I tell him again.
He asks a lot of questions about the old woman and the Little Free Library:
“You didn’t see her at first and then suddenly she was just there?” and
“You found a book about…ballroom dancing?” and
“When you looked back she was just gone?”
Strung together like that, his questions make me feel like I should’ve known something was up. But why would I think something was up?
He stares out across the cafeteria, thinking. After a while he laughs and shakes his head. “I think you got Zoltared,” he says.
“What are you talking about?”
“Did you ever see the movie Big with Tom Hanks?” he asks.
“Was this movie made in the last twenty years?”
“It’s a classic,” he says. Martin is unapologetic about his ancient tastes. Along with old movies, he loves old songs, old books and clothing best left for old men. Today, for example, he’s wearing a ten-thousand-year-old tweed blazer with elbow patches.
“Just listen,” he says, “Big is about this twelve-year-old kid. He’s at an amusement park trying to impress a girl by getting on one of the big-kid rides. The problem is he’s too short for it and they won’t let him on. He gets upset and takes off. Eventually he finds one of those old fortune-teller machines.”
“Lemme guess, the fortune-teller is named Zoltar?”
“Look who’s so smart,” he says. “Anyway, the kid puts a coin in and makes a wish to be big. Zoltar does his thing and a ticket comes out saying the kid’s wish will be granted. The kid’s about to take off when he realizes the machine was unplugged the whole time, so how could it spit out a ticket?”
“Then what happens?” I ask.
“The next morning when he wakes up he’s all grown up.”
We both sit there quietly for a minute. I connect the east and west tributaries in my mashed potatoes. After a while, the four-minute-warning bell rings. We head for the door.
“Martin,” I say, “magic isn’t real.”
“I know,” he says.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“I feel like you don’t,” I say.
I take one last look back at Shelley and Sheldon. Instead of a happy couple, all I see is Sheldon alone on the Ferris wheel, high over Santa Monica.
“Do you still have the ballroom dancing book?” he asks.
I realize that I never actually took it out of my backpack. I pull it out and flip through the pages, running my fingers over the diagrams. Am I supposed to teach myself how to dance?
Martin takes the book from me and thumbs through the pages himself. He stops and turns to me. “I think I figured it out,” he says slowly. “But you have to keep an open mind.”
“My mind could not be more open,” I say.
He holds the book so I can see what he sees. There’s an If lost, please return to stamp on the last page. Underneath, there’s an address for a place called La Brea Dance.
“This is it,” he says, sounding very excited and very certain. “This is what you’re supposed to do next.”
CHAPTER 9
So Fatal a Contagion
ACCORDING TO THEIR website, La Brea Dance is a small dance studio specializing in group and private ballroom dance lessons “For Weddings! Parties! Or Just for the Love of Dance!” It’s owned by an older Black couple—Archibald and Maggie Johnson. On the site there’s a small black-and-white photo of them smiling into each other’s eyes.
It turns out I’ve ridden by it hundreds of times without noticing it was there. It’s only ten minutes from my apartment, on the route I take to school every morning.
I hop off my bike and look around for a rack to lock it to, but （naturally） there isn’t one. I’ll have to take it inside with me. It looks like the actual studio is at the top of a long, steep and narrow staircase. I pick up my bike and begin the hike.
Almost every inch of the stairway walls is covered with dance memorabilia. It feels a little like I’m ascending to ballroom dance heaven. There’s a poster for a movie called Swing Time with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. There’s the Mad Hot Ballroom poster with two larger-than-life brown kids dancing in front of the New York City skyline. There are dance trophies and medals and framed records. Close to the top of the staircase, there’s a life-sized poster of a man and woman of indeterminate age wrapped tightly around each other. The woman is wearing a scarlet dress with matching heels. The man is wearing a blinding white tux. I think the pained look on their faces is supposed to be passion, but it looks like actual physical agony. I’d guess the pain is from the （Photoshopped） flames they’re dancing in. Across the top of the poster it says Come Feel the Heat. Across the bottom, written into the flames, it says Argentine Tango.