Dancer from the Dance by Holleran Andrew

Author:Holleran, Andrew
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

6

MALONE ONLY LAUGHED WHEN SUTHERLAND DECLARED THAT no one past the age of thirty should have more than three good friends; but he knew an awful lot of people. We had not been in his apartment five minutes the evening we left Bellevue to get the Social Security card the hospital requested, when there was a knock on the door. Two boys came in to go out dancing with Malone; two faces we had seen for years and never spoken to. They were shocked by our news that he had been beaten up, could have no visitors, and was spending the night at Bellevue. “But who did it?” said the short one. “Frankie?” We said no, and when we asked who Frankie was, the tall boy replied: “You can’t have known Malone very long. Frankie is a drop-dead Italian who was madly in love with Malone and who, when Malone told him it was all over—”

“An inevitable moment,” said the tall one, as he sat down on the edge of an upended milk crate, “an inevitable moment in the lives of all lovers, of every persuasion, a moment we must all learn to accept with grace and dignity.”

“However, at that inevitable moment,” said the short one, picking up the story, “Frankie did not behave with grace and dignity, no, he threw Malone down on the grass in Central Park and began breaking each rib and was about to knife him when Sutherland and the police arrived and saved Malone.” It was all inaccurate, but Sutherland with the freedom of an artist had arranged the plot to make the tale more vivid, and so the afternoon when Frankie had sat sobbing beside Malone was now, in the vast library of gossip, a scene of violence. “And ever since,” the visitor said, “Frankie has tried to learn the location of Malone’s cold-water flat”—he turned to us—“We call this place a cold-water flat, it is not an apartment—but with no success.”

“Is Sutherland at the hospital?” said the other.

“He’s in South America,” we explained.

“Oh,” said the first, turning to the second, “he’s with Kenny Lamar, they went over with that count, you know, the one who has every record the Shirelles ever made, the one Sutherland told you was the direct descendant of Diane de Poitiers, that’s where he is,” he said, with the breathless tone of someone fitting two pieces of rumor together. “Oh, God, they’re having a fabulous time.”

“Well,” said the second, standing up, “so will we. Malone would not want us to miss the party.” It was five o’clock in the morning, and the laundry lines that sagged between our building and the one behind, the fire escape, the flat tar paper roofs were emerging in the gray light. A pigeon fluttered in a gutter, a cat stared at it from the window opposite, its tail flicking back and forth, its teeth chattering, its eyes wild with the expression one saw sometimes on the faces of people at the Twelfth Floor.

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