Hal O'Brien

...to tell them a lie.

Here's what I told them:

---

I was walking through Pioneer Square one night on my way to look something up in my office, when I noticed the poster: “BENEFIT DANCE”.

Fifteen bucks to go towards Downtown Greens, an outfit big in the arts community ‘round the square. They specialized in finagling small tracts downtown, and then using them to grow gardens, getting poor kids to help out. The kids got outdoors and a chance to work with their hands, the neighbors got vacant lots to stop being eyesores, the bleeding hearts got to assuage their feelings on the cheap--a good deal all around.

The dance was being held on the third floor of one of the old office buildings near the Square. Hardwood floor, only a few pillars. You could see the reddish, autumnal glow through the fogged windows, down on the street. Inside, paper bags were being used as light shades, with stars cut into the middle of the large sides. Simple, more elegant than one might have thought, frugal.

I walked around the floor, listening to the band do sixties/seventies soul classics. They were good, and a bit unusual in that they had a substantial horn section--tenor and baritones saxes, trombone, and trumpet, in addition to the usual rock quartet.

There are some nights when I can just watch people have a good time, and enjoy the reflected glow. And this dance was a hit—-lots of couples, cool costumes that folks were wearing without the pressure of the just-passed Halloween.

And I wanted to dance, I really did. But, somehow . . . No.

I sat there, elbows on a table on the side of the room, hands pressed against my eyes . . . An eternity of weariness . . .

It reminded me of a time, back in seventh grade. It was perhaps my first school dance. I was tall and gawky, I still had a boy soprano voice--I was way too smart, and not wise enough to hide it very well.

I had a very hard crush back then on a girl. Sarah Alston her name was. She was also tall for her age, and stuck out at odd angles--but I found that endearing. She had tanned, smooth skin. A pixieish face that would light up in one of her smiles. And as far as I could tell, listening to her in class, she seemed to be bright. Her fatal embarrassment--every seventh grader has one--was her teeth, which were slightly bucked. Enough to make that the target of our classmates.

Anyway, cut to the night of the dance. Picture me, then, in a seventies plaid shirt, corduroy pants too short on my ankles by about two inches, glasses thick enough to serve as shielding at Three Mile Island, with those seventies red mock-turtle-shell plastic frames. Big clunky black dress shoes imported from Czechoslovakia, that happenin’ showcase of the height of fashion.

Sigh.

And I watch Sarah all night. Sarah dances with lots of the guys--although in retrospect, I seem to recall the glint in her eyes being more terror than anything else. We were all so afraid of each other back then.

And I try to screw up my courage to ask her to dance.

But for me, there was so much more on the line. Because I loved her--or so I thought at the time. My tiny little seventh grade heart was just going pitter pat. And I knew . . . Well, I knew that everyone hated me--save for a very small circle of friends.

So, here I was, contemplating asking this achingly beautiful creature to dance with me--and I knew I didn’t deserve it. And if I couldn’t convince myself, how could I convince her?

So I just kind of crumpled, in what I thought was a very quiet way. I went off to a corner of the room, folded my arms, closed my eyes very tightly, and just sat there still as a stone. Listening to “Boogie Nights”.

After a time, my best friend, Gabriel Goodman--who fifteen years later would be my best man at my wedding--noticed me. He came softly over--though I could hear his footsteps from miles away, listening to every creak of the wooden gym floor--and asked what was wrong. I wouldn’t answer. I just stayed near catatonic--No words spoken, no sights seen, just listening, and feeling like my consciousness was deep down a well.

Gabe knew me then--and now, even though we haven’t spoken for a long time--better than anyone else in the world. Gabe knew about how I felt about Sarah. I figure he went off and talked to her. Other kids noticed me, gathered in a circle around me, and made jeering, profane wisecracks.

Then I hear in my ear Gabe’s voice saying, “Johnny, there’s somebody here who wants to ask you something . . .”

And then I hear Sarah’s voice in my other ear . . . “Johnny, would you like to dance with me?”

If this was a Hollywood screenplay, I would have flashed open my eyes, embraced her, and done a tango with her on the gym floor, right out of True Lies. We’d’ve gotten married, had a passel of kids . . .

If this was a mystery novel, and I was a fictional PI, it never would have happened--Somehow, Chandler’s characters, and Dash’s, and McDonald . . . They all seem to have a history that stretches back all the way to last week . . .

But being a flesh-and-blood real man, even though I’d eventually gotten to live my power fantasy . . .

Well, I was still a thirty-mumble former stockbroker, in a gallery loft, hands scrunched up tightly against my eyes, dwelling in my childhood memories of when everything was handed to me on a silver platter--and I was so desperately sure I didn’t deserve it that I just sat there, frozen and immobile . . .

“What’s your name?” The voice was in my ear. Close. Soft.

I turned to her. “John. John McIsaac.”

She was only a few inches shorter than I. Honeyish hair, down to her waist, knotted in a French braid. She was wearing white and red silks—-draping her simply. And she was being Very Serious, which would have worried me . . . Except for the smile in her eyes.

“Well, John, I’m Traci Anderson. And I know that even in this day and age it’s considered uncool to ask the guy to dance, but . . . “

One of the good things about being an adult, though, is that sometimes you get a chance to not make the same mistake a second time.

And that was how I met Traci.