Page 4 of Shadow Ticket

After drifting around the Near North Side, putting his head in Smoky Gooden’s policy joint, passing some genial semiprofessional chitchat with elements of the MPD Morals Squad on their way in and out, listening in on a Bronzeville establishment or two, the Flame, the Polka Dot, the Moonglow, Hicks rolls into Arleen’s Orchid Lounge a little before midnight.

As jake with the world as it ever gets, extra pack of Spuds in his pocket, truck just in from Canada, rain whispering on the sheet metal out back, and April Randazzo about to begin a set, sporting an indigo number from some rag joint in Chicago that isn’t Goldblatt’s. Doesn’t look bad on her.

Over the last year or so Hicks and April have become a recognized couple on assorted dance floors around Milwaukee and further down the Lake.

Sometimes a camera girl will tiptoe up and snap them together dancing, and when the prints come back he’s amazed at how often the shot has caught April not quite smiling, that’d be too much to ask, but at least visibly relaxed, as if thinking the hard part of her day is over, one of those good-as-sincere surrenders to the swing ’n’ sway, the night out, the time she’s having so far.

They met at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, near the el, half a clam to get in, cork, felt, and spring-cushioned floor, palm trees, archways, tile, the Spanish palace courtyard treatment, secret tunnel to nearby Capone hangout The Green Mill, only white people allowed in.

First thing Hicks runs into is a floor patrolman in a tuxedo who’s just been prying apart a couple he thinks have been dancing “too close,” the male half of which has promptly disappeared, leaving a presentable young woman who turns out to be April.

“All’s I’m saying,” gripping her sleeveless arm in a less than hospitable way, it seems to Hicks, “is you and your boyfriend wherever he’s got to might find it more comfortable at the Arcadia, Dreamland, the Savoy.

Places like that don’t mind Lindy-hopping or the more experimental types of jazz band, but we have this sort of house policy, you see… ”

“Problem here?” Hicks’s hands, ordinarily sedate, beginning to tighten into fists.

“Thanks, but I wasn’t looking for police activities tonight,” April in a whisper over her shoulder, “if that’s OK?”

“See what I can do. First of all, pal, you can leave go of the lady, and get back to your junior prom out there.”

“Excuse me—”

“You’re excused.”

Apparently having taken a good look at Hicks for the first time, the floor man nods and withdraws.

“Well,” remarks April.

“Yeah. Care to cut a rug?”

“Not here. Somehow this joint has lost its charm.”

They end up eventually at a black-and-tan ballroom somewhat south of here where the music is closer to jazz and the dancing experimental as anything in town.

The band at some point decide it’ll be fun to play in 5/4.

“Hey, it’s the Half and Half. You know it?

” April turns out to be the first he’s met who ever heard of the step, let alone actually dances it, which according to Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle calls for a 1-2-3, 1-2 beat.

The rest of the floor is suddenly unoccupied.

Hicks and April remain, looking at each other, not for the first time but seems like it.

“Come on,” giving her a spin and there they are alone in a follow spot, April content to be led for a change, though she can count 1-2-3, 1-2 as well as this customer here who’s started putting in all these dips and hesitations, no doubt to keep her awake.

Well. A break at least from the cement mixers she usually finds herself out tripping with.

At the end of the number there’s even a little applause. April smiles back and nods. “For years that was my dream—to be one of those girls in a nightclub scene, all dolled up, out on a date, across a table from some dreamboat, just a little out of focus, having the best time in the world.”

“Me, a dreamboat, really?”

“Or to put it another way…”

However, a few more dances and drinks on into the evening—

“Oh my! Is that for me?”

“Thought you’d never notice.”

A pause, which he has the sense to wait through. “Maybe it’s the time of night a girl needs something to hold on to.”

“Go ahead, it won’t mind.”

“Oh, of course that’d be only one extra problem for you, I guess, easy in and out, get it over with quick as possible…”

“Who said easy?”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Anybody around here likely to get fooled, Toots, it’d be me.”

Pretending to recoil in sympathy, “Ooh! Poo-uh, lay-umb! Can I help?”

“You mean, by somehow not playing me for a sap? You’d really do that for me?”

“No. Not even if I knew you better.”

“Let’s hope that don’t happen.”

Yeah, let’s hope.

She is squinting at him, suspicion all over that photogenic kisser.

The full-scale Wabash Avenue once-over and then some.

Has he ever been scrutinized quite this close before?

Normally at about this point there begins to drift across the face of the broad in the scene a look of evasiveness Hicks has grown used to, followed by some form of “How cheapened has my life become that I have to put up with attention from palookas like this?” Except now, for once, it doesn’t happen—moments tick by as it slowly dawns on him that here’s a woman who’s finding a way to withhold her annoyance with him so skillfully that it’s invisible even to an old rejection whiz like himself.

When did this happen last, a tomato he’s hardly met going to so much trouble?

Ever? He could be paying a professional actress union scale to perform this small act of mercy, and here’s this April here giving it away for free.

Not a thunderbolt, maybe, but at least a wave of gratitude slopping over him…

—

As they get to know each other better, Hicks discovers that though April is more streetwise than the crowd she usually runs with, careful with her money, not about to say no to a drink now and then, usually now, where her sentimental eye chart goes running off into a dangerous blur is in connection with married men.

A gold-accented ring finger has the same effect on April as a jigging spoon on a Lake trout, especially when kept on while kidding around, good as a framed copy of a marriage license hanging up on a love-nest wall.

For a while Hicks tended to sympathize with the wandering husbands, although soon he found he was beginning to take it personally.

“Don’t know. I see enough of it at work already, don’t I. Crazy wives, jealous husbands, even when there’s nothing going on, it’s like they still want it to be.”

“How about you?”

“Just happy to see you when I see you.”

“Not sure how I feel about that.”

“What, I’m not crazy enough? You want me creeping around outside your window in the middle of the night? Cross-eyes? Napoleon hat? Got one of those, I could wear it for you.”

While not as common as a nose or needle habit, April’s married-man fixation does bring along its own set of health risks.

Wronged spouses within easy reach of firearms can no longer be ruled out of the national domestic melodrama, where the list of everyday household appliances now routinely includes hardware such as the Colt .

32 used by the recently famous Mrs. Myrtle Bennett of Kansas City, who in the course of an otherwise friendly bridge game shot her husband dead for coming up two tricks short on a contract, delivering her into headlines nationwide.

“Everything,” April has remarked wistfully to Hicks more than once, “right here for you, more romance than you’ll find outside the movies, until I remember this one little item, this ringless finger here…”

“So…when we’re kidding around, all that ooh, that aah, you mean that’s just an act?

Thought you were havin a good time there.

My sweetie.” Pulling out a hip flask from which he pours not hooch but some slow green liquid, rubs it between his hands, runs both hands through his hair as an intensely herbal aroma fills the room, begins to comb it into place…

“Putting some time in on your hair there, Sport.”

“A shine you can see your face in. Lasts for days, glows in the dark.”

“Show me,” reaching for the light switch.

“Hmm…maybe not as shiny as that. But long as we’re here…”

This is absolutely not the serious footloose-husband make-believe she’s comfortable with, too breezy, Hicks being the last type of dating material she should be getting anywhere near, in fact, but she can’t help herself.

A big ape with a light touch. The light touch fools women into thinking he’s sensitive, which he isn’t.

“Nice thing with you,” sez April, “is I never have to be nervous about my stockings. Any other night out all it takes is him thinking about it and zing! Runs, like that. Price of a steak, out the window. Dollar bills with these li’l…

wings on them. But you, all those pile-driver activities you’re so fond of and yet you never so much as put a wrinkle. ”

“Shouldn’t tell me things like that, Cupcake, you know what happens. Now I’ll just have to get impolite about it.”

“Oh! You animal.”

“She noticed,” making a grab.

“Dammit now, Hicks, you ape.”

“Hearing that one a lot this week.”

“Oh, who’d that be?”

“Just one of those workday episodes, maybe somebody you know, maybe not.”

“How likely am I to know anybody at, well, your level, I’m sure, and stop that—you hear me? you’re making such a big assumption…”

“Me, I’m a perfect gentleman. You want to come on down off of there?”

“Oh, Hicks. If only you would just be married, to somebody, some nice girl, Lutheran, Catholic, don’t matter, Polish, Irish, long as you do the deed in a real church…

Even got the hoop right here for you, shoplifted straight from the top sparkler joint on Wabash, your exact finger size and all, just waiting…

Only get married, one li’l ‘I do,’ and then I’d be more in love with you than you could ever dream. ”