The Chicken Dance

  Mr. Munson squeezed my hand and said, “Nice to meet you, young man.”

  He stood up and pulled some change out of his pocket and asked, “Can you do me a favor?”

  I nodded my head and said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Could you run down to the lobby of the hotel and buy a soda for me and one for you? I’m really thirsty and I have to talk to your parents for a minute.”

  I knew that Mr. Munson was only trying to get me out of the room so he could talk to my parents about Dawn. I wanted to hear what he was going to say, so instead of going down to the lobby when I left the room, I stood out in the hall and left a small crack in the door. I heard Mr. Munson say, “The reason I decided to come up to your room to talk to you instead of meeting at the restaurant is because I thought that you’d prefer to hear this in private.”

  “What is it?” my mother asked. “Is she in a wheelchair and will never be able to dance again?”

  Mr. Munson said, “No. She’s fine physically and is very much able to dance.”

  “Oh, thank God,” my mother said.

  I imagined her grabbing her chest the way she did when she thought that maybe the television was broken when it was only unplugged or that Horse Island Food and Furniture was out of TV dinners when they had more in the stockroom freezer.

  Anyway, Mr. Munson started talking again and told my parents that he’d seen a young woman named Liza Pinelli who he thought was Dawn. Two things made him believe that it was her. One was that Liza’s face looked like the pictures of Dawn that Mr. Munson had seen. The second thing that made Mr. Munson think that Liza might be Dawn was because of the way she danced. He had seen her at Bourbon’s Broadway, the same place where the woman’s legs popped in and out of the curtain. That’s why Mr. Munson had asked my parents to stay at the hotel we were in.

  It was his first time at this place, and when Liza Pinelli came out onstage, Mr. Munson didn’t notice how much she looked like Dawn. Even when she started twirling a baton, he didn’t realize it was her. He said it wasn’t until the next day when he remembered the picture my father had shown him of Dawn in a dance costume that Mr. Munson realized Ms. Pinelli could be Dawn.

  When Mr. Munson got to that part, my father yelled, “You’re saying my daughter’s a stripper! I ought to punch you for coming in here and telling me this bull!”

  Mr. Munson answered back real fast, “Calm down, Mr. Schmidt.”

  Then my mother yelled, “Don’t calm down, Dick. Hit him. Make him bleed. He hasn’t found Dawn. He’s just trying to get more money out of us. Hit him!”

  Mr. Munson yelled, “Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt, please calm down! Your daughter is not a stripper and I promise you that I’m not going to charge you anything. I hate it when I can’t solve cases, and I have a son, and it would kill me if he was missing and I couldn’t find him.”

  Mr. Munson started telling his story again and repeated that he didn’t realize until the next day that the dancer could be Dawn. That’s when he did a little more investigating and found out that Liza Pinelli’s name used to be Jennifer Joy. He found out that that was a fake name too. He told my parents that Liza Pinelli had changed her name so many times that no one knew what her real name was. Before he investigated any more, Mr. Munson wanted my father to identify Dawn.

  I didn’t understand why Dawn was dancing in New Orleans if she’d been kidnapped. I thought maybe the kidnapper had let her go, or that she’d escaped, but I didn’t know why she hadn’t come home. I wanted to ask that question, but I didn’t because I wasn’t supposed to be listening, and I kind of hoped that my parents would ask him.

  But they didn’t. Instead, my father asked, “So if Dawn’s not a stripper, why is she dancing at that place across the street?”

  Mr. Munson said, “It’s not a strip club. It’s a theater where the girls sing and dance. I think we should go over to the club tonight, Mr. Schmidt, so you can see Liza Pinelli for yourself and figure out if she is your daughter, Dawn. But I’m telling you now, you have to remain calm. We don’t want to scare her, if it is Dawn. Do you understand me?”

  “I understand,” my father said. “I’ll remain calm.”

  Mr. Munson cleared his throat and then said, “Mrs. Schmidt, to avoid arousing suspicion, I think you should stay here. There usually aren’t too many female clients at Bourbon’s Broadway.”

  “Why not?” my mother asked.

  “Because although it’s not technically a strip club,” Mr. Munson said, “some of the performances aren’t meant for other women.”

  “What are you telling me, Mr. Munson?” my mother asked.

  “Exactly what I just told you,” Mr. Munson said. “Women don’t go there to watch the show. The performers aren’t the best singers or dancers. They’re usually young, attractive women who wear revealing costumes and who men like to watch sing and dance.”

  “Are you saying my daughter is a bad dancer?” my mother asked.

  “I’m not going to argue with you about this,” Mr. Munson said. “If you want to go over there, then go. But I promise you, you’ll have a much better chance of reuniting with your daughter if you do this my way.”

  Nobody talked for a couple of seconds and then Mr. Munson said, “Also, just be aware that legally there’s nothing we can do, because she’s over eighteen. Right now, the best we can do is get her to tell you why she left.”

  “Okay,” my father said.

  I wasn’t sure what Mr. Munson meant about trying to find out why Dawn had left. My parents told me that she’d been kidnapped. And then I thought that maybe she hadn’t been kidnapped and that my parents had lied to me.

  I didn’t have long to think about it, though, because I heard Mr. Munson coming toward the door. I ran down the hall a little, turned around, and then walked back toward our room until the door opened and Mr. Munson stepped out. He looked at me, and before he could ask me why I didn’t have any sodas, I said, “The machine was broken. I’m sorry. Here’s your money back.”

  Mr. Munson smiled and said, “Don’t worry about it, young man. Keep that money, and when the machine starts working again, you buy yourself two sodas and drink mine for me.”

  I said, “Thank you, sir,” and then he walked away from me to the elevator. I liked Mr. Munson and wanted to follow him out of that hotel. I wanted to follow him and have him tell me about the birds and the bees and throw a baseball to me and have him give me a cool nickname like that kid Beaver. I wanted to follow him so badly, and so I did follow him down the hall a little, and I don’t even think I realized I was doing it until I heard my mother say, “Don! Where are you going? Get back over here.”

  Mr. Munson turned, looked at me, gave me a smile and a wink, and then stepped into the elevator. He waved at me, and just before the doors closed, I told him something I’d been wanting to tell someone all day. I told him, “Today’s my birthday.”

  Twenty

  That night, my mother and I sat at the two windows and watched the club across the street. My mother shook her head and said, “I can’t believe you did that. I just can’t believe it.”

  I stared down at the door of Bourbon’s Broadway where my father and Mr. Munson were inside waiting for a dancer that might be the sister I thought was dead. Since my mother wanted to keep an eye on the place and wanted me to help her, she told me that Dawn worked there.

  “I just can’t believe it,” my mother said again. “Why didn’t you tell us it was your birthday? Why did you shout it out to Mr. Munson? Now he’s going to think you wanted a gift from him, and that’s just selfish and rude.”

  I had woken that morning knowing it was my birthday, but I was too busy thinking about Dawn to really think about it too much. I’m not sure why I shouted that out to Mr. Munson. I guess I just wanted someone to wish me a “Happy Birthday.” I even imagined Mr. Munson showing up at the hotel with a cake with candles and a present. My parents hadn’t given me a present, and I didn’t think I was going to get one, either, because my mother said, �
��I have a good mind to not let you pick out a gift this year. You really upset me, Don, and now is not the time to upset your mother.”

  She started to cry and I thought about how I had seen the mother on Eight Is Enough cry once and her son Nicholas had walked over to her and hugged her and told her that everything would be okay. I wondered if I should do the same. But then my mother stopped crying and said, “What’s going on down there?”

  I looked out the window and saw my father and Mr. Munson standing by the front door of Bourbon’s Broadway. Then my father walked to the door of the hotel and disappeared. My mother stood up real fast and then pressed her hands to her face and said over and over again, “Oh my god. Oh my god. I wonder what happened. I wonder if it’s her. I wonder if it’s her.”

  A couple of minutes later, my father came into the room and before he could say anything, my mother asked, “What happened?”

  My father looked at me and said, “Don, go downstairs and see if that soda machine is working.”

  I started to walk to the door, but my mother said, “It’s okay, Dick. He knows. He was helping me watch the place.”

  My father breathed real deep and said, “Oh whatever, I don’t even care anymore.”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and I leaned against the window. My mother stayed standing.

  “So what happened?” she asked.

  “She wasn’t there,” my father said.

  “She wasn’t?” my mother asked. “Well, start from the beginning and tell me everything that happened after you and Mr. Munson left here.”

  “I’m not really in the mood, Janice,” my father said.

  “I don’t care if you’re in the mood or not,” my mother said. “Tell me.”

  My father took a deep breath and said, “Okay. As you know, I met Mr. Munson in the hotel lobby at ten p.m., and then we walked across to the club and sat at a table and had some drinks. A few girls danced and sang, and then the host guy called out a special performance by Liza Pinelli.”

  My mother stopped him and asked, “What song was playing?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “The song. What song was playing?”

  My father shook his head and said, “I don’t know. Some song about school being out for summer. I think it was Alice Cooper.”

  My mother scrunched her face up like she’d just eaten something sour and said, “I hate that song.”

  My father closed his eyes and said, “That’s not important, Janice,” and my mother said, “Don’t snap at me.”

  My father opened his eyes, stood up, and said, “An Oriental girl walked onstage,” and then he walked out of the room and slammed the door.

  My mother and I stood and watched the door for about ten seconds and then my mother said, “Oriental. Dawn’s not Oriental. What does that even mean? An Oriental girl walked out onstage. Why did Mr. Munson think Dawn was Oriental?”

  After my mother said it out loud again, I kind of figured that it was the wrong girl. I still wasn’t positive, though, and I was hoping that my father would come back and tell us what he meant before I had to go to sleep. He didn’t, though, and after about an hour, my mother told me to go to bed.

  I changed into my pajamas and then got under the blanket of one of the two double beds in the room. I couldn’t fall asleep, though, because I wasn’t tired, and my mother was walking all over the room. I kept my eyes closed so my mother would think I was sleeping. It must have worked, because after a while I heard her dialing the phone and then whisper, “Hey, it’s me. Can you talk?”

  I didn’t know who she was talking to, but I knew that the person was with a “she,” because my mother asked, “Where is she?” and then she asked, “Do you think the phone woke her?”

  Then I heard her say, “He’s out,” and then, “He’s asleep.”

  I started to realize that she was probably talking to R. B., even though she didn’t say “R. B.” or a name with the initials R. B. Anyway, she told that person about everything that had happened and then said, “I miss you,” and hung up the phone and went to the bathroom.

  I wondered if my father knew about R. B., or if my father had his own R. B. If he did, it probably wouldn’t be a man, and she probably wouldn’t have the initials R. B.

  Anyway, then I heard a door open. At first I thought it was my mother coming out of the bathroom, but then I heard a toilet flush and another door open and my mother say, “Come here.”

  The bathroom door shut, and even though it was closed, I could hear my mother screaming, “How dare you storm out of the room like some hysterical chicken with its head cut off!”

  My father started crying and said, “Janice! Janice! I’m so sorry. It’s just so much to take. Please forgive me. Please, Janice. Forgive me.”

  My mother lowered her voice and said, “You make me so mad sometimes, Dick. Come here.”

  I heard a slapping sound like she was patting his back. “Everything is going to turn out okay,” she told him. “We’re going to find her.”

  “We need to tell him,” my father said.

  “Not yet,” my mother said. “Let’s see if we can find her first. I want her to tell him.”

  I didn’t know what my parents were talking about. I didn’t know if I was the “him” that my father wanted to tell something to. I figured that I probably was, but I didn’t want to know what he wanted to tell me. It scared me because I thought it was something bad. Why else would my mother not want to tell me? I thought maybe I was sick and was going to die soon. But I didn’t understand why my mother wanted Dawn to tell me. Even after my parents came out of the bathroom, turned off the lights, and went to bed, I tried to think about what it was they weren’t telling me. I found out later, but it wasn’t my father who told me. It was Dawn.

  Twenty-One

  The next morning we all went to breakfast at a restaurant and my father started to tell my mother and me what had happened after the Oriental girl walked out onstage.

  Before he could tell us, though, my mother asked, “What was she wearing?”

  “Who?” my father asked.

  “The Oriental girl. What was she wearing?”

  My father put down his cup of coffee and leaned back and asked, “What? Why?”

  My mother leaned back too and said, “I just want to know, Dick.”

  My father took a breath and said, “I don’t know. I think a black sequined leotard, but I’m not sure because it was dark.”

  “A black sequined leotard?” my mother said. “I hope Dawn doesn’t wear that. She never looked good in black.”

  “Anyway,” my father said, “after the announcer called out Liza Pinelli’s name, the Oriental girl walked out. So I looked at Mr. Munson and asked him what he was trying to pull because there was no way he could have mistaken Dawn for an Oriental girl. Well, then he told me that the Oriental girl wasn’t Liza Pinelli, or at least not the Liza Pinelli he had seen and spoken to.”

  Then my mother asked, “So why did the Oriental girl say she was Liza Pinelli?”

  My father popped the lid off of a bottle of aspirin and then said, “Well, Mr. Munson spoke to one of the dancers and she said that Liza Pinelli was sick but no one had told the host, so he was just reading off of the list he used every night. So we’re gonna go back tonight to see if Liza Pinelli is working. I already called into work to let them know that I won’t be in for a couple of days. I told them there was a family emergency.”

  That night, my mother and I were in the same positions by the window as we were the night before, but we were wearing different clothes, and my mother wasn’t yelling at me about telling Mr. Munson it was my birthday. My mother was looking out of the window at the people going into Bourbon’s Broadway.

  “You know,” she told me. “I bet it was that Oriental girl who picked that Alice Cooper song. Dawn would never pick a song like that. I think she’d dance to something by the Jackson 5 or the Bee Gees.”

  I told her, “You’re probably right.”r />
  I don’t know why I told her that because I didn’t really know what song Dawn would dance to. I guess I just told her that because I knew she liked it when I agreed with her.

  “Oh, I know I’m right,” she said. “I know my little girl and she would not dance to some song by Alice Cooper.”

  Then she turned and looked at me for a second, smiled, and said, “But thank you for your vote of confidence,” and then she turned her head and looked out the window again and said, “Or maybe a song by Elvis, but nothing by Alice Cooper.”

  Before I could say anything else my mother screamed, “Oh my god!”

  I looked out the window at the front door of the theater and saw two big guys push out my father and Mr. Munson. My mother yelled, “Oh my god! What do you think happened?”

  My father started shouting and both my mother and I opened the windows and heard my father yell, “It was her! It was my daughter and she didn’t even want to see me!”

  My heart jumped a little because of what my father had said. First I was excited because it meant that Dawn was alive and not just a picture on the wall or someone my mother talked about. But then I was confused because I didn’t understand why she didn’t want to see my father. Before I could think about that too much, though, my mother screamed, “Oh my god, my baby’s alive!”

  She ran out of the room and in about two minutes she was on the street yelling, “Where is she? Where’s Dawn?”

  Mr. Munson talked to my mother while my father walked up and down the street throwing his hands in the air and cursing. I couldn’t hear exactly what Mr. Munson was saying because of all the people in the street. I found out later what had happened, though, from my mother.

  You see, my father and Mr. Munson were at the same table as the night before waiting for Liza Pinelli to come out and dance. When she did, my father recognized her right away and jumped up from his table and ran toward the stage screaming Dawn’s name. Mr. Munson ran after my father to stop him, but before either one of them could get near the stage, Dawn ran off, and then two bouncers grabbed them and threw them out on the street.