“I think I heard her Bug coming up the driveway.”
The shop door opened and she stepped in wearing a hooded parka and pulling off her gloves. “Well, hi!”
“Hi there!” said Arnie. What a picture. The Gypsy Hobett Coffee Shop Girl had an entirely different air about her in this place. You’d think she grew up here.
Dane exchanged a warm smile with her and a thumbs up.
She made a whimsical, tentative kind of face and pulled back the hood of her parka.
Dane became frozen in time.
Arnie stared unabashedly.
Her hair was blond, golden through and through. She cast them a little sideways glance as she hung up her parka and pulled off her boots, but said not a word.
“What’s this?” Arnie asked.
“You did it,” said Dane.
Her hand went to her hair, fingers combing, fiddling with it. “I did. I had my girlfriend put me back the way I was.”
“The way you were?” Arnie asked.
“She’s naturally blond,” said Dane, and he loved how it looked, it was rather obvious.
“Huh.” Arnie was still staring, getting a little message. “How ’bout that.”
“The roots were growing out anyway, and it just came time to be myself,” she explained.
Arnie nodded and forced a smile—it wasn’t a very good one; he was trying to hide a gut feeling.
“Anyway,” she said, offering her hand, “it’s wonderful to see you again.”
“Yeah,” he replied as he shook her hand with a sideways glance at Dane. “I guess it’s been a long time.”
Arnie sat in a folding chair just ten feet from the stage, the Kubota tractor at his back. Dane manned the lights and curtains, Shirley doused the shop lights and cued the music, and Eloise Kramer, in her one and only stage costume, did her show with playful, high-energy confidence, performing for Arnie as if he were the only one there. She made eye contact, she dazzled, she teased, she mugged, and most of all, she wove the wonder through everything she did.
The cards flew from her hands, arced from one hand to the other, sailed over Arnie’s head and back to her hand, vanished as if they were never there; the bottles popped and multiplied out of nowhere and sang in harmony; choreographed tennis balls bounced and teased all over the stage as she danced with them; doves materialized from her empty hands and circled the room, only to vanish into snowflakes; her microphone had clones that sang in orbit around her.
She got a hula hoop spinning around her waist, then stood still while the hoop continued to spin on its own. As she gestured magically, it rose around and then above her body until it was spinning in midair over her head. Then it became her partner and she danced with it, leaping through it, dance-dodging it, flipping and twirling it around herself like a cowboy with his lariat, and all without touching it. The hoop split into two, the two hoops circled around her like two unicycles without riders, then merged into one hoop again.
The finale went off like a fireworks display: the music crescendoed, and Eloise took her grand ta-da pose flanked by tennis balls bouncing, hula hoops spinning, doves doing figure eights over her head, and playing cards shooting like a fountain from her hands.
The music thundered and drummed to a big finish, Dane closed the curtain on Eloise’s triumphant tableau, and Arnie rose to his feet, applauding and whistling. “In-credible!Absolutely astounding!” Dane opened the curtain again so she could perform a graceful dancer’s bow.
Shirley threw the wall switches in the back, and the shop lights came up. Arnie kept clapping and Eloise, high as a kite, sprang from the stage and leaped into Dane’s arms for a congratulatory hug, and then a laughing, father/daughter hug, and then a hug between two friends. Arnie found himself calling out a few extra bravos and extending his applause so the hugs wouldn’t outlast it. What would he have to do next, sing some background music? Finally, when the student and her master were aware of someone else in the room, Arnie stepped forward and extended his hand. “You’ve definitely fulfilled my highest expectations and, uh, more besides.”
They debriefed in rapid chatter, they reviewed, they fired off ideas as they came:
“Now that we have the routines just about timed out, we can get Robbie Portov to work up a music score,” said Dane.
“And costuming. Better costuming,” said Arnie. “Something brighter, eye-catching …”
“Something that follows her and accentuates her moves.”
“Several changes if we can swing it.”
“But with class.”
“Like Mandy made famous.” Arnie’s eyes asked if the reference was okay.
“Well … exactly,” said Dane. “Is Keisha Ellerman still designing?”
“And how.”
Dane sighed through pursed lips. “Budget, budget. We’d better talk venues first.”
“Let me take you to lunch.”
“Great!”
“I guess I should change,” said Eloise.
“Just Dane,” said Arnie.
There was a short, awkward beat, and then she recovered. “Oh. All right.”
Arnie smiled and explained, “We’ve come to that point, kid: Dane and I need to talk about you behind your back.”
Dane patted her shoulder. “That means things are getting serious.”
Arnie didn’t build on that comment. He just let the sideways stretch of his mouth and the arch of his eyebrows concede.
She smiled, adjusting. “I’ve got some housecleaning to do.”
Dane took Arnie to Rustler’s Roost, a log-structured, ranch-style barbecue place with log furniture, red checkered tablecloths, and waitresses in cowboy hats. It wasn’t Vegas, was definitely Idaho, and had plenty of room so they could find an isolated table and talk privately.
“They have great food,” Dane assured Arnie.
“Bring it on.”
They ordered, then Arnie gave Dane a look he’d seen before, a look that meant this lunch could go kind of long, Arnie had a difficult topic on his mind.
Dane thought he might be able to steer around it. “You know, I was thinking it would be a great idea to get her booked on Preston’s show. Maybe she could even take up a challenge. That would get her in the public eye and give her something unique to say for herself.”
“He’d take her apart,” said Arnie.
“Well, not if we set it up right. Maybe we should leave out the challenge part and she can just be a guest magician.”
Arnie repositioned himself on the log bench as if his rear end were getting sore already. “First let’s talk about Eloise.”
“I thought that’s why we were here.”
“I don’t mean the business part. I mean the other part.”
Oh, brother. We’re going to go there.“You mean, umm …”
“I mean, I want to know if I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing.”
Cornered.Arnie wasn’t blind and he wasn’t stupid. “She … she tends to be affectionate. She has no parents. I guess I’m like a father to her.”
“Dane …” Arnie put up his hands. “Listen, if that’s the case, or even if you have something more going with this girl, I’m not your parents or your pastor, I’m okay with it. I work in Vegas, I see everything.”
“It’s not like that.”
“But do you know what it islike? As your friend, that’s what I want to be sure about, that whatever it is, you know, you really know.”
“What it’s … what are you talking about?”
“All right.” Arnie leaned toward him and made an effort to keep his voice down. “I’m thinking about you and me on the street outside that coffee shop, and you going on and on about that girl looking and sounding just like Mandy. You do remember that?”
Dane couldn’t hide the fact that he did.
“And now I see this same girl”—Arnie balked, waiting for words—“the blond hair. I just—”
“It’s her natural color.”
Arnie waved his hands as if erasing everything and starting over. “Okay. Umm, let me just spell it out for you and then you tell me if I’m wrong, okay? Friends?”