Jimmy 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.
“You want to do a project about me?” Jimmy Lavender laughed nervously. Everyone laughed with him and waited for further instructions.
“The topic is The Meaning of Success , and we have to interview a person we think can serve as an example of success for young people.”
Roger Ferron’s face sagged and settled into an expression of sad astonishment. Dancers froze in mid flight and stumbled to the floor. Tony Fine dropped Dorothy Savage.
“Laura, my natural modesty is taking a beating. Do your parents know you’re here?”
Laura Lavigne smiled and pointed out the plate glass windows.
“My lift is waiting for me.”
“Do your parents know you want to interview me ?”
Laura Lavigne smiled discreetly and responded with a disarming wide eyed gaze.
“Mr. Lavender, I did mention that I attended St-Clair?”
The dancers averted their gaze. Jimmy Lavender and Officer Smallwood stared at one another, each lost in their own thoughts.
Jimmy Lavender, thirtyish, mysterious, charismatic, a brooding genius, looked wearily at the Coney Island joyrides in the distance. He had agreed to help Laura with her project out of a racketeer’s sense of noblesse oblige, but he was having second thoughts and had almost walked away when he saw her standing before the Hall of Spectres.
“First you got to tell me why you picked me.”
Laura shrugged her shoulders and winked at him.
“Well everyone knows you’re brilliant. I mean your brilliance boggles everything, including the mind.”
Within minutes of their first meeting, he was reasonably certain this twelve year old girl would somehow cause him a world of trouble.
“You sponsored the Junior Rangers. You crowned Miss Little Odessa.”
“The list goes on and on, I know.”
“But it was the Christmas baskets that did it.”
“I never knew some of those made it to the orphanage.”
They strolled on the Brighton Beach boardwalk and stopped to watch a Russian magician do his act before a group of babushkas with their grandkids and what looked like a complete rogue military unit from the former Soviet Union.
“I never thought of myself as a success,” said Jimmy, suddenly introspective.
“Success is measured by the bottom line, right?”
He noticed her smile, but there wasn’t anything remotely resembling an affirmation of her words in the pleasing glimmer of her eyes.
“You don’t really believe that.”
“Why not?”
Jimmy Lavender gazed at the kids frolicking by the ocean surf.
“It wouldn’t be real.”
“You love your work. And you’re so successful. Of course.” Was he imagining a light, pre-adolescent touch of irony in the intonation of those last two words? “But you must be lonely sometimes,” she added with disarming candour. “Most successful people are.”
“The bottom line can be fixed in so many ways. You can’t fix something untrue.”
He watched her write down his words in her notebook. She was running the show now, and he hated himself for agreeing to a second interview.
Jimmy Lavender’s cigarette flared as he inhaled and raged and pondered his next move. The brat was stressing him out. Joey “The Thomist” Vespa grabbed the dashboard. Jimmy lapsed into momentary alertness, barely avoiding a garbage truck which swerved into his lane, then resumed his reverie. His eyes kept wandering off the road, drifting towards a distant emptiness in the patches of darkness beyond the lights. He thought about Laura Lavigne, and those other children, burdened by what he could only imagine as a deep chasm inside. He knew it well, that vast nothingness that could not be filled no matter what you threw in it. When the thought faced him and he was about to acknowledge it, he instinctively reverted to the pet schemes that put a tight savage smile on his lips.
“Keep your eyes on the road,” said Joey.
“How do you expect me to drive looking at the road? I get dizzy. I need to think.”
“Think when the car ain’t moving.”
“How do you expect me to think when I’m not driving? I need speed, trees and poles streaking past.”
“Your thinking is going to get us killed. What are you thinking about anyway?”
“I was thinking about opening an orphanage.”
“Stop the car! Let me out!”
Jimmy’s modified Camaro had a shark-like sleekness. It had something of the marine creature rising out of the abyss, skin gleaming wet. In perfect synchrony with Joey’s cry, the primeval Leviathan deftly avoided a sausage vendor, did a 180 and ended up going against the traffic down a one-way street for several blocks.
“Could you think of a better front to launder some cash?” He tagged that on for Joey.
Jimmy Lavender and Joey Vespa went back a long way. They had seen many a fair-weather larcenist fall back into the turpitude of an honest trade. Jimmy knew that his idea, fully formed, simple and honest as it was, would be beyond Joey’s comprehension. Not that he understood it either. It didn’t seem to belong to the seamy realm of rational self interest where most of his ideas had permanent abode.
“Actually I can’t think of a worse one. Besides, I hate kids.”
Joey Vespa heaved a sigh of relief when they finally arrived in the parking lot of the Emperor Nero Bar and Grill.
“You sure that lowlife is here tonight?”
“There’s his Mercedes coupe.”
Jimmy took great pleasure in fighting when he was all tuxed up. Silk suits added zest to his already prodigious pugilistic ardor. He would dress like an effete dandy just to taunt some greasy roughnecks into a brawl. The candy colored silk suits were the best. All the NEA jurist saw was a pastel tornado of punches. But even as he gave full expression to his fighting prowess, deep within him was a shattered vial of doubt, and the poison was spreading slowly.
He found himself sitting in his Camaro in front of St-Clair Elementary School. He was astonished by the memories flooding unbidden: the sweet smell of books, ink, paper, and lead pencils, the dust motes seen in the light angling in from the tall window and falling on the green chalkboard on a lazy afternoon dreaming of the vast world and its secret texts slowly being revealed by Miss Grant who could have been no more than twenty-two and could not have been more beautiful. He briefly considered that other children had those same dreams, and that to safeguard them was the essence of a noble calling, a notion he could only define as an antithesis to his own vocation. He went back home.
The power line towers disappeared beyond the horizon, a row of tall trusswork pyramids of grey steel running parallel to the apartment blocks where he had spent his childhood. There was still the constant buzz of current, a perpetual whistling in one’s ears, a crackle and the occasional spark. He could see in the darkness the blue flickering glow of televisions light up the windows of the apartment blocks. He could not wait to see Laura Lavigne again.
Smallwood had crept around St-Clair for several days, somewhat baffled by the strange atmosphere hovering not only around the school but also spreading thickly from it to the neighbouring streets. There were children everywhere. The whole neighbourhood seemed to have been planned with them in mind. He was gripped with nostalgia at seeing so many shops selling children’s clothes, toys, books, and school supplies. The streets were clean, with crossing officers at almost every intersection. There were parks at every turn. Smallwood could hear wafting through the pleasant air the faint echo of children’s voices, reciting their lessons or in song.
He got the distinct impression Sister Alphonsine had been assigned to keep him at bay.
“Mr. Lavender happens to be one of our most generous benefactors.”
“Certainly the provenance of such gifts, however much they might be needed, must be of non-negligible importance, Sister?”
Sister Alphonsine frowned, deeply disturbed.
“Do you really know Mr. Lavender well, officer?”
Officer Smallwood, with a world-weary shrug of the shoulders, gazed absently at the obscure literary journal he held up to her. “The Impact of Globalism and Neo-liberalism on Chivalry: Trends and Prospects ,” he read with bitterness and despondence. “I wonder what Jimmy Lavender really knows about chivalry.” Then he added with sudden anger, “Can’t you see he’s a fraud. A dangerous fraud. I just can’t believe you allow that kid to associate with a guy like Jimmy Lavender.”
It was obvious to him that she had led such a sheltered life that the real presence of evil he confronted every day on the street was to her but an abstract, metaphysical concept.
“Perhaps Mr. Lavender knows more about chivalry than you think,” she said, summoning warmth and kindness. “Charity might be a large part of it, Mr. Smallwood.”
Laura met Jimmy Lavender at Astroland. They rode the Wonder Wheel, and the spider-framed joyrides. They visited the mermaid and the tattooed twins. They wandered through the Hall of Spectres.
“Jimmy, please, where are you?” she cried with delight.
“Which one of me would you like? There’s at least a hundred.” He was confronted by ghostly, multifaceted reflections of a darkly clad alter ego. The reflections multiplied, vanished, and reappeared, receding into infinity.
Dusk fell in soft blue and purple over the gleaming lights of Coney Island. She sipped a slush puppy and held his hand as they walked along the arcades.
“I’m going to have to disappoint you.”
“I know. My lift is waiting for me.”
“Are you sure they know about you being out here with me?”
“I wouldn’t be here if they didn’t.”
“This school paper of yours.” He did not finish the phrase but when he looked at her, blue windbreaker and pink beret over her long braided hair, he could see she knew what he would say.
“It’s been a learning experience for me.” He looked askance. “I’m not a scholar. I’m not even a good guy.”
“Why the hell not?”
“A girl like you shouldn’t ever be with someone like me. I want you to start your project all over again and interview a real person you can admire.” She gazed at him in puzzlement and disbelief.
“A teacher. One of the nuns at St-Clair Interviewing me—I hate to say it but it’s a travesty.”
“A what?”
“It’s a travesty.”
“But I think the travesty is going great,” she said with a look of such sincerity that she just burst out laughing when she saw the look of shock on his face.
“How’s that?”
“Well you’re obviously talented.”
He looked deeply troubled. He looked around for someone else she might have been speaking about.
“It’s possible you might not have used your personal talents in a worthwhile way. That stuff happens.”
“I haven’t got the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“I think you would make a great dad.”
The dance students waited vainly for Jimmy Lavender to return. Roger Ferron regained pedagogical control of his classes. Enrollment was stable, and even increased slightly, but the older students sensed a change. They missed the chaos, the dangerous excitement of dancing alongside Jimmy Lavender. They now suffered under the spartan discipline of their teacher. Tension was accumulating beneath the regimented gaiety and astounding clothes. Students came and went, many unable to stand the strain once they discovered the discipline that true dance required.
One tedious evening, Roger Ferron was leading the avid Grace Boutin into a frenetic but futile East Coast Swing. Outside the plate glass windows there remained but one spectator, an elderly gentleman whose jacket was festooned with war medals. Tony Fine had stepped up to try to fill in the charismatic void created by Jimmy Lavender’s departure. He had come dressed like a gaucho just off the pampa. He had spurs on his snakeskin boots, but one could sense his haughty gaze was ineffectual, even if he made a big show of drawing in the foot to keep his spurs out of the way of other dancers. The effect was more nuisance than dramatic. His combination of Sugar Push Notes and High Side Passes was pedestrian.
One late summer evening, when a gentle mist carried the first fragrance of fall, Jimmy Lavender appeared as though summoned by the dancers in their ennui. Those who knew him froze in mid twirl, stopped, stumbled, and peered in disbelief. Gone was the silk suit that shimmered like an oil slick. Jimmy wore a modest blazer over a simple white cotton shirt. They wondered if he was attempting irony with the grey trousers. Then came the unmistakable tremor of his steps on the tightly braced floor beams as he walked with authority toward the sound system and changed the music. Chopin’s Waltz in D Minor came on.
“What is it?”
“What happened?”
His first tentative steps drew a stunned silence from the other dancers. Everyone expected a virtuoso phraseology of movement and waited for a burst of elegiac runs and twirls that never came. They wondered if Jimmy had fallen victim to an accident, or, more likely, a vendetta.
No one remembered or recognized Laura Lavigne.
“Laura, I’m kind of an improviser.” Laura laughed as she led him through arduous steps. “I sort of ad-libbed a great deal.” He was struggling, biting back a litany of curses.
“You know you’re a great dancer, Jimmy.”
“But I’m not a great teacher.”
“Yes you are. This is great!”
Roger Ferron, who had an eye for the purity of dance, saw something no one else noticed. It was as though Jimmy Lavender was discovering the pure essence of movement and the high price it commanded. A strange new spirit compelled him now and dragged him against his will into a ballet of such joy that he rebelled against it with every fibre of his being. The girl led him on and giggled and laughed.
“Am I doing okay?” she said, breathless and gay.
“Magnifique, professeur,” said Roger Ferron. The other dancers noticed that Roger’s voice no longer held an obsequious tone, and that perhaps for the first time he clapped his hands with sincerity in response to a Jimmy Lavender performance. They peered closer now, and gazed at first inquisitively, then with delight as the stark unfamiliar simplicity of the dance was transformed before their eyes into a sudden magic of music and motion.
Copyright 2004-2005 :: The New Pantagruel The New Pantagruel.