The Nice Girl Gets Even novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Grown Folks' Cotillion

"Mostly," I said.

I nodded.

"Well. Congratulations to you both. I'll send a gift."

"Pose, come on, it's not..."

"Something from the registry," I said. "Once she makes one."

I walked out of the country club and sat in my car with the windows up.

Then I screamed into my grandmother's old cotillion scarf until the parking attendant knocked on the glass to see if I was okay.

I told him I was rehearsing.

That night Gussie spread everything on the card table in the ballroom.

My savings book. The appraisal. A pad of yellow paper.

"Bank'll lend you most of it," she said. "Not all. How much do they want down?"

"Twenty percent."

She wrote it out in her lunch-lady print.

$128,000.

Under it she wrote what I had.

$41,000.

Under that she drew a line, and a number that made my stomach drop.

$87,000.

"The court money would've covered it," I said.

"The court money's gone, baby. Quit petting it." She tapped the pad with her pencil. "So we make it."

"How? Bake sales?"

"Grown folks," Gussie said.

"What?"

"You know how many grown people in this town need to dance at something and are scared to death of it?"

She started counting on her fingers.

"Weddings. Proms. Retirement parties. Every man in Mobile who's ever stood at the edge of a dance floor holding a beer like it's a life jacket."

I looked over at Tuesday class.

They'd stayed after to help fold chairs.

The shrimper was trying to teach the widower a fishing knot with the piano cover's cord.

The bride was eating a pack of peanut butter crackers.

"Valentine's Day," Gussie said. "A grown folks' cotillion. They pay to come. We teach a waltz, a two-step, a slow dance. Everybody dances with everybody. We auction off a dance with you."

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