maybe Babe’s .

Mose, no nice girl will ever be in those places, because no nice boy would take her there. Why not go to the Community Center? You like to dance, so dance. Have a soft drink. Talk to nice people.

So in I went.

Most of the people inside seemed to know each other — they attended the Temple, or Tifereth Israel, the Conservative synagogue. I got myself a glass of lemonade from a plump girl in a tight pink dress. It was weird to see people dancing like this, earnestly, as though they’d studied dancing for a test. The band was two fat men in blue suits, one a piano player, the other a saxophonist. They played on a small stage near the lemonade girl.

Was dancing allowed during mourning? I flexed my toes in my funeral shoes, and thought I could maybe work it in.

When I first saw the woman, she was trying to avoid having her shoes trampled by an old guy whose bald head shone with sweat. I touched my own forehead in sympathetic embarrassment. They were doing the Castle Walk, an ancient dance. Probably it was the only one he knew. The woman wore her black hair in a Spanish bun, with curls on either side. You could tell she thought she came off as taller than she was, but actually she was tiny, with a long nose and white skin and I had never, never seen anyone who looked like her, so unlikely and so beautiful. She was bossy when she danced. If they were the Castles, Castle-walking, she was certainly Vernon, and he Irene.

The saxophonist was giving the pianist room to do some fancy stuff on the keyboard. He leaned over to me and said, a mind-reader, “Go ahead, ask her to dance. What’s the worst that could happen?”

So I walked off to do that very thing. Later I found out he was the lemonade girl’s father, and that’s probably who he meant.

But the woman I had my eye on was with yet another man, this one skinny and pimple faced, with an active Adam’s apple — was he talking, or swallowing nervously? She made the way she dodged his jabbing elbows into a little ballet. I lost heart. She was too good, and though I knew I could outdance any of the men here, I couldn’t outdance her. Who could?

I caught up with her at the refreshment table.

“May I?” I asked. The lemonade was free. My offer was only to accept the drink from the fat girl and hand it over.

My woman smiled. “Surely. Thank you.”

The lemonade girl handed me a dripping glass, though earlier her aim had been faultless.

“My name is Mike Sharp,” I told the dark-haired woman. I waited for her recognition. The saxophonist said to the piano player, “See?”

“I’m Jessica Howard,” she said. She wiped the glass with a handful of her black skirt, which was made of bands of lace you could see light through: it was a Roman Colosseum of a skirt. Beneath it, she wore a dark red slip. “That guy I was dancing with?” she said. “Voice like a saltine cracker. Made me thirsty.”

The sax player pulled his instrument apart and laid it in its velvet lined case.

“No more music,” Jessica said sadly.

“Next time,” the saxophonist told her, despite himself, “I’ll play you a flamenco.”

She winked at him. Oh God, I thought, I need a wink like that myself. I said, “May I give you a ride home?”

“I don’t get in strange cars with men.”

“I don’t have a car,” I said, renouncing anything she might not like. “May I walk you home?”

She was looking at me with what was either contempt or the earliest stages of affection. “Why?”

“Why,” I repeated. “I’ve been away from Des Moines for a while. I’d like to take a walk. We could keep each other company.”

“Well, then,” she said. “Let’s walk.”

The air outside felt damp and cool, like something laid across the chest of an ailing child. I felt cured already. She had a kind of skipping stride. Maybe she was thinking of how she’d attack the flamenco at the next dance. I couldn’t decide if I liked the fact that she didn’t know I was the Movie Star. I was pretty sure I did.

“You dance beautifully,” I told her.

“Should,” she said. “It’s my business.”

“You dance professionally?”

“Have. Now I teach. But I danced with the Chicago Opera Company for two years.”

“Ah,” I said. “You teach ballet?”

“ Every thing. Ballet, tap, social. I could teach you.”

“I sort of already know,” I said, modest as I could. “People tell me I’m a pretty fair dancer.”

“Didn’t tonight,” she said.

The short sentences kept catching me by surprise. My turn? Already? “I just got into town. I guess I’m still tired.”

“Too tired to dance,” she said musingly. “So then: where?”

“I was in a dance marathon.” True enough: for a few days in 1929 when I was between bookings, I’d entered (and lost) a marathon. I hoped that would explain my enthusiasm and weariness.

“Good grief, that’s not dancing. That’s just”—she moved her shoulders around, imitating someone who mistakenly believed he was dancing—“that’s foolishness set to music. Dancing isn’t a race. You can’t do a marathon of it.”

“Well, then, I’ll come for a lesson.”

She smiled then, delightedly. “Do!” she said. “Here we are.” She turned to face me. She seemed to have her feet arranged in one of the five positions; I didn’t know which one. “Mr. Sharp,” she said, and that she’d remembered my name for a whole five blocks thrilled me. “Thank you.” She tipped an imaginary hat.

“When?” I asked.

“When what?”

“The lesson. When should I come?”

“An eager student!” She stuck a fist on one hip. “Tomorrow? Two-thirty? Call — it’s 9-0427—and make sure.” Then she turned and walked up the path to a brick house with a green door. Like my California house, it had a red Spanish-style roof; I nearly ran up the path and pointed that out to her. One strand of her black hair had come unwoven from her bun; it nearly reached her waist, and I wanted to fix it. I touched the corner of my mouth, as if she had kissed me. She hadn’t. She hadn’t touched me at all.

I walked back to Valley Junction, a considerable distance. I imagined I looked like Dick Powell, besotted with a girl, about to kick a can and burst into song. For a moment I thought: my father died two days ago. But on that long walk home it seemed I could remember one thing at a time — either Jessica dancing, or my father, and I chose. Every time I thought of Pop, I willed myself not to, so thoroughly that the next morning I had to take the streetcar into Des Moines to pick up the car.

I Could Keep Time by You

When I arrived the next day for my lesson, Jessica was dressed in leotards, a small flippy skirt tied around her waist. The girls in Hollywood, in vaude, wore next to nothing, sometimes, but in a house in Des Moines Jessica’s immodesty seemed revolutionary. She invited me in. Our houses, apart from the roofs, had nothing in common: the room I stepped into — her dance studio — was all wood, honey-polished from ballet slippers and dimpled from taps. In the corner a young man with dark hair that fell into his eyes sat at a grand piano, his shoulders already up to his ears, his hands above the keyboard, as though he was a character in a Swiss clock, waiting for the hour to strike.