Dancing Aztecs

by Donald E. Westlake

  And were they all old grads? No; obviously a few of them were husbands or wives of old grads, though the majority were widows and widowers. Having outlasted their sexually active lives, they were cheerfully returning to the pointless raillery and flirtations of fifty years before, picking up the same jokes and the same playful relationships that had been dropped for grown-up life half a century earlier.

  Should I stay with Chuck? Are these people suggesting it doesn’t matter, none of it matters, I shouldn’t struggle, because all the decisions finally come down to the same place, anyway?

  “In Dreams I Kiss Your HAND, Madame” … One couple moved alone on the tiny Holiday Inn dance floor, he in powder-blue sports jacket, white shirt, red and black bow tie, pale gray slacks, highly polished black shoes, she in gold slippers and a pink and gold floral design gown like anteroom wallpaper, with a loosely fitting bodice and a tubular skirt. They were doing ballroom dancing together, and they’d been doing ballroom dancing together for forty years. They had danced like that to Ray Noble, and now they were dancing the same way to everything the clarinetist could remember about Benny Goodman, which wasn’t very much. His hair was dyed black, and her blue-gray hair had been placed in the control of the same Junker beauty operator who had plasticized the waitress, but it didn’t matter. They were graceful, smooth, comfortable, and accomplished, and they smiled continuously together. The last time either of them had made a mistake—or surprised the other, for good or for ill—was in 1942.

  Their dance was a mating ritual, and much more obviously so than more recent dances. His moves were authoritative, masculine, in command; smooth, capable, easy, and reliable. Her moves were graceful, complementary, feminine, in agreement; not subservient but still auxiliary, necessary but deferential. They were a smoothly functioning team, but not a team of equals.

  No, not quite that. They were equal, in their importance to the dance, in the scope of movement given each partner, in the relationships between their movements, in the amount of spotlight that each received. But the team nevertheless consisted of a leader and a follower.

  The other old grads were watching with great smiles on their faces, laughing out loud at particularly felicitous spins and turns. They weren’t so much watching the dance as sharing in it; if a part of their group was capable of this, all were capable of it. How many divorces, unhappy marriages, unfaithful husbands and wives, lost loves, missed opportunities were represented at that U-shaped table? Yet, none of them mattered. The couple that had honed its movements, its partnership, its unity for forty years represented them all.

  I was right to quit Chuck. Because if it doesn’t matter at the end, so what? It’s during the life that it matters. If Chuck and I were here, with thirty more years together, we wouldn’t be the couple on the dance floor, we’d be among the also-rans at the tables, pretending the dancers represented our own lives.

  The number ended, and everyone applauded; the old people, Bobbi, the musicians, even the quarreling fifty-year-olds, who were both looking misty-eyed now and who, after the applause, held one another’s hands over the dirty dishes. Saved from truth once more.

  “If we can prove we’re old enough, you think they’ll let us dance?”

  Bobbi looked up in surprise, and it was the young man from across the room, the Heineken’s drinker. Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” was being run through the accordion and clarinet like steak through a meat grinder. The young man had a rather tough-looking face, relieved by a kind of quizzically amused grin and clear level eyes.

  It’s a new world, Bobbi thought “I’m not as good as they are,” she said.

  “We’ll plead youth and inexperience.” And he held out his hand for her.

  She took it.

  A good half of the old people were dancing to “In the Mood”; chins rested on shoulders all over the place. The ballroom couple had toned down their movements, but were still the most graceful and charming sight in the county; elsewhere, a certain stiffness harked back yet again to high school dances, except that fifty years ago it had been shyness and now it was sciatica.

  Bobbi and the young man stepped onto the floor, and he grinned at her again, saying, “Do you Hustle?”

  “To this?”

  “It’s perfect,” he said. “Trust me. Have I ever lied to you?”

  He took her hands. La-da-da, de-dada, la-da-da-de-da Da. Their shoulders, flat and level and set back from their bodies, moved in unison as though operated by a marionettist from above. Their hips had an undulating underslung motion; understated sex. Their feet slid left and right, just above the floor.

  “Nice,” Bobbi said. She was smiling, and he was smiling. Their hands were warm together. Other dancers, catching their eye, smiled and nodded at them. Everybody was happy. In the corner, the fiftyish couple paid their bill and left, arm in arm. The salesman went away with a newspaper under his arm. The male half of the ballroom dancers caught Bobbi’s eye and winked; she laughed, and winked back.

  La-de-da, de-dada, la-da-da-de-da Da.

  The next number was “Ease on Down the Road.” Bobbi and the young man looked at the musicians in pleased surprise, and the clarinetist nodded at them, smiling his inverted T while doobing through his clarinet.

  Ease on dow-own. The ballroom dancers did their best; they frugged or something, without touching. The spear carriers retired. Bobbi and the young man held each other’s elbows, and spun around the floor. “My name is Jerry,” he said, “and I’m from New York.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  ON THE TRAIL …

  Jerry said, “Where you heading?”

  “Los Angeles,” Bobbi said.

  The old folks had gone, laughing and shouting into the night. The musicians had packed up their axes, lit up their Trues, and decamped. The waitress, much of her sentimentalism draining away, had requested payment of her checks and had walked from the kitchen to the exit wearing a black-and-red hunting jacket over her white uniform. The bartender had rinsed a hundred glasses, had played the bells on his cash register for ten minutes, and had finally turned off a lot of lights and gone away. And Jerry and Bobbi sat alone in the Holiday Inn dining room, nursing a pair of anisettes and haying a conversation.

  “Los Angeles?” Jerry shook his head. “Why?”

  “Why not?” she said.

  Which wasn’t an answer, but what the hell. Jerry played it her way: “Because it isn’t New York,” he said.

  “Maybe that’s the reason.”

  Jerry frowned at her in disbelief. “You don’t like New York?”

  “Well, I’m not a real New Yorker. I only lived there seven years.”

  “Lady, I was born in Queens,” Jerry told her, “and let me tell you something. Nobody’s a real New Yorker. You get closer, and you get closer, but nobody gets inside. You know?”

  “No,” she said. “You’re a New Yorker.”

  He shook his head. “Up till a couple days ago, I hadn’t been in Manhattan in four, five years. I used it up when I was in high school, you know? I got to be seventeen, eighteen, I thought I knew about, Manhattan, I thought it was a bore, you know what I mean? But all the Manhattan I ever used up was just some dumb kid’s idea of it. The last couple days, I been in the city, moving around, looking around, and I don’t know that place at all. You ever been in Vegas?”

  “Where?”

  “Las Vegas.”

  “No. Have you?”

  “Sure.” Jerry held up a finger. “It’s one neighborhood,” he said. “That’s what every place is, except New York. One neighborhood. You could be in Vegas six days, there wouldn’t be anything left you didn’t know. I’d like to visit New York sometime, you know? Pretend like my place is a hotel, go out every day, see the city.”

  She laughed, looking at him with interested eyes. “That’s a very funny idea.”

  “Why not? The first week, do all the tourist stuff: Radio City Music Hall, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Staten Island Ferry, UN Building, al
l of that. Second week, the stuff that only some of the tourists know, like the Cloisters up at Fort Tryon Park, and the Circle Line, and the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, and like that. Third week, the nut stuff, things I’d just like to do. Like ride all the subway lines on the same token; you know you can do that? Some kid did it about twenty years ago, took him twenty-four hours. Or how about the Staten Island Rapid Transit; ever hear of that?”

  “Never,” she said. “What is it?”

  “The Toonerville Trolley, that’s what it is. You ever go watch the Stock Exchange?”

  “No, I never did.”

  “Neither did I,” Jerry said, “and I lived in New York all my life. You can go there and watch them down on the floor. How many places got a Stock Exchange?”

  “Very few,” she said.

  He glanced at her, and then away. Every time he looked across the table at her she was smiling at him as though it was Christmas time and she’d found him under her tree. He’d never had a girl look at him like that before, and especially not a girl he was figuring to rob a little later tonight. It was confusing, and unsettling, and he didn’t know what to do about it, so he covered himself by a steady stream of talk. Christ knows what he was talking about.

  New York. The girl said, “You know, I never did any of those things. Except the Statue of Liberty, we went there once. But that’s all.”

  “Then you’re a New Yorker,” he told her. “You gotta be a tourist to see the place. Ever eat in Chinatown?”

  “I didn’t know where the good places are.”

  “They’re all good places, and they all look like crap. I went a few times when I was in high school, I’d like to go back there again. And Rockefeller Center. I used to know a guy in school, he was a nut, he liked to sneak around where people couldn’t see him, he fell in love with Rockefeller Center. You know there’s a whole other level down underneath, with stores and wide walkways and everything?”

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “I’ve gone down there to get out of the rain sometimes. You can go two or three blocks underground.”

  “You can go all over underground,” Jerry told her. ‘This guy claimed he could get out of the subway at Grand Central and walk underground as far as 51st Street and Eighth Avenue. I’d like to find out if that’s the truth.”

  “Oh, I know one!” She was getting caught up in it now. “The escalators at Lincoln Center!”

  “Escalators?”

  “All the buildings there have huge windows,” she explained. “And escalators. A girl I know in the orchestra says it’s a terrific kick to ride up and down the escalators and look out the windows at the same time. You go up and you start with just the fountain, really, and then there’s Ninth Avenue and Broadway, and the traffic, and the other buildings, and it just keeps changing. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

  He was dubious, but he said, “Maybe so. And all the museums, that’s something else. I went to a couple of them on class trips when I was a kid, but whadaya get out of something like that? Nothing. Who knows, maybe today I’d get a kick out of it.”

  “Like the Fire Department Museum,” she said. “You’d have to love that one.”

  “Fire Department? Where’s that?”

  “Way downtown, near City Hall. It’s full of terrific old fire engines. A friend of mine took me there one time. You have to see it.”

  “Okay,” Jerry said. “As soon as I get back. Or, should I wait for you, and you’ll take me?”

  “I’m not going back,” she said, but she didn’t sound happy about it. Positive, yes. Defiant yes. But not happy.

  “You’re not going back? Never?”

  “I’ve left my husband,” she said, “and it’s for real, and I’m never going back.”

  “To him, or to New York?”

  “Neither.”

  “How come? Is he the mayor?”

  “What?” She looked blank for a second, and then she laughed. “It’s all connected in my mind,” she said. “It’s a journey into independence. Or does that sound stupid?”

  “No, I can see that,” he said. “If you’re making a big move, you want to make a move.”

  “Right” she said. “If I’m leaving, I’m leaving.”

  “Sure,” he agreed. “If you’re throwing out the bath water, you might as well throw out the baby.”

  She frowned at him. “Somehow that doesn’t sound the same.”

  “Why would anybody want to live anywhere except New York?” he asked her. “You’re quits with your husband, so you punish yourself by living in some tank town somewhere.”

  “Los Angeles isn’t a tank town.”

  “The hell it isn’t. Los Angeles is three Long Islands next to each other. But no Midtown Tunnel.”

  Laughing, she said, “If you’re so crazy about New York, what are you doing way out here in the provinces?”

  “Business,” he said. “I’m coming out to get something, and then I’m going right back.”

  “All right,” she said. “But what if everybody felt the way you do? What if everybody wanted to live in New York?”

  “They do. That’s why they all hate New York so much—it’s envy. But you know who the big guy is in the social set in Indianapolis? The one that just got back from a trip to New York. He could go to Chicago or St. Louis or any damn place, and all people say is, ‘How was the trip?’ New York is the only place in this country he could go, when he gets back people say, “Tell me all about it.’”

  She laughed again, and said, “Maybe you’re the mayor.”

  “I’m not so dumb,” he said, and a fellow in a yellow blazer came over to apologize, and to say they wanted to close up the dining room now for the night. “Sure thing,” Jerry said, and the two of them walked out to the semidark lobby.

  The original idea in Jerry’s head had been that he would scratch up an acquaintance with Bobbi Harwood, hustle her into bed—in her room—and grab the statue once she was asleep. He could be on his way back to the city before sun-up, he could be in Mel’s living room—either with the golden statue, or with proof that this wasn’t the right one—before noon. That had been the original idea, but something had gone wrong somewhere, and now he didn’t know what the hell to do.

  The problem was, she liked him. The other problem was, he liked her. Who could expect a thing like that from some ditzy broad that throws her husband’s clothes out the window and takes off like an asshole for California? Who could expect that she wouldn’t be a ditzy broad after all—except for maybe that Lincoln Center escalator idea—or that she would have such a nice friendly smile, or that she would act like a real human being instead of a bar pickup?

  But without the original idea Jerry didn’t have any idea at all, so it was with some variant on Plan A still in mind that he now said, “I’d ask you up to ray room for a nightcap, but I don’t have anything to drink. But I’d like to go on talking.”

  “So would I,” she said, smiling. “I wish I could. This has been a lot of fun, Jerry. You make me think I might want to visit New York someday.”

  “It’s a rotten place to visit,” he told her. “Do you want me to tell you why?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but don’t do it. I’d love to talk with you till morning, but I put in a seven-thirty call, and I’ve got a lot of driving to do tomorrow.” She held out her hand; the friendly brushoff. “I really did enjoy meeting you, Jerry.”

  He took her hand, but didn’t immediately release it. “Any reason you have to get up that early?”

  “Several,” she said. “But the one that counts right now is that I’m not going to be a runaway wife shacking up with a strange guy her first night on the road.”

  He released her hand and stepped back, a pained smile on his face. “All of a sudden, I run out of arguments.”

  “I did enjoy meeting you, Jerry,” she said, and they exchanged a few more words in the same vein, and then she went away to her room and he went away to a phone booth and put in a call to Mel.

  Wh
o answered in person: “Yeah?”

  “Mel?”

  “Jerry! By God, what happened to you?”

  “I’m out in the middle of nowhere. What’s happening back there?”

  “She’s got it, Jerry!”

  “What? Who?”

  “Bobbi Harwood!” Mel’s voice was running up and down its range, full of excitement, and behind him several other voices could be heard whooping and shouting.

  “Bobbi Harwood?”

  “All the others are checked out– It’s her, Jerry, it’s definitely her!”

  For some reason he hated that “Great,” he said. “I’m on her trail.”

  “Go get her, tiger,” Mel said.

  “Right” said Jerry.

  AT JFK …

  “Foreigners,” said the driver of the CBS remote unit truck. “That’s what it is; it’s foreigners, they don’t know shit.”

  “You can say that again,” said the announcer, a guy named Jay Fisher, sitting beside him in the cab. The truck was a huge monster full of equipment, including its own generator, and it could send live pictures direct to the studio in Manhattan, which is what it was going to do as soon as those South American assholes in that South American asshole of an airplane got the hell onto the ground and got this goddam business over with.

  The driver said it again: “They don’t know shit,” he said. “An American, now, he’d come down in prime time, am I right? Make his point when there’s somebody around to listen. Look what the hell time it is,” he said, and looked at his own watch to see. “Five minutes after fuckin’ three o’clock in the morning. Who the hell’s up now?”

  “You and me,” said the announcer.

  Inside the plane from Descalzo, circling for its final approach, drama had given way to exhaustion. The air conditioning had failed over northern Louisiana, and most of the passengers were now sprawled out asleep, with their mouths open; just like home. The pilot, the co-pilot, the stewardess, and Pedro himself were all dressed in strange oddments of this and that; for the pilot, it was the fifth complete set of clothing this trip. Fortunately, however, by Mobile, Alabama, Pedro had finally become inured to the processes of landing and taking off, and there had been no unfortunate incidents either there or later in Columbia, South Carolina, the ultimate refueling stop before New York. Perhaps relevant to that, there was also no more gluppe aboard, and Pedro was becoming increasingly sober. If he weren’t so weary that he could barely keep his eyelids and gun raised, he would be terrified out of his mind.