Norman looked at his watch. It was nearly two thirty. Norman and Patsy’s spouses were supposed to have rejoined them at two. “I suppose they aren’t coming,” said Patsy.
“I suppose you’re right,” answered Norman.
Patsy sighed. “The colors were much brighter last year,” she said quietly. “They’re quite muted now. They almost seem to be fading.”
The two looked at one another, each knowing the same thing: that by this time next year there’d be no fair, and thus, no color left at all. And what then?
What then?
1935 PERSEVERINGLY TERPSICHOREAN IN WASHINGTON STATE
The two women hadn’t started out as friends. In fact, they weren’t even acquaintances in the beginning. But after a couple of days of polite nods and another three days of courteous verbal greetings, Mrs. McLatchy took the plunge and invited Mrs. Trestle to take the empty seat next to her in her box. It was positioned on the opposite end of the ballroom from the bandstand and the stage. Here one could see the full breadth of the competition area.
The Century Ballroom on the “Seattle-Tacoma Hi Way” was less than a year old but had already earned a name for itself not only for its size — it boasted an impressive twenty thousand feet of floor space — but for its strange design: it looked, upon first glance, like a Martian mausoleum, the subtlety of its Art Deco design origins getting somehow lost in architectural adventurism. This hadn’t stopped Guy Lombardo and his brothers from performing there a few weeks earlier and bringing over twenty-five hundred fans in out of the rain.
Mrs. Trestle lived in nearby Fife. Mrs. McLatchy came from Tacoma, a half-hour’s drive away. The distance didn’t discourage Mrs. McLatchy from attending the “Walkathon” (as the dance marathon’s promoters chose inexplicably to denominate it) just as often as Mrs. Trestle. Both women came twice a day with rigorous regularity — first for several hours in the morning and early afternoon, and then again for several more hours in the evening. In between their two daily visits, they dashed home to feed their respective pets and to read their respective mail, Mrs. Trestle to dust and mop and add the spic to the span of her little widow’s cottage, and Mrs. McLatchy to make sure that her maid was doing all of the above in addition to putting Johnson Wax wherever Fibber McGee and Molly on the radio told her to. Mrs. McLatchy was wealthy; Mrs. Trestle was not. This mattered not at all to the two sexagenarians, who became fast companions as the Walkathon plodded on, hour after hour, in the great Martian ballroom.
In the quiet mornings, when there wasn’t much to see, Mrs. Trestle brought her knitting. The dancers were much more subdued at this early hour and appeared to be saving their strength (what little of it there was) for the evening, when the ballroom boxes and grandstands would swell with those who came from as far away as Seattle to see what had been banned both there and in its companion metropolis, Tacoma. Arbiters of morality in both cities branded dance marathons cruel and indecent, and attractive to only the riff and raff of society.
The dance marathon attended by Mmes. McLatchy and Trestle in the Century Ballroom of Fife, Washington, was not so different from any other. Most of the spectators came to see the live drama of bedraggled human endurance — to take voyeuristic pleasure in witnessing hardship and peril from a safe distance, and to thank their lucky stars that it was not they out there on that punishing dance floor. It was a ghoulish thing. But this was not the reason that Mrs. McLatchy and Mrs. Trestle came. They came to cheer on their favorites.
Each woman had selected two couples early on for whom she would root—two so that if one dropped out or was purposefully eliminated from the competition, there would still be a couple left to pin her hopes on.
“47 and 93,” said Mrs. McLatchy, pointing out her favorites to Mrs. Trestle with one of the latter’s unemployed knitting needles. “And you?”
“Numbers 13 and 62.”
“Why those two?” asked Mrs. McLatchy, who did not like to knit, and so was in daily possession of crossword puzzles instead. As Mrs. Trestle considered the question, Mrs. McLatchy plucked up a crustless cucumber sandwich from the little picnic basket resting on the floor at her feet. There were crackers in there as well, and a little cool stainless steel tub of some sort of pâté that Mrs. Trestle couldn’t identify.
Finally, Mrs. Trestle replied: “I looked them all over on the first day. I can spot the professionals — the ones who make money from dancing. I don’t like it that they let the professionals in here. The specialty acts are always entertaining, but I know for a fact that many of these dancers are vaudevillians who are being paid on the side.”
Mrs. McLatchy, who did not know this, cocked her head in edified amazement.
“So I seek out the ones who look hungry, who look down on their luck. I study the clothes they wear. Are the girl’s dresses faded? Are the boy’s trousers tattered and torn? Is there a hollowness to their faces? Are their eyes sunken in their sockets, as if retreating from all the pain they’ve seen? I choose to put my faith in those who seem the most deserving.”
“Your two couples are quite young.”
Mrs. Trestle nodded. “They’re just babies.”
“Mine are older, as you can see. I’m looking for the two couples who seem to have the best chance of winning. It’s just like sizing up thoroughbreds in the enclosure before a race. Take Couple Number 38 over there, for example. I very nearly picked them. See how they’re moving like stiff corks bobbing in the water? They appear to be conserving their energy.”
Mrs. Trestle nodded. “You can tell that they’ve been in marathons before. But they don’t look very hungry.”
Mrs. Trestle didn’t like it that the crowds in the evening came to see blood. When the sun went down, the Walkathon became all but gladiatorial. On some nights there was the “sprint.” “One fall and they’re both out!” the emcee would bray into his microphone. On other nights, there was the “grind”: continuous dancing without the customary fifteen-minute rest period every hour. The couples danced on and on until one member of a partnership dropped from sheer exhaustion. And the unfortunate dancer need not even make full bodily contact with the floor to be disqualified, along with his companion; a single knee touching the floor was sufficient to send the pair home.
“I sometimes feel guilty watching it,” confessed Mrs. Trestle during a particularly long-lived “grind.” It was nearing the five hundredth hour of the marathon and there were still fifty-one couples remaining on the dance floor. No one seemed fatigued to the point of imminent danger but all seemed painfully, wearily beaten down — even more so than usual. “I feel that I shouldn’t be watching, that I ought to turn away. There is so much suffering inside this hall.”
“Now, my dear,” said Mrs. McLatchy, setting down her pencil and crossword puzzle, having been stymied by a four-letter “tool” containing the letter “z.” “They’d be dancing here day in and day out whether we’re present to watch them or not. And, darling, you know that I have a great deal of money and I take every opportunity that is given to me to add my coins to those generous silver showers. I’m sure that’s why many of these young people have entered this competition, my dear. To win the top prize, well, certainly — but also to take some money home with them even in defeat. And I speak for the professionals as well. Vaudeville is dead. Where else has a dancer to go? The radio? And Hollywood is such a terribly difficult place to make a—”