Then I saw Elizabeth at the far left corner of the room. She was dancing with a woman who appeared to be in her late thirties. I noticed, too, that there were half as many men as women on the dance floor. Of course, I didn’t know if people had been assigned dance partners or chose them voluntarily, or if any of that mattered, really, except how it spiked one’s erotic temperature, the result of watching people dance, especially if they were in the least graceful. Elizabeth’s partner was about two inches taller than Elizabeth, which made her five foot eight or thereabouts, and wore black slacks and a maroon blouse, and the blouse had an outsize bow at the neckline. Also, she had a boatload of freckles. Another striking aspect was that her hair, a lighter shade of red than Elizabeth’s, was fashioned into two shoulder-length braids. The braids flopped and flailed about, an anarchy of movement against the formal choreography that defined an established dance step, no matter how wild and faddish, which the lindy was.
Elizabeth saw me and waved — she looked so happy — and her partner scowled, as if Elizabeth had rudely broken their concentration; it was a slight scowl of betrayal, but they quickly regained the lindy rhythm, and to my untrained and impressionable eye, they seemed to have mastered it. Truth be told, it was not so much their duet of mutual regard, nor the intimate coordination of their bodies, which was not flawless, but their look of abandon that got deepest to me. Watching them (they sometimes closed their eyes), I imagined they were actually resident in the past, say the early 1930s, perhaps a decade before they would become war widows. At one point, Arnie Moran lost his composure, or fully realized his alter ego, and in a crooner’s voice said loudly into the microphone, “Yowza! Yowza! Yowza! The lindy is a dance of love and romance, made to free the bohemian soul, my friends. Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” He spun on his heels, faced the projector screen, and said, “Gotta cut a rug!” In response to Arnie Moran’s revelry, Elizabeth’s face scrunched up in mild disgust. A few seconds later, though, her expression was full of pleasure again. That quickly, Arnie Moran was forgiven his — by Elizabeth’s lights — cloying indulgence. Elizabeth and her partner both leaned back as far as they could while still holding hands — should either let go, the other would fly dangerously backward — free hands fluttering in the air, the lindy hop.
When the Boswell Sisters song ended, Arnie Moran all but shouted into the microphone, “Let your fancy feet get their money’s worth!” Right away he punched the jukebox buttons and on came another fast tune, and this was when I saw Alfonse Padgett, who’d been dancing with a woman across the room, make a beeline for Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s partner had gone to the ladies’, and when she returned shot Padgett a nasty look, then stomped out of the ballroom, which of course left Padgett’s recent dance partner the odd woman out. Arnie Moran didn’t miss a trick. He saw the lopsided arithmetic of the situation and jumped chivalrously from the bandstand, bowed deeply in front of the abandoned woman, took her in his arms, and dipped her back with dexterity and flair. She was at once convinced.
But now Alfonse Padgett was holding Elizabeth and insisting that they slow their movements. I could see Elizabeth acquiesce for the sake of not making a scene, but she kept Padgett at arm’s length. He’d press forward; Elizabeth would stiffen her arms. In a moment, Arnie Moran navigated his partner close to Padgett and kicked him in the ankle without breaking stride. Padgett winced, then let go of Elizabeth and limped over and sat on the bandstand. When Arnie Moran sashayed his partner past Padgett, Padgett formed a pistol with his finger and thumb, aimed it at Arnie Moran, and pulled the trigger.
When the song ended, Elizabeth walked over to me and threw her arms around my neck. She smelled of perfume and sweat in a way that made for an elixir, and whispered, “I did pretty well until the creep made his move — really creepy. You recognize him? It’s bellman Padgett, who delivered my chaise longue. Let’s go now. I’m all done in.”
Elizabeth’s Welsh accent seemed to become more pronounced when she was upset or dramatically flirtatious or when she chose to be very emphatic. Like when she said, “I’m all done in.”
It was about nine-thirty when we got back to our apartment. Elizabeth right away ran a hot bath and, once she slid into the claw-footed bathtub, left the bathroom door wide open. I was sitting at the kitchen table. “Wash my back?” she called out.
I went in and sat on the rim of the bathtub and took up a washcloth. As I massaged her back in slow eddies, she said, “Enjoy watching us klutzes dance?”
“You looked great. You really did.”
“Some partner I had, huh? I mean the first one. Name, as it turns out, is Grancel Fitz. Her husband owns the hotel.”
“In fact, that was their daughter, Miriam, on the dance floor, too.”
“Dancing with the bellman Jacob Grune, right? She might be jailbait, do you think?”
“With her mother chaperoning?”
“I’ve got news for you, O innocent husband of mine. My bet is that it might’ve been jailbait Miriam chaperoning her mother. Want to know why I say that?”
I dipped the washcloth into the sudsy water, leaned forward, and squeezed the water over Elizabeth’s breasts, purposely touching her nipples, circling each one with my thumb, just for a moment. “No fair,” she said. “Oh, I get it, maybe thinking of Miriam Fitz as jailbait turned you on. Better watch that.”
“Okay, what’s your theory?”
“Because—it was revealed to me in the ladies’ room, in no uncertain terms, that Mrs. Grancel Fitz is more than a student of the intermediate lindy with Mr. Arnie Moran.”
“Goodness, she’d have to be really organized to keep track of everything. Husband in one room, dance instructor in another. Me, I couldn’t have a secret life. I’d forget it was there.”
“Continue with the washcloth, please. There’s more.”
“All in an evening’s detective work for Elizabeth Church Lattimore, right? How do you find out so much, so quickly?”
“You just talk and then listen. I can teach you.”
“Never mind.”
“Okay, so… Oh, that feels so nice, Sam. Okay, so, furthermore, my dance partner, Grancel, she wanted, you know, to be my partner. You know, elsewhere but the ballroom.”
“Well, she’s got ambidextrous taste there. She’s also got good taste. And I don’t mean with Arnie Moran.”
“Mental telepathy, Sam! You and me have mental telepathy, because that’s exactly what I said to her invitation. I said, ‘You’ve got good taste.’ I meant to shut it down right there with that quip. But she came right back with, ‘I bet you taste good.’”
“Fast on her feet, Mrs. Fitz. I really like the name Grancel, though.”
“Me too.”
“Can I get in the tub with you?”
“No.”
“How about now?”
“No. What did you make of Arnie Moran?”
“Right out of central casting or what?”
“I’m not so sure,” Elizabeth said. “He seemed, I don’t know, genuine.”
“A genuine something, that’s for sure. Anyway, you caught on to the lindy fast.”
“The lindy’s pretty basic, actually. But Arnie Moran’s a good teacher. ‘Just be loose as a goose in a caboose.’ He says things like that.” Elizabeth stood up and I wrapped a towel around her. “I liked how I felt after the lesson,” she said, “but I had to wash the creep bellman Alfonse Padgett off,” she said.
We then removed directly to the Victorian chaise longue.