Deadline at Dawn

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He was just a pink dance-ticket to her. A used-up one at that, torn in half. Two-and-a-half cents’ worth of commission on the dime. A pair of feet that kept crowding hers before them all over the map, all over the floor, all over the night. A blank, a cipher, that could steer her any which way he wanted until his five minutes were up. Five minutes of hailing, pelting two-quarter-time notes, like a stiff sandstorm hitting an accumulation of empty tin buckets, up there on the bandsmen’s box. And then suddenly silence, as at the cut of a switch, and a sort of tonal deafness for a moment or two after. A couple of free breaths without your ribs being corseted by some stranger’s arm. And then the whole thing over again; another blast of sand, another pink ticket, another pair of feet chasing yours around, another cipher steering you any which way he liked.

That was all any of them were to her. She loved her job so. She loved dancing so. Especially for hire. Sometimes she wished she’d been born with a limp, so she couldn’t manage her two feet alike. Or deaf, so that she’d never have to hear another slide-trombone fingering its nose at the ceiling. That would have kept her out of this. Then she would have probably been bathing somebody’s soiled shirts in a basement-laundry, or scouring somebody’s soiled dishes in a lunchroom scullery. What was the good of wishing, anyway? You didn’t get anything. Well, what was the harm? You didn’t lose anything.

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