“Okay.” She giggled and tried on the other suits, and we walked out of the discount house an hour later, the happy owners of two new suits each. Deep dusk had settled over the parking lot, but plenty of traffic still zipped by on Highway 50. Late rush hour-the commuters who worked late to avoid the worst crush of traffic. With the possible exception of midnight until three a.m., every hour of the day in the greater D.C. area was rush hour of some kind.
“Does this mean you’re coming to Jekyll Island?” I asked.
She gave me a “don’t push me” look. “It means I’m planning for all eventualities, keeping my options open.”
“Spoken like a true union negotiator.”
Tucked up in bed an hour later, I started in on the first page of the manuscript, even though my eyelids were drooping. The first chapter consisted mainly of introductory-type comments-why Corinne was writing the memoir and a bit of ballroom dance history. The second and third chapters concerned her childhood and I skimmed those, even though her accounts of her father’s harshness (verging on abuse, it seemed to me) and her younger brother’s death from pneumonia at age four were riveting. The following chapters dealt with the way she fell in love with ballroom dance by watching all the old musicals in the local theater on Saturday afternoons, and her earliest dance lessons, paid for by the money her mother made sewing for neighbors in the evenings after her day’s work was done.
Corinne had just moved to New York City when I must have drifted off, because I awoke the next morning, one manuscript page crumpled under my cheek, the rest of them scattered on the floor where they’d fallen during the night. Great. A glance at the clock told me I didn’t have time to sort them out; Maurice would be here in half an hour to pick me up for the funeral. Hastily scooting the pages together, I stuck them in my bedside table and dashed for my closet. I didn’t have a single outfit anyone would call “solemn,” so I had to settle for a zebra-striped sheath dress that went almost to my knees, with black hose and strappy black sandals. I twisted my hair into a simple chignon and, thinking it was kind of Corinne-ish, added a small black hat with a wisp of veil that I’d worn when Rafe and I performed a foxtrot on the Ballroom with the B-Listers results show a couple years back. A slick of light makeup and I was waiting in the front hall when Maurice pulled up.
When we arrived at the Presbyterian church, Maurice deserted me with an apology to join the other ex-husbands in a front pew, across the aisle from Randolph and Turner Blakely. “Corinne drew up the seating charts,” Maurice explained in a low voice before he headed toward the altar, “and selected the music and the scripture passages for reading, and the flowers. It looks like Turner’s done a nice job of fulfilling her wishes.”
I gave Turner a silent apology for assuming he’d been the one determined to turn Corinne’s funeral into a spectacle; rather, it was Corinne orchestrating the drama from beyond the grave. I shivered and slotted myself into a pew near the back, where the scent of lilies and carnations wasn’t too overwhelming. I could just glimpse the oiled mahogany of the casket. I didn’t think I’d feel compelled to draw up a script for my funeral when the time came.
We were a few minutes early, and I watched as other mourners trickled in. Mrs. Laughlin entered on the arm of Jonathan Goudge, and they were ushered to the pew behind the ex-husbands. Marco Ingelido and his wife arrived and followed an usher to a pew only two in front of where I sat. I guessed they hadn’t made Corinne’s A-list. Lavinia Fremont arrived soon after in a beautifully cut black linen suit and a wide-brimmed hat with enough veil to hide Jimmy Hoffa. I recognized her by her limp, and by the fact that she was shown to the pew Mrs. Laughlin occupied.
I recognized many, many of the other mourners, dancers I’d competed against, or ballroom dance legends I’d revered-Corinne’s contemporaries. My pew was filling up, and I looked up in semiannoyance when a newcomer squeezed in beside me. My annoyance turned to pleasure when I recognized Tav.
“I didn’t think you were going to make it,” I whispered. I’d mentioned the funeral to him a couple days earlier, but he’d been unsure about getting away from his business long enough to attend.
He scanned the church with slightly lifted brows. “Judging from the crowd, I wouldn’t have been missed.”
“I’d have missed you.” Oops. I hadn’t meant to say that.
He gave me a warm smile that elicited all sorts of feelings not appropriate for a funeral. I resolutely faced forward as the service began, but I was conscious of his muscled thigh pressed against mine and his every movement as he flipped a page in the program or stood for a hymn. A photographer-not Sarah Lewis-took pictures discreetly, and if people had been wearing brighter colors and the music had been a bit more up-tempo, I’d have thought I’d stumbled into a wedding rather than a funeral.
We were spared any eulogies, and the service itself was mercifully brief and tasteful. The interment was in the cemetery attached to the church, and we all filed outside while the organist played a dirge-y piece I didn’t recognize. I was grateful for my sleeveless dress as we emerged into the swampy heat. Tav stayed beside me as we angled toward the grave site, his arm lightly draped over my shoulders. Something black moved under the awning set up to shade the mourners, and I took a closer look as Tav asked, “Is that-”
“Black swans,” I said, suppressing a giggle. Six of the large birds were corralled in a roped-off area to the left of the grave opening. A scrawny man in black jeans and a black T-shirt with SWAN WRANGLER stenciled across the back cast seed for them and headed off an aggressive bird that pecked at the patent-leather shoes of a woman who walked too close.
“Now I have seen everything,” Tav said in a wondering voice. “I have seen doves at weddings a couple of times, but this is my first experience of swans at a funeral.”
“Something to keep in mind for when your own time comes,” I said with an impish smile.
“Absolutely not.”
He said it forcefully, and a couple in front of us turned to glare. I buried my head in his shoulder to stifle my giggles and felt him shaking with laughter, too. “This is a solemn occasion,” I managed to squeak after a moment, straightening up. The minister was saying something, but we were too far back, and a breeze was blowing her words away, so I couldn’t hear. What we did hear was a sharp yap-yap. I looked around, thinking a stray dog might have wandered into the graveyard, but didn’t see one until Tav poked me gently and directed my attention to a furry mop of a dog sticking his head out of a woman’s purse to tell the swans what he thought of water fowl at a funeral.
The dog’s owner tried to silence her pet with a hand around his muzzle, but the dog continued to mrrf and growl. People nearby began to smile or frown, and a wave of muffled laughter and comments spread through the crowd. The lowering of the casket caught the dog owner’s attention, and the pooch seized the opportunity to leap to the ground. Threading his way through people’s legs, he beelined for the swans. Despite the fact that they were three or four times his size, he dashed under the rope and stood barking at them. The minister spoke louder to compensate. A couple of the swans waddled away uneasily, more disturbed by the shrill yapping, I was convinced, than by any threat the tiny dog represented, but another swan moved toward the pup, hissing.
Before the swan wrangler could shoo the dog out of the enclosure, the aggressive swan fanned his wings wide and snaked his head toward the dog. With startled yips, the mop dog turned tail and ran, the swan chasing him. People backed away as the angry swan sailed over the rope and the wrangler cried, “Not yet, Ebony, dang it!”