Emancipation Day by Wayne Grady Read Free Book Online Page A

was a fad that would pass, and then she’d just have to learn a new one anyway, so why bother? Instead, it kept getting more and more complicated, with the men doing the breakaway and the girls flying up into the air step to show off their nylon stockings. “Never had the right partner, I guess.”
    “I could teach you. I’m a whiz at it.”
    “I bet you are.”
    “Used to dance with my sister back home.”
    So he did have a family. “What’s her name?”
    A pause. “Alvina.”
    “Where’s home, then?” She realized he’d not mentioned where he was from. With most people it would have been the first thing they talked about.
    “Windsor. Ever heard of it?”
    “No. Where’s it at, then?”
    “Across the river from Detroit.”
    She wasn’t sure where Detroit was, either, but at least she’d heard of it. Something to do with motor cars. Her father bought his cars in England, brought them across strapped to the deck of one of the company’s merchant vessels. Not since the war started, of course.
    “My sister and me went across to the dance halls in Detroit. They had live bands, all the big names. Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Guy Lombardo. Glenn runs the American Army Air Force Band now. You ever hear them play ‘In the Mood’?”
    “On the marconi, yes. It’s nice.”
    “And Tommy Dorsey. I’ll play a little Tommy Dorsey for you next set. You’re staying this time, ain’t you?”
    “I suppose I will.”
    “Here, have a drink.”
    He pushed his Coke bottle across the table and she put it to her lips, aware that his had just touched it. The Coke was warm and burned her throat.
    “You’ve put rum in it!” she said, coughing.
    “Good old Newfie Screech. Sailor’s best friend.”
    “It’s awful,” she said, pushing the bottle back to his side of the table.
    “Where are you from when you’re not living with your sister?”
    She told him she belonged to Ferryland, down the South Shore.
    “Well, I better get back up there,” he said, nodding at the stage. “Stick around till the bitter end and I’ll walk you home.”
    “Maybe,” she said.
    “Say you will?”
    “Why should I?”
    “Just because,” he said.
    He was a flirt, she wouldn’t trust him for a minute, but when he stood up and passed behind her she found herself leaning her head back and letting her hair brush his arm.
    When the band returned to the stage they played two fast numbers to get the mampus on the floor. She almost wished she could join them, the smiling girls tossing their hair from their glistening foreheads, the men standing between songs with their arms around the girls’ waists. That was an aspect of dancing she hadn’t considered. Then Jack went to the microphone and announced that the next song was going out to Miss Lily White from Ferryland. He put a mute in the bell of his trombone and played “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You,” Tommy Dorsey’s signature tune. He played it slowly, not as high as Dorsey but more sensual, the muted notes sliding into one another and flowing out into the room like liquid smoke. On the floor, couples sank into one another, barely moving their feet. She felt the sound soak into her back and arms and chest. She held his Coke bottle in her hands and watched a couple she knew, a girl who worked in a dry cleaner’s and a corporal from the Canadian air base. Seeing them together made the idea of herself and Jack seem possible. The music brought the pair closer and closer until the girl’s head was resting on her partner’s chest, as though she were listening to his heart.
    The thought that Jack was playing, and that he was doing this for her, made her dizzy.
    Later that night, at Iris’s front door, she let him kiss her. Then she didn’t see or hear from him again for three weeks.
    “Throw him back, Viv, he’s by-catch,” Iris said when Vivian told her about the kiss the next day. “Forget him.”
    But she went over it a thousand times in her mind. They had been talking