I wanted to do something for Jimmy, something private, something no one else knew about. Something that was just between him and me. I went down to the DuPage Trust and closed out my savings account. It wasn’t a lot of money, less than two hundred dollars, but it was enough to make a nice contribution to the scholarship fund at Jimmy’s dance school, which was what I’d decided to do.
“I’m going into the city today,” I told my mother Saturday morning. “You know. Knock around. Go to Field’s. Do some shopping.”
“Do you need any money?”
“No, I’m okay,” I said. “I’ll be back around five.”
“That jacket isn’t going to be enough,” my mother said. “You better take your coat and an umbrella; it’s supposed to rain—”
“Are you kidding? There isn’t a cloud in the sky!”
Mothers are always right. I got caught while I was crossing the bridge over the Chicago River, and believe me, I got caught good. The rain came fast and furious. Cabs got snatched up. People stopped ambling and started bustling. Me too. I ran the few blocks to Jimmy’s dance school, pulled open the glass double doors, and collapsed against the wall. I tried to catch my breath and shake off some of the wetness.
“You picked a hell of a day to go out without a raincoat,” I heard someone say. “Didn’t you hear the weather report?”
“Only from my mother,” I said. The person I was talking to was a young woman. A dancer, I was sure, because she was built tall and lean like Robin-the-toothpick and walked with the same kind of athletic grace.
“Here,” she said. “Catch.” She took the towel that was draped around her neck and tossed it to me.
“Thanks.” I started drying myself off. “Listen, maybe you can help me—I guess I’m looking for the registrar or someone who handles tuition.”
“Most everyone’s out to lunch now. Did you want to sign up for classes?”
“No. I was a friend of Jimmy Woolf’s, and I want to make a contribution to his scholarship fund.”
“The scholarship’s closed,” the girl said. “They made the decision yesterday.”
“Oh,” I said. I was really disappointed. “Who got it? Who did they give it to?”
“One of the first-year students. Jimmy worked with him a lot; taught him all of the old movie stuff. The Fred Astaire stuff.”
“Well,” I said, nodding, “I’m glad they gave it to someone who’s interested in the same kind of dancing Jimmy was.”
“It was a nice thing for his parents to do. The scholarship, I mean. The boy who got it was going to have to drop out because he couldn’t afford the tuition.”
“I’m glad they gave it to someone who knew Jimmy.”
“You were a friend of Jimmy’s?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Everyone around here was really devastated when we heard about it—about what happened—”
I started getting uncomfortable. “Yeah, I know.”
“Hey, would you . . . do you want to meet the boy who won the scholarship? I think he’s rehearsing down the hall in one of the practice rooms.”
“Oh,” I said. “No . . . no, I really have to be going.” I folded the towel and handed it back to her. “If I leave right now, I think I can probably catch the next train home.”
“I have to get going too. I have an audition at three, and I want to rehearse for it. It was nice talking to someone who knew Jimmy—I wish we could have talked longer.”
“Thanks. So do I.”
“’Bye.”
“Yeah, ’bye.” I watched her run up a flight of stairs. I turned around, pulled my collar up, pushed open the glass doors. I felt like the whole afternoon had been one huge wet waste of time. I was halfway out into the rain when I heard it: a song coming from one of the practice rooms. A song from the movie Swing Time. A song Jimmy and I had danced to a million times, the summer we were ten. The summer he discovered Fred Astaire and fell in love with dancing. The recording sounded old—the scratches were louder than the music; still, you could hear Fred Astaire, just barely:
Nothing’s impossible I have found,
for when my chin is on the ground,
I pick myself up,
dust myself off,
start all over again.
I came back inside and walked slowly down the hall toward the music. I peeked inside the practice room. It was a beautiful room: neat brown-brick walls, huge windows that faced skyscrapers and gave a spectacular view of the storm, a well-worn wooden floor, and those mirrors! Ceiling to floor, parallel to the windows, along the whole length of the room. I stood just inside the door and watched the boy who had won Jimmy’s scholarship. He was a young boy, maybe about fourteen, and he was totally wrapped up in his dancing, very serious about it. He was good. He was very good. Loose and relaxed and self-assured, just like Jimmy. I could see in his dance the signature of Jimmy’s style. It was like this kid was signing his name with Jimmy’s handwriting. It bothered me, sort of.
“Hi,” the kid said, whirling by me. He stopped dancing and put his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath. “I’m having a little trouble with the turns. . . .”
“No, it looks good. Do you . . . you don’t mind if I watch, do you? This is one of my favorite routines.”
“I like an audience,” the boy said. He did some bending and stretching, the same loosening-up exercises I’d seen Jimmy do hundreds of times. “Are you a dancer?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Just a Fred Astaire fan.”
“Me too. I love this song. It’s classic Astaire, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. . . . I haven’t heard this song since I was about ten—a friend and I spent the entire summer doing the dances from Swing Time, only I think he made a much better Fred Astaire than I did a Ginger Rogers.”
“Swing Time’s my all-time favorite movie,” the boy said. He tilted his head to the side and listened to the music, like he was waiting for just the right place to start dancing again. “Here comes the chorus,” he said, holding out his hand in a matter-of-fact way. “Remember this part? Want to give it a try?”
I just automatically took his hand. He put his arm around my back. It felt good. Sometimes I think that was what I missed most about Jimmy: good old-fashioned body heat. The boy started whirling me around and around the room. I shut my eyes. Partly because I was dizzy, mostly because I wanted to be back in Jimmy’s arms again, even if it was only a big fake.
Don’t lose your confidence if you slip,
be grateful for a pleasant trip,
And pick yourself up,
dust yourself off,
start all over again.
I could almost pretend I was safe again. I could almost pretend Jimmy was whirling me around and around his front porch like he used to. I could almost pretend he had never been killed. Almost. But not quite.
“I have to go,” I said suddenly. I pushed away from the boy and headed for the door.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing. I just have to go.” I ran down the hall. I banged into a couple dancers coming back from lunch, but I just kept on going.
It is not natural, I thought, for seventeen-year-olds to get killed. It is not normal. It is not the way things were meant to be.
Never mind the rain. Never mind the wind. The important thing was to stay calm and not give in, not give in to the panic. After I had walked a couple of blocks, my heart started pounding. Another block and I was unable to breathe. My hands started shaking. I ducked into an office building and called my aunt from a pay phone in the lobby. I had to go through her damn answering service. I finally reached her at some restaurant.
“I thought I had everything worked out,” I said. It was hard for me to talk; my throat muscles felt paralyzed. “I don’t know what’s happening to me; I need to see you.”
“Where are you?” my aunt asked. “Are you in the city?”
“I’m in some office building on Wacker. I have to see you.”
“I’ll meet you at the hospital. Can you make it over there?”
“Yes.”
“I’m leaving right now, and I want you to do the same thing, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
What it boiled down to was this: I was alone, truly alone. There wasn’t anyone, anywhere, who could take Jimmy’s place. Maybe the school could replace him with another dancer, but what was I supposed to do? The world could go on very nicely without him, maybe, but I couldn’t. No matter how many new people I met, no matter how many new friends I made, I wouldn’t ever have the same kind of relationship I’d had with Jimmy. That part of my life was gone forever. Why had it taken me so long to figure this out?
Why had I been so dumb?