and a red wrap skirt. She’s staring at him with wide, fascinated eyes.
Chuck holds his hands out to her, smiling, snapping his fingers. “Come on,” he says. “Come on, little sister, dance.”
* * *
Jared doesn’t think she will—she looks like the shy type—but she walks slowly toward the man in the gray suit. Maybe Magic Hat really is magic.
“Dance!” one of the beret guys says, and others pick it up, clapping along with the beat Jared is laying down: “Dance, dance, dance!”
Janice breaks into a what-the-hell smile, tosses her purse down beside Chuck’s briefcase, and takes his hands. Jared drops what he’s been doing and turns into Charlie Watts, hammering like a soldier. Mr. Businessman twirls the girl, puts a hand on her trim waist, draws her to him, and quick-steps her past the drumkit, almost to the corner of the Walgreens building. Janice pulls away, waving her finger in a “naughty-naughty” gesture, then comes back and grasps both of Chuck’s hands. As if they had practiced this a hundred times, he does another modified split and she shoots between his legs, a daring move that opens the wrap skirt to the top of one pretty thigh. There are a few gasps as she props herself on one tented hand and then springs back up. She’s laughing.
“No more,” Chuck says, patting his chest. “I can’t—”
She springs to him and puts her hands on his shoulders and he can after all. He catches her by the waist, turning her on his hip and then setting her neatly on the pavement. He lifts her left hand and she spins beneath it like a hopped-up ballerina. There must be over a hundred people watching now, they crowd the sidewalk and spill into the street. They burst into fresh applause.
Jared runs the drums one time, hits the cymbals, then holds up his sticks triumphantly. There’s another round of applause. Chuck and Janice are looking at each other, both out of breath. Chuck’s hair, just starting to gray, is stuck to his sweaty forehead.
“What are we doing?” Janice asks. Now that the drums have stopped, she looks dazed.
“I don’t know,” Chuck says, “but that’s the best thing that’s happened to me in I don’t know how long.”
Magic Hat is full to overflowing.
“More!” someone shouts, and the crowd picks it up. There are many phones being held up, ready to catch the next dance, and the girl looks like she would, but she’s young. Chuck is danced out. He looks at the drummer and shakes his head. The drummer gives him a nod to show he understands. Chuck is wondering how many people were quick enough to video that first dance, and what his wife will think if she sees it. Or his son. And suppose it goes viral? Unlikely, but if it does, if it gets back to the bank, what will they think when they see the man they sent to a conference in Boston shaking his booty on Boylston Street with a woman young enough to be his daughter? Or somebody’s little sister. Just what did he think he was doing?
“No more, folks,” the drummer calls. “We gotta quit while we’re ahead.”
“And I need to get home,” the girl says.
“Not yet,” says the drummer. “Please.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later they’re sitting on a bench facing the duck pond in Boston Common. Jared called Mac. Chuck and Janice helped Jared pack up his kit and load it in the back of the van. A few people hung out, congratulating them, offering high fives, adding a few more bucks to the overflowing hat. When they’re rolling—Chuck and Janice sitting side by side in the back seat, their feet planted among stacks of comic books—Mac says they’ll never find parking next to the Common.
“We will today,” Jared says. “Today is magic.” And they do, right across from the Four Seasons.
Jared counts out the cash. Somebody has actually tossed in a fifty, maybe the beret guy mistaking it for a five. There’s over four hundred dollars in all. Jared has never had such a day. Never expected to. He sets aside Mac’s ten per cent (Mac is currently standing at the edge of the pond, feeding the ducks from a package of peanut butter crackers he happened to have in his pocket), then begins to divvy up the rest.
“Oh, no,” Janice says when she understands what he’s doing. “That’s yours.”
Jared shakes his head. “Nope, we split even. By myself I wouldn’t have made half this much even