And then one day, I’m not sure when or why, I just stopped crying.
Dancing’s been a kind of life. You get used to it. It’s better than hammering away at a noisy electric typewriter, mucking with carbons, hoping the cartridge won’t run out halfway. Plus no office politics. Girls who dance, they’ll be friends or leave you alone, whatever you want. Independent types. I like that.
The boss was good about things. Kept me on after Ron died, mostly because he felt bad for me. But business is business, and let’s face it, I was over thirty and this place is about fresh girls. So I came up with the cigar. He was skeptical, but gave it a whirl. I was a big draw. After the lighting incident, we moved on to vegetables. These were fine except for dai-kons, because those taste bad raw. But the boss was right.
Variety is spice, so out I strutted on spikes, hiked up the skirt, sucked in, spat out, and caught each tubular from between the legs, shoved each one between the lips, and crunched, hard, the pale, peeled daikon being the finale. Like juggling, with dance.
When I turned forty a few years back, the boss and girls gave me this big party. I look pretty good for my age. You can’t see the lines unless you look close. Makeup works. The girls come and go while I hang on. You have to keep going.
The act keeps me going. These days, we need to be careful. There’s less you can get away with. Mood of the times; a conservative feel’s in the air. That’ll blow over, like disco. Besides, it’s time to think about retiring. Economy’s improving. Ballroom’s hot again and there are gigs at shopping malls and the Y. I could do those. You don’t need to be either young or brilliant to foxtrot or jitterbug. All you need is a partner.
It was a silly way for Ron to exit. I would have supported us forever. He was all the home I wanted, even on those days when he couldn’t get out of bed. If only he hadn’t given up. He would always have been my star.
Show time. Feet hurt.
Funny Face is on later. That’s my favorite. Yes, it is just an earlier Fair Lady, except she does the actual singing. Astaire’s supposed to be this famous fashion photographer who turns plain-jane bookworm Audrey into a top model. Naturally, they fall in love, and their wedding day is the grand finale.
Astaire dances delightfully, and Audrey wears the most delicious dresses. Story’s hilarious. I love it where she’s all in black, among the Parisian pseudo-intellectuals, dancing past their stony faces. And the corny ending makes me laugh. Fred’s way too old for her, of course, and the plot’s quite impossible. But in the movies none of this matters, because it’s always a perfect match, made only the way those can be, in heaven, and never on earth.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
CHARLES ARDAI, a lifelong New Yorker, spent his first thirty years living either at 51st and Second or 52nd and First, before packing the Conestoga and lighting out for the wilds of 10021. His first novel, Little Girl Lost(written under the pen name Richard Aleas), was nominated for both the Edgar and Shamus awards. Ardai is also the cofounder and editor of the award-winning pulp-revival imprint Hard Case Crime.
CAROL LEA BENJAMIN, once an undercover agent for the William J. Burns Detective Agency, a teacher, and a dog trainer, is the author of the Shamus Award-winning Rachel Alexander mystery series, as well as eight acclaimed books on dog training and behavior. Recently elected to the International Association of Canine Professionals Hall of Fame, she lives in Greenwich Village with her husband and three swell dogs.
LAWRENCE BLOCK has won most of the major mystery awards, and has been called the quintessential New York writer, although he insists the city’s far too big to have a quintessential writer. His series characters-Matthew Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, Evan Tanner, Chip Harrison, and Keller-all live in Manhattan; like their creator, they wouldn’t really be happy anywhere else.
THOMAS H. COOK is the author of twenty novels and two works of nonfiction. He has been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award five times in four separate categories.
His novel The Chatham School Affair won the Edgar for Best Novel in 1996. He splits his time between Manhattan and Cape Cod.
JEFFERY DEAVER, the author of The Bone Collector and a number of other international bestsellers, was born outside of Chicago but lived in downtown Manhattan for nearly twenty years. He was an attorney on Wall Street before turning to writing thrillers full-time. One of his first novels was titled Manhattan Is My Beat, an Edgar Award-nominee about a crime involving a (fictional) film noire.
JIM FUSILLI is the author of the award-winning Terry Orr series, which includes Hard, Hard City, winner of the Gumshoe Award for Best Novel of 2004, as well as Closing Time, A Well-Known Secret, and Tribeca Blues. He also writes for the Wall Street Journal and is a contributor to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.
ROBERT KNIGHTLY was an NYPD patrol sergeant in the 1980s and worked at one time or another in every precinct in Manhattan South (below 96th Street, East and West). In the ’90s, he turned to the Dark Side as a Legal Aid Society lawyer in the criminal courts at 100 Centre Street.
JOHN LUTZ has long enjoyed setting suspense novels in his favorite city, New York, one of which was made into the film Single White Female. His latest book is Fear the Night, set in… New York.
LIZ MARTÍNEZ is an editor and columnist for police and security publications. Her short fiction has appeared in Combat, OrchardPressMysteries.com, Police Officer’s Quarterly, and Cop Tales 2000. She was born in New York City and is on the faculty at Interboro Institute, a two-year college in Manhattan. For the record, unlike Freddie Prinze, she is Mexican-American.
MAAN MEYERS (Annette and Martin Meyers) have written six books and multiple short stories in the Dutchman series of historical mysteries set in New York in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and ninteenth centuries.
MARTIN MEYERS grew up on Madison Street, a couple of blocks from the East River where the Manhattan Bridge hovers-the Lower East Side then, Chinatown now. He currently lives on the Upper West Side with his wife, author Annette Meyers. In 1975, when he was still an actor, he wrote the first book in his Patrick Hardy P.I. series, Kiss and Kill.
