[JAN (CONT.) Do I detect a pregnant pause?]
JOHN: Eighth grade Sadie Hawkins Day.
JAN: A girl asked you.
JOHN: Yes.
JAN: Who had a name.
JOHN: Shelly McGregor.
JAN: Description?
JOHN: Butter blonde in a ponytail, green eyes, slender, two inches taller than me. Freckles and buck teeth.
JAN: You knew her?
JOHN: Since fourth grade.
JAN: Friends?
JOHN: No. I helped her up and gathered the contents of her lunch daisy-themed lunch pail when she tripped on her way to the cafeteria in fifth grade. She said thank you very much, I said sure or something like it, and that was the extent of our conversation until she asked me to the dance.
JAN: How'd it go?
JOHN: I fell in love with her.
Jan stops, sets down dumbbells, John does the same.
JAN: All ears.
JOHN: She was a wonderful dancer. I told her so and she said she'd been practicing with her imaginary partner. She wore overalls, a gingham blouse and cowgirl boots with floral embroidery. First time I'd seen her in pants and with her hair down. She always wore dresses that I learned that night her mother made from patterns and fabric she ordered from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue. Between dances we sat on a bench in a corner at one end of the gym and talked mostly about how we thought high school w3as going to be. She was going to play basketball. When I say fell in love I'm talking about a crush, of course.
JAN: Of course.
JOHN: Her dad picked her up after the dance, she introduced us, we shook hands. His were huge and calloused. He was a mechanic at a Pontiac dealership in Fort Wayne. Driving a sixty-one Ventura. Same green eyes. Shelly and I shared a quick hug and told each other see ya Monday. I walked home looking forward to Monday, borderline elated, like I had unearthed treasure I never knew existed, told mom and dad a little about how things went, got to school Monday to find out that Shelly and her dad, Paul, had died on their way home in a head-on with a tractor-trailer loaded with corn whose driver had fallen asleep. I cried off and on for a week.
Jan embraces him.
JAN: John, if not for the arrival of Tom Travis Walker, I'd never have known this. Correct?
JOHN: Correct.
John wipes away a tear.
JAN: Did you just wipe away a tear.
JOHN: Me? A cold-hearted litigator? Please, Jan.
She looks at him, wipes away another tear.
JAN: When we get home and before you call Kate, do you think you remember enough to show me a little do-si-do?
JOHN: I do. And then maybe a swing your partner. If you're up for it.
She smiles, he winks.
JAN: I most certainly am.
They pick up their dumbbells, stride out of frame.