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Forces Polly chuckled at that, and Jack squinted at me and went "huh" the way he does when he doesn't know what you're talking about. Jack can't stand to be on the outside of anything but, bless his soul, he's just not the best read man you've ever met. Polly said, "Poor Grace. I hope you got to dance with Ernie Mcintyre today. I don't think his feet even touch the ground. Like dancing with Fred Astaire, I always thought." "Oh, Ernie," I said. "Isn't he a cupcake? He was my partner twice. But the trouble with square-dancing is that you keep switching around. I just wanted to drag him out of the square and make him waltz with me." Polly was patting Jack's hand again, to make up for our praising another man. But that's the way people always talk about Ernie: he's just a man that everybody loves. And he's short enough to match up when you take hold of him; I don't care for dancing with my nose on somebody's middle shirt button. Ernie and his wife, Laura, were the President of the Square Dance Club. You should have seen them together, like a pair of little dolls. And dance! They once won second prize, I believe it was, in a West Coast Ballroom Championship. With your glasses off you might take them for college kids, they were so trim and peppy. "Huh," said Jack. "If Ernie stepped on your foot, you wouldn't even feel it. Little runt can't weigh more than eighty pounds." But he was just pretending to be jealous, flirting with us. Just then we heard a siren, an ambulance coming down El Camino, turning into the entrance to the Village, and starting to wind around the hill. The place is laid out in concentric levels, like Dante's Paradise; our two houses — the Maynards' and mine, a unit with a common wall — are right at the top. We sat there and followed the wailing sound. I seemed almost to see the ambulance climbing — I have these flashes sometimes, like second sight. It's quite a common gift, actually. But when the siren stopped on the level below us, I couldn't quite tell where it was. "O'Malleys'?" guessed Polly. "Cora Kneeland?" I said. "Maybe Fred Primack's heart," said Jack, and that seemed to settle it. Polly put her hand on the phone, but Jack stopped her. "Leave it to the grapevine, honey. We'll hear soon enough." Suddenly the situation was too much for me-the implications, if you know what I mean. You hear sirens around here night and day; you might even get used to them. But sitting there with Polly, I was afraid I might break down and disturb the positive energy that Jack was giving out. <<| 1
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