Page 72 of Shadow Ticket
-mis-sion,
Pretty soon you’re Lupe Velez! like
the fella sez, it’s a pleas-
ure steppin
Right, a-long, with-that rhyth-m—that
Pan-Ame-ri-can jive, dive-
-in into the deep end, lettin ’em
know, you’re, alive…
down where fate is philanthropical…
mis-apprehensions mic-ro, scop-ical…
not-to mention all that tropical,
strange-ly trop-i-cal, rhyth-m!
The room by now lit up in some unearthly color process, timed in a faraway film lab so as to present an outward and visible sign of some strange underacknowledged link between Hungary and tropical Brazil, energetic dancers in vivid flashes of parrot colors and fanciful hats gliding elaborately by, camera angles growing dutched and dizzy, as it all goes sweeping down a long depth of focus away toward, and perhaps at last funneling into, an elaborate ladies’ lounge or toilet, and who knows what further vistas of streamlined modernity…
Slide was tipped off to Daphne’s whereabouts by Pancho Caramba, one of the percussionists, a bandmate of Hop Wingdale’s from the old Klezmopolitans. Hicks has to make his way through a crowd of smitten debutantes just to pass him a quick word of thanks, Pancho apparently enjoying some success not only with his extravagant solos but also working the ladies’ man angle in between. “Ironically it was never me but Pancho Caramba’s many fans who brought him into being, Casanova with a drum kit, all-round swoon material. ’Course it helps to be crazy. I go into this kind of trance, when it’s over they all come rushing up to tell me all about it. But very little of it’s on purpose, ’cause in public basically I’m shy.”
“Except when he cuts loose on the cymbals,” Daphne materializing from someplace, “then it’s ‘bashful.’ Saludos, Pancho, thanks for not stepping on my number.”
“Ever tried that I’d be counting my toes. You two already met, I think.”
“Been carrying around this daydream about it happening again sometime,” Daphne trying not to sound like she’s complaining, “you know the one.”
Hicks can guess. “Basic rule of the business ain’t it, Miss Airmont, one person’s big romance is another’s time and a half for overtime.”
“You can say Daphne, that worked OK before.” Not one of these after-dark sophisticates partial to cigarette holders, she counts on lipstick alone to keep the gasper attached to her lower lip, whether dancing, chatting, sipping cocktails, even eating sometimes. Admirers grow fascinated as to when and where butt and ashes, often still glowing, will drop.
“Yes,” one eye in a squint for the smoke, “stylish as hell, and you’d better know I also chew gum. Something you’ll have to deal with if this bittersweet reprise is going anyplace.”
“This what? Miss Airmont, Daphne, come on, it must be years by now, one high-speed boat ride, once, that’s the complete rap sheet.”
“Certainly one way to look at it.”
“Since then, only been following your career from a distance, Chicago papers, gossip mags, and so forth—”
“Another way to look at it, Snooks,” along with an emphatic flare of cigarette smoke out her nose, “you breezed in at just the right moment and kept me away from that North Shore Zombie Two-Step, otherwise I’d still be inside and lost. You are a key factor in my history, like it or not.”
“Boating conditions,” he protests, “at the time, see, I was only thinking about making it back in again without runnin out of gas.”
“While what I was thinking was, was if theyhadpulled me back into Winnetka Shores it would’ve been the last time, that’s how desperate it was for me. So…”
“Daphne, if you’re gonna start in again with that Chippewa hoodoo…”
By which point they’re dancing, having glided into it from some everyday moment, like reaching across him for a cigarette…after no more than four bars of which he can feel her begin to relax, and unless Hicks wants to start deliberately stepping on her feet or tripping over his own, he’s stuck once again with being Oversize Fred Astaire here.
By the time the band takes a break she has a peculiar look in her eye. Speculative.
“What?”
