I snapped back to attention when Dave screamed into his microphone, ‘Your duck is a rip off!’ and spent another agonizing minute waiting for the punch line. ‘So, asks the duck’s former owner, did you remember to light the fire under the pot?’
I managed a modest titter at that, but the rest of the audience roared so loudly you’d think it was the funniest joke they’d ever heard.
‘Well, I don’t think we’ll have to light any fires under the feet of the contestants here today, do you folks?’
Nooooh!
Dave made a time-out sign, cutting the audience off in mid-cheer. ‘As you probably know, over the next few months, we will be conducting talent searches in New York, Chicago, Kansas City, Dallas and Los Angeles, so if you have friends in any of those cities, tell them to put on their dancing shoes and come on out! Email ’em. Text ’em. Call ’em on your cell.
‘And speaking of cell phones . . . do you have a cell phone? Of course you have a cell phone. Everyone has a cell phone. My goldfish has a cell phone. Well, get them out now.’ Dave waited for the deafening noise of everyone scrambling in his or her purse, bag or pocket to die down before continuing. ‘Now, find the off button and push it. Done? OK? Now put those phones away. You won’t need them any more today. OK, so you wanna know how it works?’
Oh, yes! Tell us, Dave. Tells us how it works!
‘What we’re going to do here today, and in those other cities I mentioned just now, is pick a total of sixty-five couples to compete in the finals in New York City. When they get to the Big Apple, they’ll be told which six dances they will have to perform, and they’ll be given just five weeks to prepare before the competition begins. One of the couples you see here today could very well be our next Shall We Dance? champions!’
Oh, yes! How cool is that!
‘So, are we ready?’
The audience was so ready, hooting and hollering, that if Dave didn’t get on with it, they were likely to storm the stage.
‘But, first,’ he shouted over the din of the restive crowd, ‘first, you’ll meet our three esteemed judges.’ His arms shot skyward, followed by renewed clapping and hooting.
‘They’ll sit up here,’ Dave Carson said, turning to his left and indicating with a sweep of his arm the curtain, which was slowly rising to reveal a starkly furnished stage. Wide and enormously deep, the Hippodrome stage could easily accommodate the most ambitious of Broadway shows, even those that required full-size helicopters to touch down in the center of it.
Now, however, it was furnished with a single, long conference-style table and three chairs, with their backs to us. Three microphones, one for each judge, sat on the table, and between the table and the back of the stage, was a standing microphone.
Eva leaned over and whispered, ‘The judges will be facing away from us?’
‘They face the contestants who’ll be dancing back there, I suppose, behind the standing microphone.’
‘Once we begin,’ Dave continued, ‘the contestants will be called out one couple at a time. Steve Owens here –’ Dave gestured to the sound man on stage right – ‘will cue up the music. Let’s put our hands together now for Steve!’
Yay! Yay for Steve!
‘Each couple will have ninety seconds to show the judges what they’ve got.’ Dave leaned toward us, the audience. ‘Ready?’
‘Ready!’ we all screamed, even me.
‘Now, to meet the judges. First, all the way from Melbourne, Australia where he just finished filming Paradise Bay, Neville Grant!’
Neville appeared, gleaming white hair slicked straight back, bowing to acknowledge the thunderous applause. He was dressed entirely in black, including his shoes. The man was painfully thin, desperately in need of emergency ravioli.
Dave pumped Neville’s bony hand. ‘When will Paradise Bay be released in the United States, Nev?’
‘Next year, Dave, and it’s starring two of Australia’s greatest exports, Mel Gibson and Nicole Kidman.’
The audience went insane with joy, while Neville, alternately waving and bowing, loped long-legged across the stage and eased into his chair.
‘Next,’ Dave continued, ‘we have the beautiful and talented Samantha Purdy!’
The crowd went bonkers.
‘Samantha’s a former Miss America who wowed us in Atlantic City with her dazzling clog dancing. Come on out, Sa-man-tha!’
The beautiful and talented Samantha appeared from stage left, grinning hugely, did a quick double-toe-step, rock step, and waved to the audience. She wore a bright red sweater and slim, black jeans. Samantha’s trademark waist-length auburn hair (she’d been a L’Oreal spokesmodel since 2001, and definitely worth it) was tied in a ponytail. She’d drawn the ponytail through the opening at the back of a Chicago Cubs baseball cap that was sitting on her head at a jaunty angle.
Dave grabbed Samantha’s impeccably manicured hand and said, ‘I understand you’ll be joining the US touring company of Riverdance this fall, is that right?’
Samantha giggled. ‘That’s absolutely right, Dave. I’m so excited to be working with Marty Dowds and Maria Buffini and all the other talented individuals on the Riverdance team.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And I’m so excited to be here today, and to have this incredible opportunity to be part of discovering some astonishing new talent!’
Even from where we sat, it looked as if Samantha was capable of rattling on forever in a god-bless-all-the-poor-little-children-of-the-world sort of way, and Dave must have sensed it, too, because he raised Samantha’s arm as if declaring her dah winnah in a boxing match and said, ‘Let’s hear it for Samantha Purdy!’
‘Cead Mile Failte!’ cried Samantha. ‘Slan go foill!’ And she took her seat.
‘What the heck was that?’ Eva asked.
‘Gaelic?’ I suggested. ‘In honor of Riverdance? They’re Irish.’
‘Shhhh,’ said the sourpuss to my right.
‘And last but certainly not least, Mr Jonathan Job, who with his partner Izabelle Kucharski, won the silver medal for ice dancing at the 2006 Winter Olympic Games. Jonathan, come on out!’
I am a major fan of ice dancing (Torvill and Dean are gods!) so I instantly recognized the handsome man emerging from stage right. Job was tall, muscular, and broad-shouldered – had to be to hoist Izabelle, a sturdy Polish lass, and sling her around the ice rink like he had done to win the silver. Job flowed, rather than walked, on to the stage.
‘Welcome to Shall We Dance?, Jonathan.’
‘My pleasure.’
‘So, what’s next for you?’
‘I’m doing the choreography for Harry Potter on Ice, Dave. We’ll be opening in New York City on November 1st, then touring the United States and Europe. We’ll be in Baltimore next Thanksgiving weekend, in fact.’
‘Did you hear that folks? Harry Potter on Ice is coming to Baltimore!’
The audience was delirious with joy.
‘And how about your partner, the lovely Izabelle. What’s she up to?’
Jonathan combed his fingers through his curly, sandy locks, looking uncharacteristically shy. ‘Izzy’s touring with Potter on Ice, too. And I suppose it’s only a matter of time before Entertainment Tonight spills the beans, so I might as well announce it right now, Izabelle and I were married on New Year’s Eve!’
The audience erupted in a frenzy of congratulatory delight.
‘Well, congratulations, Jonathan. We wish you and Izabelle all the best. Now, if the judges will take their seats. Let’s get on with it. Your job is to decide which of these talented contestants goes on to the finals in New York City this April.’
As Jonathan glided toward his place behind the table, Dave approached the edge of the stage and spoke directly to us, the audience. We were such good friends by now. ‘The auditions will start in just a few minutes, ladies and gentlemen, but first, a special treat! To get everyone into the Shall We Dance? spirit, and to demonstrate how it’s done by the pros, Shall We Dance? has arranged for some amazing dancers
to perform for you. First, from right here in Baltimore, Merry-land are Ron and Janet Benrey dancing . . .the waltz!’
We sat enthralled while Ron and Janet, elaborately costumed as colonial Americans complete with powdered wigs, performed a gorgeous, perfectly coordinated Viennese waltz to the tune of the ‘Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet’.
After their final bow and curtsy, Ruth muttered, ‘Wait a minute. The waltz wasn’t invented until the 1800s, am I right?’
Ruth was, but the woman on my right was glaring at us again, so I simply nodded and tried to ignore them both.
‘So why aren’t George and Martha Washington dancing a minuet, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Ruth!’ I hissed.
Meanwhile, on stage, the auditions had begun. We had no idea what time Hutch and Melanie would perform, only that we had to sit through ten other contestant couples before we got to them. We watched a hip hop routine, a country western line dance for two, a pas-de-deux from Swan Lake – ‘competent’ (according to Jonathan), ‘straight out of high school’ (Neville) but ‘boring, boring, boring’ (Samantha) – and a couple dressed as characters from the Phantom of the Opera who leaped, pranced and stumbled their way though a waltz largely because she kept tripping on the trailing hem of her dress and he couldn’t see very well through the eyehole of his mask.
Ruth frowned. ‘Is that what Dave meant when he said that contestants should stand out?’
Unbelievably, by a two to one margin (Samantha being the lone dissenter), the judges decided to put the Phantom and Christine through to the finals.
‘What a crock,’ Ruth growled from the end of the row.
It was hard for me to believe, too, but I said, ‘They’ve got to have somebody to make fun of, Ruth. Better Christine and her Phantom than Hutch and Melanie.’
I turned away from my sister when Dave reappeared on stage, flapping his arms like a wounded goose. ‘Everybody up! On your feet! Arms in the air! Touch your toes!’
For a large man, Dave was surprisingly graceful as he danced on tiptoe, jiggling his arms to demonstrate how easily one could avoid the risk of deep vein thrombosis. ‘Shake out those kinks!’ he instructed as Steve slotted ‘Rock Around the Clock’ into his CD drive.
My kinks were quickly dispatched, so I sat down and amused myself by watching everyone shake, rattle and roll all around me.
‘And now,’ Dave continued, ‘before we meet our next group of contestants it’s time to bring out some more of our pros. Here they are, all the way from Annapolis, Maryland, dancing the paso doble, let’s hear it for Jay and Kay Giannotti!’
I nudged Paul with my elbow. ‘This is going to be great!’ And all of us clapped like crazy.
Steve cued up the Giannotti’s CD and the music began, a sultry malagueña with Spanish guitar and castanets.
Clothed in iridescent black, his shirt slit to the waist and wearing what looked like an ivory tusk on a chain around his neck, Jay backed out of the wings, heels tapping like a flamenco dancer, his shoulders arched and wide, his chest high, his head thrown slightly back. Next came Kay, following, her eyes locked on his, her white-blonde hair slicked back and held high with a Spanish comb. As she progressed, twirling her ruffled skirt like a matador’s cape, Jay backed away, puffing his lips as if mouthing ‘olé’.
‘Is Miss Kay the bull?’ Chloe asked, almost picking up on the symbolism of the dance.
‘No, she’s the cape,’ I said. ‘Just watch.’
Suddenly Jay turned his back on his partner, tap, tap, tapping in place while Kay approached stealthily from behind. She pasted her body against his, wrapped her arms around his chest, fingers splayed. As the music grew in intensity, Jay peeled Kay’s hand from his chest, and spun her away. She dropped to the floor, her legs sliding into a graceful split, while Jay continued his increasingly frantic tapping, dragging Kay around by her arm, as if he were mopping the floor with her body.
Jay released Kay’s hand, turned away, as if in scorn.
Kay collapsed in despair, her cheek resting against the floorboards, but only for a moment. In one fluid movement she leapt to her feet, arched her back, raised her arms toward the ceiling and pumped them up and down, as if picking apples.
Jay turned, as if he’d only just noticed his partner. She stopped picking apples, locked eyes on him and started to run. He spread his arms and caught her, she draped herself around his neck, nestled her head under his chin.
Unexpectedly, Jay’s knees buckled, and he staggered sideways. I gasped. Who would have thought Kay was so heavy? As I watched in astonishment, Jay’s arms dropped to his sides, Kay along with them, dumping her in an unceremonious heap on the floor, like a colorful bundle of laundry. Jay clutched his chest, staggered backwards, then collapsed.
The music played on.
First we heard an ‘ooooo’, the intake of thousands of breaths.
The music stopped abruptly.
Then silence.
By that time, Kay had crawled over to Jay where he lay on the floor. As we watched in horror, scarcely daring to breathe, she put her cheek to his face, then laid her head on his chest.
Dave hustled over from the wings, his ragged breathing amplified a hundredfold by the mike, the judges were on their feet, and Kay was screaming, ‘Somebody call 9-1-1. My husband’s having a heart attack!’
Nineteen
Chloe bounced on tiptoes, trying to see the stage over the heads of the people standing in front of us. ‘What’s wrong? What happened to Mr Jay?’
I wrapped my arm around my granddaughter and pulled her close. ‘It’s going to be all right, Chloe. Somebody’s calling a doctor for Mr Jay.’
After seeing that there was nothing he could do to help Jay, Dave turned to the audience, arms raised, except that this time nobody clapped. ‘Please, everyone, stay calm. Take your seats. The paramedics are on their way.’
The audience sat, but restless murmuring washed in waves through the theater.
The paramedics must have been standing by because they arrived almost immediately, two men in uniform carrying a stretcher upon which sat an instrument I recognized, a portable defibrillator. Paul stretched his long frame across Eva and Chloe’s laps to grab my hand and give it a comforting squeeze. He had to know I was thinking about the day my mother had a heart attack while standing in our kitchen.
Up on stage, the paramedics went to work on Jay while Kay’s brave face dissolved into a mask of panic, and she started to sob and shake.
I shot out of my seat. ‘I need to go to her.’
Paul, always the voice of reason, jerked his head toward the stage where well-trained, green-shirted staffers had materialized, blocking all access from the orchestra to the stage. ‘Sit down, Hannah. They’re not going to let you anywhere near the poor guy.’
Reassuringly for me, Samantha Purdy had already reached Kay, wrapped both arms around her and was rubbing her back and rocking, soothing her as one might a child. After a few moments, Samantha led Kay off-stage where she could wait in the comfort of the star lounge or green room I figured must be backstage somewhere.
The problem must not have been with Jay’s heart; after fussing about for several minutes, the paramedics put the defibrillator away. Together they lifted Jay on to the stretcher, made sure he was comfortable, strapped him in, and started to carry him away. Just before the stretcher disappeared into the wings, Jay raised a hand and managed a wave.
‘He’s going to be all right!’ somebody shouted.
A sea of mighty, thunderous applause.
‘Where do you suppose they’re taking him?’ Eva wanted to know.
I knew the answer to that question. The University of Maryland Medical Center was right around the corner. That’s where they’d done all they could for my mother, the place where she’d died.
‘What’s wrong with Mr Jay?’ Chloe asked again.
‘Probably nothing serious, Pumpkin. But they’re taking him to the hospital just to make sure.’ Chloe didn’t look convinced, so
I added, ‘Remember when you were very little and I was in the hospital?’
Chloe nodded. ‘Sort of.’
‘And they fixed me all up, right?’
Chloe had been clutching her notebook to her chest, but she opened it and spread it out on her lap, apparently reassured. ‘Can I write about Mr Jay?’
‘Honey, you can write about anything you want.’
‘Chloe,’ Ruth added, ‘don’t worry about Mr Jay. He’s probably just exhausted. He’s been practicing very hard on his dancing.’
‘How do you spell egg-zausted, Aunt Ruth?’
While Ruth helped Chloe with her spelling, I said, ‘Melanie told me Jay was feeling achy, thought he might be coming down with the flu. Wait a minute . . . look.’
Samantha Purdy had reappeared on stage, smiling hugely as if she’d just saved the entire Third World from war, poverty and disease. She approached the standing microphone, bent at the waist, put her plump, glossy lips close to it and said, ‘He’s going to be fine, ladies and gentlemen. Backstage just now, Jay was smiling and talking to me, ready to get right up off that stretcher. They’re taking him to the hospital to have him checked out, but he’s going to be fine, just fine.’
While Samantha was delivering the good news, Dave bounced as bouncily as a three-hundred-pound man could bounce back to center stage. ‘That’s great news, Samantha. Great news indeed. And wasn’t that a fabulous paso doble, ladies and gentlemen? Let’s give a big round of applause to Jay and Kay Giannotti, and we certainly hope to see you back on your talented feet real soon, Jay.’
Although I remained worried about Jay, and wondered how Kay was holding up over at the emergency room, I was anxious for the show to go on, so when it did, I clapped until my hands began to sting just like everyone else.
We sat through the next two auditions – neither of them worth writing home about, either in my opinion or the judges – before Hutch and Melanie were introduced.
Dead Man Dancing Page 13
