by Chip Cheek
After dinner they abandoned their plates and glasses on the table and piled into the Cadillac. Max kept the top up to preserve the ladies’ hair. In the back, Effie sat in the middle and leaned her head on Henry’s shoulder. “Are you going to make it?” he asked.
“I’m just saving my strength,” she said.
* * *
The power outage didn’t extend to the marina. As they crossed the bridge over the canal they could see lights blazing all along the length of the pier to the dance hall, which itself blazed against the dark of the sea and cast a river of light across the water in the cove. They turned into the marina parking lot and parked near the head of the pier. Outside, music drifted from the hall, big-band stuff, horns and heavy drums, and Henry wanted to run toward it—he wanted to leap up and smack the moon. He was eager for civilization. He imagined elegant jet-setters crowded inside the hall, people for whom physical distance was no obstacle, who might be in Cape May tonight and in Cabo tomorrow for another party, and he couldn’t wait to join them.
But as they made their way down the empty pier he could see through the divided windows that the hall was mostly empty, and at the door they encountered a matronly, not-elegant woman behind a foldout table, who greeted them and informed them that the entrance fee would be five dollars. “Five dollars?” Effie said. “That’s a little dear, isn’t it?” The woman showed no offense, also no sympathy, and explained that it was to benefit the Cape May Historical Society. A hand-painted poster behind her said as much. “It’s my treat, of course,” Max said, but Effie insisted she pay for herself and Henry. Henry said he could pay for them, but Effie said that was silly, she had the money her daddy had given her. He didn’t press the point. They paid, and went inside.
The music echoed in mostly empty space. The Cape May Historical Society had obviously gone to lengths for the band. There were twelve of them on a raised platform, all of them in white tuxedos, like Max, and the music was jumping. But aside from a few older couples trying to waltz in double-time, the dance floor was empty, and the rest of the crowd was scattered among the tables surrounding it. Most of the tables were empty. In the spaces between the windows hung nautical bric-a-brac: nets, harpoons, ships’ wheels, anchors, flags, the jaws of a shark.
“Maybe we’re early?” Clara said.
“I’m sure we are,” Effie said. “It’s not eight. I’m sure more people will pile in.”
“From where, I wonder?” Max said.
A bar stood off to one side, under strings of lights, seemingly unattended, and as they made their way to it, a man in tweed stopped them. He was selling raffle tickets. Two dollars a pop, and the prize was that lovely painting of a sailboat and lighthouse displayed at the side of the stage. Max said he’d buy five, one for everybody. Clara laughed. “I don’t want that thing,” she said, and Max said, “Good, because I do. If anyone of you wins, you have to give it to me.” He bought the tickets, and they went over to the bar, and the same man who’d sold them the tickets went behind it and asked what they wanted. Clara found this wildly funny. “Martinis all around,” Max said grandly.
While they waited for their drinks, Henry’s eyes adjusted to the scene. A group of Coast Guard cadets, easy to spot in their white uniforms, crowded around one table near the dance floor. The rest of the crowd looked old, except for a group of children who ran among the tables, playing a game of tag or something similar. Clara seemed amused. Alma seemed to be observing it with detached curiosity. But Effie, standing on tiptoe, her lips parted, seemed tense with expectation, with hope. His heart faintly broke for her. “The band’s great,” he said, and eagerly she agreed.
Their drinks appeared on the bar, Max paid for them, and they made their way to one of the tables beside the dance floor. For a couple of numbers they just sat and sipped their martinis—Alma was having one too—and watched the band, periodically looking back toward the door to see if more people were arriving. But no one was. It was a sad scene. People were dressed as if for church, and Henry felt eyes on their table—on Alma’s shimmering dress, on Clara’s exposed cleavage. After the first number the audience clapped respectfully, and the trumpet player said, “Thank you, thank you. It’s great to be here,” and without further comment, launched into the next number. They were earning a paycheck, Henry thought. Alma slumped back in her seat with her arms crossed. Effie drew her lips tight and gave Henry a look that seemed to say, Well, we tried, and he couldn’t bear it. He clapped his hand on her thigh and said, “To hell with it. Let’s dance.”
“There’s the spirit,” Max said.
By this point the dance floor was completely empty. Effie seemed uncertain, but then Max stood up and offered his hand to Clara, and when Clara accepted, Effie said, “Well, I guess I went to the trouble of dressing up.”
The band seemed relieved to see them. They were playing an easy swing number, and Henry turned and spun Effie around. They had always been able to move well together, to anticipate each other’s steps. She seemed happy. Halfway through the song they swapped partners, and Henry danced with Clara, who was soft and vast in comparison. He stepped on her toe but she laughed, and soon they found their rhythm. He spun her out and brought her back to him, and she squeezed his arm and said he was very good. He said she was very good too. Alma sat by herself at the table, but on the next turn he saw one of the Coast Guard cadets bending to her, and by the next song the two of them had come onto the floor. An elderly couple joined them, and then a group of children came up as well, in a corner of the floor, kicking and flailing individually, as if to mock the beat—and suddenly the dance floor was hopping. The band launched into a fast jazz number, and the couples broke apart. Three more cadets stormed the floor. One of them engaged Effie. Henry tried to edge himself toward Alma, but another of the cadets, a tall one, had gotten her attention, taking her hand, turning her this way and that. Clara took Henry’s hand and spun him around. Effie and Max, facing each other, did a kind of Charleston. One of the trombonists did a solo with a plunger, and it was funny the way he made it sound, the way he moved, and everyone laughed and whooped and clapped their hands. Then the band finished with a few measures of pandemonium and a crash of cymbals, and the little crowd on the dance floor cheered.
Clara and Max headed to the bar to order another round of drinks. Effie needed to rest a bit, and Henry followed her to the table. But before he could sit down Alma took his hand and said, “I need you to rescue me. Do you mind?” she said to Effie, and Effie laughed and said, “Of course not, honey.”
The song was a slow one, an instrumental version of a tune he recognized, “I’ll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time,” and they were one of only three couples on the dance floor now. He took Alma’s hand and slid his arm around her.
“Thank you,” she said. Her eyes were locked on his, and she was grinning.
“Do I need to fight some cadets?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
They moved lazily, out of step with the beat. She was slender and taut and warm, and the back of her dress was damp with sweat. She ran her hand up his arm and gripped his shoulder.
“The dress is nice,” he said. “Good choice.” He let his eyes linger on her bare shoulders, her collarbone, the little mounds of her breasts.
“I tried on a dozen of them. This one wasn’t my favorite, but there were shoes that matched.”
“Well, I love it.”
“I’m glad. I guess I didn’t need your help after all.”
He turned her, touching his cheek to her hair, breathing her in, and through the dress he could feel the soft knobs of her spine, the clasp of her bra. He was going to get himself into trouble. Effie was watching them, smiling, but then Max and Clara returned with the drinks, and a couple of women Henry didn’t recognize, and she turned her attention to them. The cadets had joined the table too.
“Ten to one Clara’s going to invite all those people back to the house,” Alma said.
“Another party?” Henry said, and sh
e nodded.
“You’ll need to stay by my side. I don’t trust these boys.”
He smiled like a fool. “I thought you wanted to meet people.”
She made a face. “Not them. They’re starved. They’ve been on the base too long. One of them said he fell in love with me the moment he saw me.”
He laughed, and turned her again, pressing his hand to the small of her back. He thought he knew the cadet in question, the tall one, who was sitting at the table and watching them. “What did you say to him?”
“What could I say? I thanked him. I told him he was nice.” She saw the cadet watching, smiled and twiddled her fingers at him, and Henry felt a flare of possessiveness.
“Well,” he said, “I’ll keep guard. I won’t leave your side.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
They danced the rest of the song without speaking. She looked at their clasped hands. Her earlobes were tender and studded with silver beads. The hair at her temples was wet. He was under a spell. But then the song ended, and they parted, smiling, averting their eyes, and returned to the table.
The tall cadet’s name was Carl, from Bloomington, Illinois, and his friends were Chance, Freddie, and David. They were trainees, fresh out of high school like Henry and Effie. That’s what the base in Cape May was—a training center. They were on leave for the weekend, and were planning to head up to Atlantic City tomorrow. “Anyone interested?” Carl asked, looking at Alma, who pressed her lips together and shrugged—but one of the other women, Maggie, said that sounded like a grand idea. She and her friend Brenda were in town for the dance—Maggie’s father was the president of the Cape May Historical Society—and they were looking for something to do. Maggie and Brenda looked older, in their late twenties, and seemed drunk already. The band had been Brenda’s doing; she’d known the drummer in high school. Did they like it? Freddie, who was obviously angling for Brenda, said they were swell. David seemed to be sweet on Effie, until she introduced Henry as her husband, and Henry pulled a chair up between them. The band announced that they were taking a break, and they came over to the table. Henry stood up to shake the trumpet player’s hand. Suddenly, their table was the center of the party. More drinks went around, from the bartender in the tweed jacket. The president himself, Maggie’s father, a plump man who looked like a ship’s captain, introduced himself and thanked everyone for their support. They would draw the raffle in half an hour. Max clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “That painting is mine,” he said, and the president, oblivious to mockery, looked pleased. He’d commissioned it himself from a local artist. It sat on an easel beside the stage, a sailboat angling toward the lighthouse against a fiery sunset. Henry actually liked it. If he won it, he wouldn’t mind taking it home.
Alma had been right: when the president left them, to mingle among the other tables, Clara said they should all abandon this joint and come back to the house. “You too,” she said to the band. “We’ve got a full bar, and it’s free.”
“The lights are out, though,” Max said.
“That only makes it more interesting.”
The trumpet player said they were on the clock for another hour, but after that, they were up for anything. Maggie, looking aggrieved, said she’d have to stay and clean up, but Brenda said that was absurd, it was the booster club’s job to clean up, and Maggie raised her glass and cried, “After-party!” Henry raised his glass too, and cheered.
The band went back on. Henry let David dance with Effie, and he danced with Maggie, who smelled of the mint gum she was chewing. “You have the most adorable accent,” she said, and caressed his earlobe between her fingers, and he twitched his head so she would stop, laughing so as not to offend her. He wanted to be dancing with Alma again, but big Midwestern Carl was monopolizing her. A few minutes later they were gone, and when he rejoined Effie for a slow number he was distracted, looking around the room for them, looking through the windows to the pier outside.
“Lord, I’m fading,” Effie said. She looked pallid.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m just a little woozy. I probably shouldn’t go to this after-party thing.”
“Oh?” Henry said. “Not even for a little bit?” If she didn’t go, he couldn’t go. And he couldn’t bear the thought of missing out.
“Maybe for a little bit, sure,” she said. “I can rally.”
But then Henry remembered himself. “You shouldn’t if you’re feeling sick. Maybe we should just get you to bed.”
“We’ll see. I’d hate the night to end so early.”
The band played a few more songs, and then the president and an older woman who might have been his wife took the stage and said it was time to draw the raffle. Max made a show of patting his jacket, as if he’d lost the tickets, then drew them out of his trousers’ pocket. The president reached into the tin bucket the woman was holding, pulled out a ticket, called a number, and sure enough, Max raised his hand in the air and cried, “That’s me!”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Clara said.
The painting was his. The president congratulated him, invited him onto the stage to shake his hand, and after he and the woman had left, Max stayed up with the band. In his white tuxedo, he looked the part. One of the band members gave him a pair of maracas, and for the next two numbers he shook them and danced around the stage like an idiot. The band ate it up. Effie and Clara cheered and laughed, and gamely Henry applauded. Max was the center of attention, as ever.
Soon the band announced their last number, a slow one—“Moonlight Serenade”—and he and Effie danced to it. She rested her head on his chest, closed her eyes, and barely moved, and he rocked her side to side. Alma and her cadet had reappeared on the dance floor. He was looking intensely down at her, and she was looking away, as if lost in thought. When her eyes caught Henry’s, she smiled at him.
The song ended, and the lights came up in the hall. They were unflattering fluorescents, and they made the crowd seem sparse and drab. Max took his painting down from the easel, and he and Clara hung back by the stage, waiting for the band to pack their instruments up. “The corner of New Hampshire and Madison,” Clara called out, “New Hampshire and Madison.”
Effie leaned heavily against Henry. He could feel her shivering. “I’m gonna collapse,” she said.
“We’ll just get you back to the cottage,” he said, feeling chivalrous and terribly disappointed.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“What are you talking about? It’s all right.”
“You don’t have to be with me. You can stay out.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
They were standing near the dessert table by the door, where most of the crowd were lingering and gathering their things. Maggie, close by, was blathering to someone about the nightlife in Wilmington, Delaware, and when Henry turned, he saw that she was talking to the cadets, and that Alma was beside him. Carl stood on the other side of her, his arm around her waist. She was eating a caramel square, squinting at Maggie as if she were a puzzle to be deciphered, and Henry watched as she put the last bite into her mouth and licked her thumb and forefinger lavishly. And then, without taking her eyes off Maggie, she reached her arm out and wiped her fingers on the side of Henry’s jacket.
That decided it. He would put Effie to bed, and then he would go to the after-party.
* * *
He could hear the music all the way from Aunt Lizzie’s front porch: horns, piano, maracas, and a chorus of voices, then cheers and applause. In front of Clara’s, though he wasn’t sure what he was seeing until he was almost upon it, stood a bus, a full-size school bus, with letters painted on it that he couldn’t make out in the dark. It was the band’s, naturally. Other cars were parked on either side of the street and in the driveway, and he felt his way among them toward the front door.
Inside, it was a more intimate gathering than it had sounded outside. The candles had been lit, the lamps were aglow. On the
mantel over the fireplace stood Max’s painting. Clara was at the piano, the band was lounging with their instruments all around the den, and everyone was singing a boozy rendition of “You Belong to Me.” Max and two of the cadets were standing by the bar, Maggie and Brenda among them, and to Henry’s surprise, a few of the older people from the dance were there too. Max raised his glass to Henry, and Henry held his hand up in greeting. He stepped uncertainly into the den, feeling strange without Effie, as though he were intruding, until he spotted Alma and Carl sitting on the rug by the coffee table, along with a rumpled-looking gray-haired gentleman and a few women he didn’t recognize. They seemed to be playing cards. A bottle of whiskey stood on the table. When Alma saw him, she brightened and beckoned him over.
“Don’t do it yet,” she said to a Hispanic-looking woman, who was up on her knees across the table from her, holding a deck of cards. “I want Henry to see.”
“Henry, darling!” Clara cried from the piano, then launched into another verse.
Carl eyed him warily. He’d unbuttoned his shirt, and underneath it he wore a white tank top, and he seemed to have spilled something on himself. “How’s it going, Hank,” he said. They were the first words he’d spoken to him all evening.
Alma told Carl to move over and make room.
“You’re a tease, you know that?” he said, but Alma only smiled sweetly at him.
“I’m not teasing. I told you my boyfriend was coming back, and here he is. Now scoot.”
Henry laughed, and felt a rush of heat. It was only a game, but he would play along. Reluctantly Carl scooted over, and Alma patted the space between them, and Henry sat down beside her, crossing his legs. She’d pulled her shoes and stockings off and was sitting with her legs tucked beside her, and when he asked what was going on, she shifted closer to him, so they touched.
