Billy
Billy was asleep. A deep, blessedly dreamless sleep, with no rustling of feathers. No flapping of wings.
Then, suddenly and without notice, he was standing on his feet, wide awake, gasping for breath, heart pounding, wondering if there had really been a gunshot, or if that had only been part of a dream.
“But we weren’t dreaming,” he said out loud.
Still, when unexplained things happened in the night, they often happened as part of a dream, whether you’d thought you were dreaming at the time or not.
Then again, there really had been a drive-by on this block just a handful of months earlier. Ten bullets had sliced through the windows of a first-floor apartment two buildings down, thankfully killing no one. Hitting no one. But Jake Lafferty had run all through their building, pounding on doors at two in the morning, asking if everybody was OK. With a shotgun on his shoulder. Billy had seen it through the peephole, while refusing to open the door.
But this gunshot…this gunshot had sounded, if anything, louder than the drive-by gunshots had.
“Maybe because we dreamed it,” Billy said.
After all, Jake Lafferty wasn’t doing his night-time messenger Paul Revere number. So it must have been a dream.
Except, just then, somebody knocked on his door.
“That’s not so much a Jake Lafferty knock, though,” Billy said out loud. “More than Rayleen Johnson but less than Jake Lafferty.”
He turned on the bedroom light and checked the clock. It was only barely past ten thirty.
“Billy, are you OK?” he heard Grace call through the door.
He hurried to the door and threw it open wide.
Rayleen was standing there in the hallway with Grace in her arms. The little girl looked sleepy and scared all at the same time. Well, they both did. Well, all three of them probably did, actually, but in the absence of mirrors — and he owned none — Billy could only guess about himself.
“What was that?” Rayleen asked. “Are you OK?”
“Drive-by?”
“I don’t know. I would think Lafferty would have been down here with his shotgun by now.”
And Billy smiled, just a little, in spite of himself.
“It’s not funny,” Grace said, still clutching Rayleen, legs wrapped around her waist, head down on her shoulder. “It’s scary.”
“Sorry. You’re right. You guys want to come in?”
“No,” Grace said. “We have to check on my mom and Felipe and Mr. Lafferty and Mrs. Hinman and make sure they’re OK. Oh, wait. Look. There’s Felipe.”
Billy looked up to see Felipe pause on the bottom step, looking relieved to see them all in one piece, and all in one place.
“Felipe,” Grace yelled, much louder than necessary. “Will you go and see if Mr. Lafferty and Mrs. Hinman are OK?”
Felipe turned and trotted back upstairs again.
“Let’s go get your key,” Rayleen said to the girl, “so we can go check on your mom.”
“I’ll go,” Grace said, wriggling to get down. “She’s my mom, so I’ll go check on her.”
Rayleen set the girl down with her bare feet on the wood floor of the hall, and she danced from one foot to the other because it was cold.
“Sure you don’t want me to come?” Rayleen asked her.
“Positive.”
“Go get your key, then.”
But Grace just headed off toward the basement apartment. A cautious step or two later, she pulled it out from under her pajamas and held it up for them to see: the key, still dangling on its cord around her neck.
She disappeared down the stairs to the basement apartment.
“Who knew she slept with that thing on?” Rayleen asked Billy, who only shrugged and shook his head.
He was still standing in his open doorway, not wanting to come out — of course — and not quite ready to invite anyone in after bedtime. In fact, he was still not wholly awake.
“I should have gone with her,” Rayleen said. “What if her mom—”
“Oh, good God,” Billy interjected, cutting her off. “Don’t even say it. Don’t even think a thing like that.”
“Sorry.”
“What is that on your floor?”
Billy pointed to an envelope lying just inside Rayleen’s open doorway, looking starkly white against the worn and darkened rug.
“Hmm,” she said. “Don’t know. Didn’t even see it.”
She walked back and picked it up. She opened it as she walked back to Billy’s door. But it wasn’t light enough in the hallway to read the printing on the small rectangle of card stuck inside. It looked colorful, though. It didn’t look like a written note. It looked more like an advertisement of some sort.
“I guess you’d better come in,” Billy said.
And he turned on all three lights in his living room.
Just then, both Felipe and Grace arrived back.
Grace bounded in, shouting, “She’s OK! She’s loaded, and I couldn’t wake her up all the way, but she’s not shot, because she grunted at me, so that’s good.”
Billy looked up to see Felipe paused in the open doorway. He had never seen Felipe before, except through the glass, and he expected that Felipe had never seen him at all. They eyed each other in the tentative way strangers often do.
“OK if I come in?” Felipe asked.
“Oh. Um. Sure. Please do.”
But Felipe only advanced a step or two into Billy’s living room.
“Mrs. Hinman’s fine,” Felipe said. “Little scared. Lafferty wouldn’t come to the door. But that’s prob’ly just cause I told him it was me.”
“But he answered?” Rayleen asked. “I mean, you heard he was OK?”
“No. He’s either out, or he made like he didn’t hear me.”
“What’s that?” Grace asked, pointing to the envelope in Rayleen’s hand. The fear and confusion of events had raised her voice to a near-shriek.
“It’s a gift certificate,” Rayleen said, as if only just figuring that out as she reported it. “It’s a seventy-five-dollar gift certificate to a store called Dancer’s World. And it’s made out to you.”
“Me?”
“Grace Ferguson. That’s you. Right?”
Grace screamed. She jumped up and down. Ten, then fifteen, then twenty times. She shrieked, “I can get tap shoes, I can get tap shoes!” Then she stopped jumping and shot Billy a worried look. “Can I get tap shoes for seventy-five dollars?”
“I’m sure you can get something decent,” Billy said.
And, of course, that got Grace jumping again.
“That’s the best present anybody ever gave me! Tell me who gave it to me, OK? Please? Tell me who gave me that, so I can go hug and kiss them forever! Tell me right now? Please?”
Billy looked at Rayleen, who shook her head. Then Rayleen looked at Felipe, and he also shook his head no.
“We don’t know,” Billy said. “Somebody just slid it under Rayleen’s door.”
“Maybe your mom,” Rayleen said. “Yeah. Must have been your mom.”
“I don’t think so,” Grace said. The mystery of the gift must have sunk in for her, because she stopped jumping and screaming, and her face took on a thoughtful expression. “She doesn’t even know I started tap dancing.”
“Who else knows, then?”
“Nobody. Just you guys. Oh, yeah, and I told my teacher. But if my teacher wanted to give me a gift thingy for tap shoes, I think she’d’ve given it to me at school. Right? And besides, I just told her I was learning to tap dance, and for all she knows maybe I have my own shoes already, because I didn’t tell her I needed my own shoes. Only you guys know that. Oh, yeah. And Mr. Lafferty. I told him about it when I was asking him to go get the wood.”
“Hmm,” Rayleen said.
“Well, we’re all in one piece,” Felipe said. “So I’m going back upstairs. If it was a drive-by, we’ll hear sirens in a minute.”
“Goodnight, Felipe,” Grace shouted. Then, when he was gone, Grace said, only slightly more quietly, “I’m going to go ask Mr. Lafferty if he gave me this. Because then if he says yes I can say thank you.”
“It’s ten thirty,” Rayleen said. “That’s a little late to go knocking on his door. Besides, Felipe said he wasn’t home.”
“Or that he just wouldn’t answer because it was Felipe. Besides, we know he’s awake if he’s home, because somebody just shot off a gun.”
“OK, you can try,” Rayleen said. “But then come running right back down.”
“’K,” Grace said, and flew away.
As soon as she did, Rayleen leveled Billy with a look reserved for the adults of the building.
“What do you make of all this?”
“No idea,” he said.
“You really think Lafferty would do something that nice?”
“Maybe. He might. When she asked him for the dance floor, he had it back here in under an hour. Maybe he hates other grown-ups and loves kids. Some people can only tolerate little kids or dogs. Or both. It happens.”
“You don’t suppose these two things are connected?” she asked, holding up the gift certificate.
“What two things?”
But just then Grace came bounding down the stairs again.
“He must not be home,” she said, “because I said through the door all about how it was me.”
“OK,” Rayleen said. “Let’s just start settling down again, so we can get you back to sleep.”
“Are you kidding me? I’ll never get back to sleep thinking about my tap shoes!”
“Try.”
Grace sighed and slouched back into Rayleen’s apartment.
Rayleen looked up at Billy again.
“No sirens,” she said.
“Yeah. Well. In this neighborhood, minutes might mean hundreds of minutes. Or maybe they won’t come until morning. Maybe even the police don’t want to be down here at night. I wouldn’t put it past them to wait for a safer hour to investigate.”
Rayleen snorted. “And we’re so used to this shit, if nobody was hit, maybe nobody even bothered to phone it in. I’m going back to sleep.”
“What was that thing you were starting to ask me? Something about two things being connected.”
“Oh. Never mind. That was a crazy thought.”
“You know what I think is interesting?” he asked her.
“No, what?”
“I was thinking about the drive-by a few months ago. Lafferty was out in the hall, running around, checking on everybody, but that was almost…it’s like he needed to take charge of it or something.”
“No ‘almost’ about it,” Rayleen said. “It was a power trip. Pure and simple.”
“But other than that, nobody checked on anybody else. We just stayed in our apartments.”
“We didn’t know each other. That’s the difference.”
Grace appeared at Rayleen’s open door, across the hall, looking impatient.
“Are you coming already?” she asked.
Then she rolled her eyes and left again.
“I was thinking that was the difference,” Billy said.
Rayleen smiled just a little, and then let herself out without saying more, and Billy locked the door behind her.
He walked into his bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Now we’ll never get back to sleep,” he said.
But he was not entirely correct. Mostly. But not entirely.
? ? ?
For twenty minutes or so, well after the first light of dawn, he drifted off. And was nearly blown over by the wind currents of the beating of wings. Then they disappeared, suddenly, driven away, in a kind of evaporation, by a sharp sound.
He opened his eyes and blinked into the light.
“Don’t tell me. Let me guess,” he said quietly. “Someone is knocking at the door.”
A second knock.
“I want my old life back,” he said.
Grace’s voice, through the door.
“Billy, it’s me, Grace. Don’t get up if you’re in bed, I just want to tell you that I’ll be really late today, because Felipe is taking me to Rayleen’s salon, and then I’m waiting there till she gets off work, and then she’s taking me on the bus to the Dancer’s World store to get tap shoes.”
“Right,” Billy called out. “I saw that one coming.”
“I wish you could be there with us, so I’d know I’d got the best ones.”
“You’ll do fine. Trust the clerk and tell him how much money you have to spend. He’ll help you.”
“What if it’s a she?”
Billy sighed. “The trust part still goes.”
Rayleen’s voice now, through the door.
“Just wanted to let you know I’m right here to make sure you heard that, Billy.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“Go back to sleep now.”
“I will,” he said.
But of course he never did.
? ? ?
“Wait till I show you what I bought,” Grace said, the minute she bounded through his door. “I think they’re good, and I sure hope you think they’re good. The guy at the dance store said they were very good. Well, he said they were very good for the money. They were on sale. They used to cost over a hundred dollars, so that must be good, right? Because I didn’t even have that much to spend, but I could get them because they were on sale.” Then, before Billy could even answer, she said, “I’m worried about Mr. Lafferty. He wasn’t there last night, and he wasn’t there this morning before I went to school, and I just tried and he’s not there now. Why would he be gone so long? Where do you think he would go?”
“Oh,” Billy said.
Then a silence hung while he tried on some vague thoughts, all of which had been hanging around anyway, but none of which had yet been acknowledged.
“Billy,” she said. “Wake up. You’re not answering any of my questions.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I was just thinking.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing, really.”
“Why, Billy Shine! I never thought you would be a great big liar!”
“Right,” he said. “Sorry. I guess I was a little bit worried about Mr. Lafferty, too.”
“But you don’t even like him.”
“So true. I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Billy said, though he wasn’t sure at all. “Show me what you bought.”
“Guess who got me the gift certificate?”
“You found out?”
“Yup. Guess.”
“I can’t guess. Tell me.”
“Mr. Lafferty!”
“But you said you haven’t seen him.”
“Right. I haven’t.”
“So how do you know?”
“The guy at the dance store told me. You were right, it was a man. You said it would be a man I was supposed to trust at the dance store, and you were right. Anyway, he was the same guy who sold Mr. Lafferty the gift certificate. He said he just sold it to him yesterday. He didn’t say the name Mr. Lafferty, but he said it was a guy, kind of older but not real old, and he said the guy was very grumpy and rude.”
“Yup. That’s Mr. Lafferty,” Billy said.
“Close your eyes and I’ll show you.”
Billy closed his eyes. And, while they were closed, his mind slid softly back to the previous night. He heard Rayleen ask, “You don’t suppose these two things are connected?” and he knew, now, what she had meant. She had meant the gift certificate and the gunshot. Maybe part of him had even known it at the time.
He smelled the new leather of the shoes, close to his face.
“OK, open your eyes!”
He opened his eyes, and melted inside.
“They’re black,” Grace said, as if he couldn’t see that. “Do you think black is good?”
“It’s perfect. It goes with everything.”
“That’s what the man said. And he said they have a forced toe box.”
“Forced?”
“Something like that.”
“Reinforced?”
“Maybe. He said it makes you more…I forget, but it’s good.”
“Stable?”
“Yeah, I think so. And he said you can even change the sound — you know, bigger taps or smaller taps — but I’m not sure how, but maybe you can show me. He had some others, with more like bows, like ones with wide ties, but yours are lace-up, so I thought I should get lace-up; and besides, those weren’t on sale, so they weren’t worth a lot more than I paid. Do you like them?”
“Very much.”
He took another deep breath, filling his sinuses and lungs with their aroma. It made him feel the tiniest bit dizzy, but in a pleasant way. In a melting way.
We learned something new today, he thought, but did not say out loud. We learned that one’s first pair of tap shoes are always magic, even if they aren’t our first pair.
He looked up to see Rayleen standing in the doorway.
“Maybe we should call the landlord,” Billy said to Rayleen. “And ask him to check on…things.”
“Right,” Rayleen said. “Things. I’ve been a little worried about things, myself.”