Free Among the Living by Dan Vining

Andrea.”
    “Hey.” Price looked at Jimmy.
    “I just wanted to thank you for playing the song,” she said.
    “Shouldn’t you be keeping the line open for . . .” Price looked at a Post-it note stuck on the mic stand. “Carmen?”
    “I have call waiting,” she said, sexy.
    Price was still looking at Jimmy when he said, “I hope things work out for you guys.”
    “You’re so sweet,” she said.
    “Not really,” he said, as a sexy threat.
    “Yeah-h uh,” she said.
    “I want you to call me, whatever happens,” he said. “On this line, OK?”
    She said yes and he said he had to go and cut her off.
    “I’m like a priest,” Price said as her light went out.
    “Yeah, I was just thinking that.”
    Jimmy told him who he was, what this was, a version that left out murders and executions and little girls orphaned, that almost made it sound like Elaine Kantke had lost her purse or one of her shoes like Cinderella and had hired Jimmy to get it back, all the way back from Disco ’77.
    “The Jolly Girls,” Price said. He used a slanted intonation, like a comic. The Jolly Girls . . .
    “So you remember them.”
    “There were three of them, four of them. They were babes. They were all older than I was. I was, I don’t know, twenty-four. They were maybe thirty. It seemed like a real difference at the time, but they were still babes.”
    “And they always came to the club with their husbands,” Jimmy said.
    “Yeah, right, I remember that distinctly. ”
    “Who was the leader?”
    “Elaine, I guess. I don’t know. It’s all kind of a blur, if you know what I mean.”
    Jimmy knew. “Did they do coke?”
    “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
    Jimmy had said they in a way that meant, “Did they do coke, too?” The DJ wasn’t insulted. Lloyd-the-Void had tried to fill the void with one of the things you try to fill the void with. Step One was to accept that you were powerless . . .
    “I wouldn’t say they were the biggest Hoovers among the regulars,” Darren said. “But then again, that bar would have been pretty high at Big Daddy’s at that particular time.”
    “Did you talk to her much?”
    “I talked to all of the regulars. It was part of the job. But I liked doing it. I was kind of a star. I got that kind of response from people, the regulars.”
    And he began to talk about the nights there. I love the nightlife, I love to boogie. He described each one of the lighting effects suspended above the dance floor, how they had been brought in from New York, how there weren’t any lights anywhere else in L.A. like those lights. Turn the beat around, turn it upside down. He remembered the wattage of the sound system, the size of the big black bass cabinets that sat on the four corners of the dance floor so it came up out of the earth at you, too, how the floor was covered in fog, like a graveyard in a cheap movie. Talking about the past, he had a different kind of energy. He woke up. He had more words at his disposal and they were better words, words that put you there.
    He interrupted himself when he needed to change a record or speak some words of encouragement to the heartbroken. An hour passed while he talked and the lovesick went to bed and the requests changed. Now it was more the people at work trying to stay awake, wanting something with a little more heat and a little less hurt.
    He remembered what Elaine Kantke drank because he’d buy her and the other Jolly Girls drinks to make them feel special. Long Island iced teas. He remembered that she wasn’t the best dancer of the four young women. That would be Michelle. Michelle would also be the biggest Hoover. Elaine would dance every once in a while, but what she really liked was being at the bar, on a stool, facing the dance floor and laughing at her friends.
    He remembered Vivian Goreck, a redhead. Viv.
    He remembered Bill Danko but not by name, just remembered that for a while there was someone Elaine seemed to meet, a blocky guy with his thick