the New Pantagruel

Cake-Walk

by James Fletcher Jordan

immy Lavender cut a dashing figure with his matador pants and bouffant shirt with frills. He did an elegant Paso Doble with show-stopping Chasse Cape maneuvers, but it was the ever-present air of menace that commanded wild applause.

“Sur place, and three and four!” Roger Ferron went through the motions of leading the class, although he did little more than follow Jimmy Lavender’s every whim.

Officer Smallwood would come to cramp Jimmy’s style every Tuesday and Thursday evening. He would sit in front of the full-length mirrors and smile sardonically at Jimmy Lavender for two full hours. The odd passerby would sometimes stop in front of Roger Ferron’s studio to look at the dancers. Now a crowd of close to fifty people pushed, jostled, and pressed against the plate glass windows to gaze at Jimmy strutting his stuff in the face of the law.

“Deplacement and Attack—and five and six—chasse to the left, yes! And seven and eight. Separation and Fallaway Ending–beautiful!”

Jimmy’s style was rather more graceful in its free flowing form than Roger Ferron’s highly academic steps. Roger Ferron was in fact taking secret dancing lessons just to keep ahead of his star pupil. He would dash out to Atlantic City for weekend conventions to check out the latest moves and embellishments. Considering Jimmy Lavender’s sensitivity and penchant for violence, Roger Ferron felt compelled to proclaim, often and emphatically, his student’s dancing genius.

“Absolument splendide, Professeur ,” or, “Magnifique, docteur !” gushed Roger Ferron.

Smallwood winced and shook his head in disgust. Technically it was true: Jimmy had been granted tenure at NYU. Witnesses to the grandiose fraud were silent or had vanished, as had any trace of the ghosts who had penned his doctoral thesis: Subverting the Hegemony of the Male Sublime: A Feminist Critique of Structural Engineering.

Jimmy’s victory dance celebrated a recent windfall: he was awarded a $360,000 grant from the Department of Health and Social Services to pursue his research on The Diagnosis and Pharmacological Treatment of Virtue .

Law enforcement theorists referred to Jimmy Lavender as a “Renaissance Criminal.” After mastering innumerable variations on the broad theme of fraud, Jimmy came up with something so radically new it entailed what the police, perhaps partly to justify their ineptitude, referred to as a “paradigm shift” in criminal rackets.

He had entered by brute force the ranks of academe and brought along his disciples. Among them were the likes of Joey “The Thomist” Vespa, himself the beneficiary of a $450,000 grant from the Internal Revenue Service for what would eventually become a canonical text for forensic auditors everywhere—“Corporate Accounting Principles: On the Varieties and Uses of Enchantment.”

No one had noticed the young girl in the studio that evening until she suddenly appeared on the dance floor amid the frenetic swirl of bodies. She was no more than twelve years of age. Her eyes were bright and alert and she stood on her toes, gazing with a look of interest and delight at the room’s center of gravity. She smoothly moved across the gleaming oak floor, gliding out of the way of a twirling couple.

Jimmy Lavender daintily executed a Promenade, giving his partner, the lissom Brigitte, an inside turn. Unable to corral his enthusiasm, he did an Explosion on the off beat, his Caping actions brimming with enthusiasm. His body language contained only synonyms for “narcissism”

“And now, what’s this?” cried Roger Ferron, staring after the girl. “Can I help you?—yes you!” Roger Ferron clapped his hands as though he were trying to scare away a stray cat. “We are dancing here!” said Roger Ferron in a polite but firm voice.

“I guess that explains the outrageous clothes,” said the girl. She wore a navy skirt, long navy socks, and a simple but nicely cut white silk blouse.

“That was just so cool, Mr. Lavender,” said the girl.

“Thank you.”

“Mr. Lavender, can I have a minute of your time?”

Officer Smallwood’s eyes narrowed with curiosity.

“That’s enough with you,” Roger snapped. “Come along now.”

“Hold it, Rog, the girl wants to talk to me.” Jimmy Lavender wiped the sweat from his forehead with a towel. “What can I do for you, sweetheart?”

“Mr. Lavender, my name is Laura Lavigne.” The girl’s voice, so straight and direct, without the slightest tone of obsequiousness or fear, caught everyone’s attention. “I came to ask whether you would help me with my end term project. I’ll be graduating from St-Clair Elementary in June.”

“That’s great, Laura. What is your project about?”

“It’s all about you.”

A deep and prolonged silence could be discerned under the cacophony of world beat Bossa Nova.

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