with some lucky lady...

Odnośniki

Smutek to uczucie, jak gdyby się tonęło, jak gdyby grzebano cię w ziemi.

“Seriously, folks, it’s time for us to put on our dancing shoes. Please
kiss Dad or Mom, Granddad or Grandma good-bye, and on your way
out, you may wish to leave a contribution toward our expenses in the
basket on top of Ragtime Willie’s piano right over here, ten dollars, five
dollars, anything you can spare helps us cover the costs of giving your
mom, your dad, a bright, bright day. We do it out of love, but half of that
love is your love.”
And in what may seem to us a surprisingly short amount of time, but
does not to Chipper Maxton, who understands that very few people
wish to linger in an elder-care facility any longer than they must, the rel-
atives bestow their final hugs and kisses, round up the exhausted kiddies,
and file down the paths and over the grass into the parking lot, along the
way a good number depositing bills in the basket atop Ragtime Willie’s
upright piano.
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B L A C K H O U S E
No sooner does this exodus begin than Pete Wexler and Chipper
Maxton set about persuading, with all the art available to them, the old-
sters back into the building. Chipper says things like, “Now don’t you
know how much we all want to see you trip the light fantastic, Mrs.
Syverson?” while Pete takes the more direct approach of, “Move along,
bud, time to stir your stumps,” but both men employ the techniques of
subtle and not-so-subtle nudges, pushes, elbow grasping, and wheel-
chair rolling to get their doddering charges through the door.
At her post, Rebecca Vilas watches the residents enter the hazy com-
mon room, some of them traveling at a rate a touch too brisk for their
own good. Henry Leyden stands motionless behind his boxes of LPs.
His suit shimmers; his head is merely a dark silhouette before the win-
dows. For once too busy to ogle Rebecca’s chest, Pete Wexler moves
past with one hand on the elbow of Elmer Jesperson, deposits him eight
feet inside the room, and whirls around to locate Thorvald Thorvaldson,
Elmer’s dearest enemy and fellow inhabitant of D12. Alice Weathers
wafts in under her own guidance and folds her hands beneath her chin,
waiting for the music to begin. Tall, scrawny, hollow-cheeked, at the
center of an empty space that is his alone, Charles Burnside slides
through the door and quickly moves a good distance off to the side.
When his dead eyes indifferently meet hers, Rebecca shivers. The next
pair of eyes to meet hers belong to Chipper, who pushes Flora Flostad’s
wheelchair as if it held a crate of oranges and gives her an impatient glare
completely at odds with the easy smile on his face. Time is money, you
bet, but money is money, too, let’s get this show on the road, pronto.
The first wave, Henry had told her—is that what they have here, the first
wave? She glances across the room, wondering how to ask, and sees that
the question has already been answered, for as soon as she looks up,
Henry flashes her the okay sign.
Rebecca flips the switch for the pink spot, and nearly everybody in
the room, including a number of old parties who had appeared well be-
yond response of any kind, utters a soft aaah. His suit, his shirt, his spats
blazing in the cone of light, a transformed Henry Leyden glides and dips
toward the microphone as a twelve-inch LP, seemingly magicked out of
the air, twirls like a top on the palm of his right hand. His teeth shine;
his sleek hair gleams; the sapphires wink from the bows of his enchanted
sunglasses. Henry seems almost to be dancing himself, with his sweet,
clever sidestepping glide . . . only he is no longer Henry Leyden; no
T H E T A K I N G O F T Y L E R M A R S H A L L
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way, Renee, as George Rathbun likes to roar. The suit, the spats, the
slicked-back hair, the shades, even the wondrously effective pink spot
are mere stage dressing. The real magic here is Henry, that uniquely
malleable creature. When he is George Rathbun, he is all George. Ditto
the Wisconsin Rat; ditto Henry Shake. It has been eighteen months
since he took Symphonic Stan from the closet and fit into him like a
hand into a glove to dazzle the crowd at a Madison VFW record hop,
but the clothes still fit, oh yes, they fit, and he fits within them, a hipster
reborn whole into a past he never saw firsthand.
On his extended palm, the spinning LP resembles a solid, unmoving,
black beachball.
Whenever Symphonic Stan puts on a hop, he always begins with “In
the Mood.” Although he does not detest Glenn Miller as some jazz afi-
cionados do, over the years he has grown tired of this number. But it al-
ways does the job. Even if the customers have no choice but to dance
with one foot in the grave and the other on the proverbial banana peel,
they do dance. Besides, he knows that after Miller was drafted he told the
arranger Billy May of his plan to “come out of this war as some kind of
hero,” and, hell, he was as good as his word, wasn’t he?
Henry reaches the mike and slips the revolving record onto the plat-
ter with a negligent gesture of his right hand. The crowd applauds him
with an exhaled oooh.
“Welcome, welcome, all you hepcats and hepkitties,” Henry says.
The words emerge from the speakers wrapped in the smooth, slightly
above-it-all voice of a true broadcaster in 1938 or 1939, one of the men
who did live remotes from dance halls and nightclubs located from
Boston to Catalina. Honey poured through their throats, these muses of
the night, and they never missed a beat. “Say, tell me this, you gates and
gators, can you think of a better way to kick off a swingin’ soiree than
with Glenn Miller? Come on, brothers and sisters, give me yeahhh. ”
From the residents of Maxton’s—some of whom are already out on
the floor, others wheelchair-bound on its edges in various postures of
confusion or vacuity—comes a whispery response, less a party cry than