Dandy Mike was dancing cheek-to-cheek with some sweet young thing, but he winked at Kate as she threaded her way through the crowd. Bobby and Dinah held court in one corner, baby Katya on Bobby’s lap, resplendent in a bright pink corduroy kuspuk trimmed with rickrack and wolverine, necessitating a brief deviation from Kate’s course. Katya saw Kate coming, and as soon as Kate was within range, she gathered her chubby little legs beneath her and executed a flying leap that landed her on Kate’s chest.
“Oof!” Kate almost went down under the onslaught.
“Shugak!” Bobby bellowed. “Good ta see ya. Sit down and have a snort!”
Kate exchanged sloppy kisses with Katya and exchanged a grin with the ethereal blonde who was her mother. “Hey, Dinah.”
“Hey, Kate.”
An unknown blonde with melting blue eyes and a figure newspaper editors used to call “well nourished” came over, inspecting Kate with a quizzical eye. “What can I bring you?”
“You know Christie Turner, Kate?”
Aha, Kate thought. “We haven’t met, but I’ve heard tell.”
Christie cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”
Kate grinned. “I was just up to the Step.”
Christie ducked her head and appeared, in the dim light, to blush. A shy smile trembled at the corners of her mouth. “Oh.” That was almost textbook, Kate thought, watching, but then Christie rallied to her duty. “Can I get you a drink?”
The Park was like a desert in midwinter-it sucked every drop of moisture out of the body, caused lips to crack, hangnails to sprout, and an unquenchable thirst for anything in liquid form. “Club soda with a wedge of lime would be good. One of the big glasses.”
Ben E. King came on the jukebox. “You’ve got baby duty,” Bobby told Kate, and snatched Dinah’s hand and rolled his wheelchair out onto the dance floor.
“Da-deee! Da-deee!”
“You’ll have to get taller first,” Kate told her.
Mandy and Chick were jitterbugging. Old Sam was watching a game on television and doing the play-by-play, since the sound was turned down. “Where’s the defense? Where the hell is the defense? Jesus H. Christ on a crutch, just give him the ball why don’tcha and tie a bow on it while you’re at it!” The First Nazarene congregation, consisting of three parishioners and one minister, was holding a prayer meeting in one corner. A group of Monopoly players huddled around one table, with no attention to spare for anything but buying property, acquiring houses, and collecting rent, not even for Sally Forrest and Gene Mayo, who were all but having sex on the table next door.
All pretty much business as usual at Bernie’s.
“Kaaaay-tuh,” Katya said.
“That’s me,” she told her, and they rubbed noses in an Eskimo kiss.
Katya leaned over in a perilous arc to tug at one of Mutt’s ears. “MMMMMMMMMutt,” Katya said.
Mutt endured, looking resigned at this assault on her dignity and person.
The song ended and Bobby and Dinah came back to the table. Bobby gave Kate a salacious grin. “How’d you like to keep Katya overnight?”
“Bobby!” Dinah smacked her husband without much sincerity. “Behave.”
“Why? That’s no fun,” he said, and kissed her with a mixture of gusto and conviction that involved a certain amount of manhandling, which appeared to be received with enthusiasm. Sally and Gene had nothing on these two.
“Jesus,” Kate said, “get a room,” and perched Katya on her hip for the walk to the bar. Bernie, what hair he had left caught in a ponytail, intelligent eyes the same brown as his hair set deeply in a thin face, had a stick of beef jerky and Kate’s club soda waiting. Mutt exchanged a lavish lick for the jerky and lay down at Kate’s feet, where everyone was very careful not to step on her.
It was crowded that afternoon, full of talk and laughter, loud music and smoke, and the clink of glass, the pop of bottle caps, and the fizzle of soda water. Bernie was constantly in motion, sliding up and down the bar as if on skates, dispensing beer, screwdrivers, red hots, rusty nails, salty dawgs, and, for one foolhardy table, Long Island iced teas all around, after delivery of which, Bernie confiscated everyone’s keys and designated Old Sam Dementieff to drive them home in his pickup. Old Sam got out his martyr look, but fortunately they all lived in Niniltna and he accepted his assignment with minimal grumbling. Bernie returned to his post, and Kate, folding straws into weird
Old Sam cast his eyes heavenward. “Some men,” he said to Bernie in a withering tone of voice, “some men purely have to be taken by the pecker and led.” He shook his head and finished his beer. “How up are you on your Bible studies, Sergeant?”
“Way down,” Jim said.
“Read up on Jacob,” Old Sam said, and moved to a table with a better view of the game to continue his play-by-play. Michael Jordan was back, and Old Sam was way more interested in that than he was in anybody’s love life.
He didn’t look much like Cupid, but then, he’d never much cared for Ethan Int-Hout, having been corked by his father a time or ten out on the fishing grounds. In his eighty years on the job, Old Sam had had some earned life experience in the dictum, Like father, like son.
And in Like grandmother, like granddaughter. Ekaterina had never been one to go long without a man, either.
2
Kate felt the exact moment when Jim Chopin stopped watching her walk away, and she breathed easier for it, although she would have died before admitting it. By the time she got to Dina and Ruthe’s table, the two women were out dancing on the floor, with whom, Kate couldn’t quite tell. The song was “Gimmee Three Steps,” and pretty much everyone was out there, but Dina was easy to find because of her cane, and where Dina was, Ruthe would not be far away. Dina wore a black sweatshirt and, with her white hair, looked from behind like a bald eagle. Ruthe, as usual, looked about half her age, and moved like it, too.
As Kate watched, John Letourneau danced into view. So this was where he’d been headed when she knocked on his door. He was dancing with Auntie Edna, who looked like she was having a wonderful time, until John rock-stepped back into Dina, whose cane somehow became tangled in John’s legs. John went down and took about three other dancers with him. Christie Turner tripped over the pile and spilled an entire tray of drinks all over John. Everyone got up again, all laughing, except John, who took a step toward Dina, who held her cane out at arm’s length, its rubber tip against John’s chest. He batted it away, and then suddenly Ruthe was dancing with him, jitterbugging or bebopping or swing-dancing, or whatever it was called, doing a series of what looked like complicated turns without missing a beat.
John, perforce, went along, as Auntie Edna faded quietly to the table where Auntie Balasha and Auntie Joy were quilting squares and knocking back Irish coffee. As Kate watched, Auntie Vi came in and made a beeline for the table. The four old women put their heads together and spoke earnestly and at length, with much nodding and shaking of heads. Auntie Joy got out a little notebook and a pen and started making a list.
Lynrd Skynrd got the break they were waiting for and the song faded away, punctuated by whistles and applause from the dance floor. And then, oh my, Creedence Clearwater Revival started rolling down the river and Katya let out a “YES!” loud enough to break her auntie’s eardrums and made urgent movements toward the dance floor. Dinah and Bobby were already out there, and they welcomed Kate and Katya with whoops of joy. The circle started small and grew, evolving into sort of a conga line that stamped and shimmied and boogied around the bar, between the tables, around Old Sam Dementieff, who was still grimly focused on the game, out the back door and in the front, scooping up people inbound from the parking lot in its wake. Bobby was the heart of the line, the beginning and the ending of it, rocking back and forth to the beat and frugging and shrugging and clamming and jamming and beating the band. The song wasn’t long enough for any of them, so it was a good thing when someone put five dollars into the jukebox and the Beach Boys took them all to Kokomo immediately thereafter. Bernie, in response to universal acclaim, turned up the volume, and the roof of the Roadhouse like to come off.