WILFRED HAD THE shining new Blue Jays cap perched on top of his head when Muriel came into the room. He should have been caught, but his mother was so excited about the Big Bazoohley, she did not look at anyone but Sam. She came into the room with a Perfecto hairbrush in her hand, ready for action, and by the time she actually looked at Wilfred, he had hidden the baseball cap under his pillow. There was now only half an hour to go and even Sam was getting excited, though not half as excited as George and Muriel. They combed and brushed. They sprayed. They sponged and patted. They kneeled at his feet, pulling and tugging at his suit, putting a pin here, removing a little lint there.
“When you walk into the ballroom,” Muriel called up to him, “you will see there are a lot of tables with white cloths. That is where you will eat, but you must not sit there.”
“That’s not the right way to tell the boy,” said George, unscrewing a bottle of shoe polish and applying it with a tissue.
“Oh no, my dearest? And how should I tell him?”
“What you must do, young fellow,” George said, speaking carefully as he applied more polish to Sam’s left shoe, “what you must do is walk to the line of chairs on the wall at your left.”
Looking down, Sam saw him fold a yellow cloth and then begin to buff his left shoe furiously.
“You will already be being judged,” George puffed. “They will be looking at your hair. They will watch how it catches the light, how it moves, how it shines. But as the commercial says—you’ve seen the commercials?—‘Perfecto isn’t just about hair.’ They’ll be judging your clothes, the way you walk, the way you sit. To sit in someone else’s chair would lose you ten points. Can you remember that? Tell me the number.”
“Thirty-two.” They had told him that last night. Sam never forgot a number.
“There,” said George, smiling up at Muriel. “He knows now.”
“He knows nothing,” said Muriel.
She stood slowly, glowering at Sam from behind her weird thick glasses. “Who is Mr. Lopate?” she asked.
Sam shrugged.
“You see.” Muriel looked down at George, who was carefully packing up his shoe polish and cloth in a shoe box. “He’s a foreigner. He knows nothing. He knows totally nothing. First you will absolutely not touch your hair, ever, no matter. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
“Even if it itches.”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes the shampoo might make your head a little itchy. If you scratch, you are out.”
“What about Mr. Lopate?” Sam asked.
“He is a very famous movie star. I can’t believe he isn’t famous in whatever horrid little place you come from. You will see him in front of you the moment you take your seat. He will be seated at the podium. Do you know what a podium is?”
“It’s a sort of platform.”
“Correct. On this ‘sort of platform’ you will see a remarkably handsome gentleman sitting on a chair. That is Phillip Lopate, and all that matters in your little life is that Phillip Lopate likes you.”
“Seat thirty-two is right in front of Mr. Lopate’s nose.” George stood, holding his box of shoe polish. “It is a very good number. He cannot miss you.”
“You will have a blue number thirty-two. And when you stand to dance,” Muriel said, “you will go to the little girl who will have a pink thirty-two. Her name is Nancy See and she has particularly good hair. She dances nicely too, which is why all the old hands are so jealous of her. She’s new to the competition circuit, but everyone thinks she’s going to win.”
“You never said anything about dancing,” Sam said.
“Well,” said Muriel, “I am saying it now.” And they both began to laugh.
“I can’t dance,” Sam said.
There was sudden absolute silence in the room. Everybody was staring at Sam.
“You fox-trot at least,” Muriel said at last. “That’s all that’s needed. You can get by on fox-trot. That horrid little blond boy who won in Tokyo—that’s really all he could do, the fox-trot.”
But Sam had never even heard of a dance called the fox-trot, and he could see the Big Bazoohley slipping out of his grasp. “I can’t dance the fox-trot,” he said quietly. “I just can’t dance.”
“Oh, heavens,” said Muriel. And she sat on the bed with her head in her hands. “Oh, Lord help us.”
Wilfred slipped off the bed. “I’ll teach you,” he said “It isn’t hard.”
“How can you teach anyone to dance in half an hour?” wailed Muriel.
“I’m a fast learner,” said Sam.
But Muriel started yelling at him: “You tricked me! You tricked me into this—”
“Muriel!” said George. “Relax!”
“Relax!” she shrieked, leaping off the bed so high she seemed to fly. “I did all this work. I’ve added body and bounce to his filthy hair. He never told me he couldn’t dance. I pinned my hopes on him. I bribed that stupid man so he would give him seat thirty-two.”
“No one told me I had to dance,” Sam said.
“How could it be a Perfecto Kiddo Prize if you couldn’t dance?”
“Chop, chop,” said George. “It’s not too late to learn. Come on, Wilfred, you’ll have to be the girl. Okay now. I’m the orchestra.”
And, still seated in his straight-backed chair, the strange stooped man in the cardigan began to wave his arms around and thump his foot and croon in a strange high voice.