THE LAST WALTZ

 

THE LAST WALTZ

 

“Oh, my gosh, it is you. Donald Bix. Oh, my gosh, I thought it was you. Why, you’ve been here all evening and it seems you’ve danced with everybody but me. How long has it been? More than thirty years, I would say.”

        I smiled at the ebullient Kate Conklin.  She looked pretty good for a woman approaching sixty.  Smooth skin, and chestnut brown hair. No gray showing.

        We were at a church social, in the very church that we had both attended when we were teenagers.  Back then, I’d had a flaming crush on Kate, but she had been too beautiful to give me a tumble.  She was still beautiful. 

        “Actually it’s forty years,” I told her, as I led her out to the floor to begin our dance. “I left Beantown a few months after we graduated, and joined the Army. Liked it so much I stayed in for thirty- four years.  Been all over the world. I only came back this way a few months ago.”

        “Imagine that,” she gushed.  “And how are you now?  You look wonderful. Not different at all. That’s how I recognized you. And how do you feel these days?  I have a touch of arthritis.”

        “I feel like I should at sixty.”

        “And are you married?” she asked.

        “I was.  I’m not now?”

        If she was itching to ask if I was divorced or if my wife had died, she didn’t do so. 

        “What about you, Kate?”

        “Oh, I’ve been a widow for ten years now.  I’ve got four grown children.  Well, of course they’d be grown, wouldn’t they? Three girls and a boy. I was married to Joshua Laine.  You must remember him from school. Star quarterback, and all of that.  He drank himself to death, the poor dear.”

        “So, it’s not Conklin anymore?”

        “Oh, but it is. I took my maiden name back.”

        The music stopped.  A man on the stage at the end of the hall got in front of a microphone and announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s almost time to turn out the lights and go home to dreamland.  For our final dance we’ll play Engelbert Humperdinck’s wonderful recording of ‘The Last Waltz’.

        As Kate and I twirled at low speed around the floor, I asked “How did you come here tonight?”

        “I took a taxi.”

        “Would you like me to give you a ride home?”

        “Oh yes, thank you. That would be very nice.”

        I frowned.  “I have to say, if you were my daughter, I would be very angry with you”

        “What on earth for?”

        “For accepting a ride late at night from a stranger.”

        “A stranger?  What are you talking about, Donald?  We’ve known each other since we were kids.”

        “No. We knew each other when we were kids. But we haven’t known each other for a long, long time.  And a lot can change in forty years.”

        Kate smiled indulgently.  “Don’t worry, Donald.  I trust you.”

        “And what about the strangler?  They haven’t caught him yet.  He’s already killed seven women.  Older women.”

        Kate chuckled.  “Are you the strangler, Donald?”

        “I could be,” I admitted.

        The music ended, and people began to move away from the floor and towards the cloakroom.

         “Let’s not talk morbidly anymore, Donald,” Kate insisted, as I helped her into her coat. “You’ll drive me home, and please come in for coffee and brownies.  How does that sound?”

        I smiled and nodded.

        We walked out to the parking lot, and I settled Kate into the passenger seat of my car.

        My expression was solemn as I got behind the steering wheel.  “Kate,” I said, “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but my wife was one of the strangler’s victims.  That’s how Dorothy died.”

        For a very long time, we both sat silently in the shadows of the car. Then there were some gulps from Kate and tears on her cheeks.

        “Oh, dear god, I’m so sorry, Donald,” she gasped. “So sorry.”

        “I’m sorry too, Kate.  I’m sorry that I burdened you with such awful knowledge.”

        “No, it’s alright,” she said and squeezed my hand in hers.  “Perhaps in some way it eases your pain.”

        I started the engine and turned on the headlights.  Kate gave me directions to her home, which I was surprised to hear was the very house that had always been her home.  “Josh bought the house after my father died, and my mother went to live with my sister Jean,” she explained.

        When I swung into Kate’s driveway the high beams flashed across the porch, and I was pulled back four or five decades. Kate’s sweet, gentle mother, was handing out baked cookies and tea to me and all of Kate’s little friends.

        It was a long, long time ago.

        It was a better time ago.

        I got out of the car and opened the passenger door.

        “You’ll still come in?” Kate asked hopefully.

        “Of course,” I said.

        We went into the house and Kate snapped on the lamps in the living room.

        “Make yourself at home,” she said, and indicated the Laz-E-Boy recliner in the corner.  “I’ll be out to put the coffee on soon.”

        Kate went down the hallway and into a room that I expected would be a  bedroom.  She put a light on, and I followed her into the room.

        When she realized that I had come in behind her she was surprised, but not apprehensive.  She even smiled. 

“I’ll be coming right out, Donald,” she assured me. “The brownies are in a cake dish on the kitchen table if you want to help yourself. And I’ll be making us some coffee.”

        I closed the bedroom door behind me and glowered at Kate. 

I moved towards her and she backed away and stumbled against the bedframe.