by Stanley L. Daniloski (bio at end of story)
Read the first part to this story: Puppy Love
The old, granite block school looks like an abandoned castle in the early evening’s twilight. A lone tomcat patrols the quiet padlocked schoolyard, while a family of Starlings flutters around a rooftop nest. Up there, on the corner of the fourth floor, was my eighth grade classroom, and it has a great view of the east side of the city. That room to the right of the front entrance was my first grade class. Thousands of kids have been processed through this building in the eighty years it’s been here.
The sounds of happy voices float down the street as the first guests arrive at the school hall. There’s laughter and the happy screams as the ladies spot old friends and carry on conversations outside on the hall steps. Everyone is well dressed and there’s anticipation in the air. Five years have passed since we graduated, and tonight our class is celebrating its Five Year Reunion. I walk down the street toward the commotion and meet my friend, John, at the main entrance to the hall. He’s brought his steady girlfriend with him, but I came solo. All the guests are welcomed and given nametags before entering the hall, which is decorated in happy October colors. Once inside, we’re quickly set upon by several ladies who I soon found out were my ex-classmates. There’re more screams of surprise and a lot of hugging, and I’m loving every minute of it. I look around the room and everybody’s hugging and shaking hands like it was New Year’s Eve. I noted right there that I like reunions.
Eventually a voice on the microphone asks everyone to be seated. After a brief formal opening speech by the organizers of the reunion, a DJ begins to play music that was popular the year our class graduated. There’s tables everywhere, but people seem to prefer moving about and forming their own little mini groups. I’m engaged in a conversation with three former classmates when someone lightly taps me on the shoulder. I turn and am suddenly eye to eye with a beautiful woman. She looks very familiar. I glance down at her nametag.
“Yikes!” It’s Ericka! A full-grown Ericka, and she looks as if she stepped out of a fashion magazine. She embraces me. I have a hundred things to say, but nothing comes out. Her laugh tells me she understands. Then in that wonderful accent she says, “Ov course, you remember Anna?”
Ericka nods her head in the direction of a young lady standing off to one side. “Yikes!” again! Anna is Ericka’s younger sister, but she doesn’t look anything like the skinny little unguided missile I remember. In those days Anna was an accident waiting to happen - a kind of Calamity Jane! Both sisters laugh at my expression. I must be a comical guy. Back in grade school, I had a crush on Ericka but it was nipped in the bud when her father’s company transferred him to Virginia and he moved his family with him. Except for exchanging Christmas cards, we had no other contact for the last five years. I had forgotten how alive she made me feel.
I ask Ericka to dance when the DJ plays a slow tune. I hold her hand and we walk out on the dance floor. She comes together with me so easily, so gently. Ericka tells me that she and her family are currently living in a suburb of Washington D.C., and they just found out about the reunion a week ago. Anna insisted on tagging along. I tell Ericka that I still have all the Christmas cards she sent me. She hugs me and we get lost in the music. Then all the people magically disappear and we’re the only ones in the building. It’s a wonderful moment, and I don’t want it to end.
The rest of the evening the DJ plays polkas, cha-cha-chas, mambos, and everything in between, including a Paul Jones mixer dance. Anna asks me to start this dance with her. Before I can form the words yea or nay, she pulls me onto the dance floor. This gal is a dancin’ dynamo! The evening flies past in one beautiful streak of colored lights and happy sounds as we dance the night away. When the DJ announces the last dance, “Good Night, Sweetheart,” I dance again with Ericka. We slow dance without talking. The song and the scent of her perfume wrap around us and I’m transported to another level, a place where we’re dancing with clouds at our feet. Earth is someplace far away.
But everything must come to an end. Immediately after the last dance, Ericka gives me a hug and abruptly leaves. I start to follow, but Anna slowly steps in my path and holds me by the arm.
“Please, stay a moment,” she asks, and sits down. She pats the seat of the chair next to her.
Anna and I sit together and she tells me that Ericka is engaged to be married. She came tonight with the intention of telling me in person, but couldn’t bring herself to do it.
“Wrong!” I say in my head. “This is the wrong ending for tonight!” I go from the clouds to Earth in one big hurry.
We sit without talking as enthusiasm slowly drains from my body. People are laughing and talking all around us, but they seem miles away. Finally, I extend my gratitude to Anna and get up to leave. My friend, John, walks over and says that a bunch of people are going to the Ye Ol’ Koffeehous directly after leaving the hall tonight and says that I’m invited.
“Vot about me, am I invited also?” Anna responds.
“Sure,” John grins, “as long as you behave yourself!”
“I need a ride. Ericka took the Porsche,” she adds.
“I’ve got a five year old Chevy, if you don’t mind being seen in it,” I said half kidding, half serious.
“I lof Chevys,” she purrs. “Let’s go.” This gal was scoring points like crazy.
I unlock the car doors and Anna slides over beside me. I fire up Baby and follow John’s vehicle to the Koffeehous. Anna puts her hand on my hand and gives it an ever-so-gentle squeeze. Electricity shoots through me. Then, in that German accent, she says, “I haf a crush on you since the sixth grade. But your eyes see only my sister, not me.”
I take a quick sidelong glance at Anna. Something’s happening here - I feel like I’m seeing her for the first time! A second glance tells me, “I like what I see!” Then I’m hit with the overpowering thought that my focus is suddenly about to change.
Stan is the oldest of five brothers born and raised in East Baltimore, and is himself the father of two sons. He belongs to Local #2610 U.S.W.A. and has been an employee at Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point Works since 1959. In his free time, his hobbies are genealogy and country and western dancing. He began writing as a hobby about five years ago. One of his non-fiction stories was accepted for a steelworker’s anthology. Presently, he is working on a family narrative. “Puppy Love” is Stan’s first attempt at fiction.
