Free The Search for Joyful by Benedict Freedman

didn’t mind her going on about Robert Whitaker because I’d found out quite by accident that she’d had the chance to room with someone else but elected to stay with me. That obligated me to hear more examples of her young intern’s sterling character. As she enumerated his peerless attributes, I thought—Crazy Dancer has none of those. In the first place he hasn’t a proper kind of name. Robert Harley Whitaker II, now with that name one could be a banker, a trial lawyer, the head of a corporation, an admiral in the navy, or the first-rate surgeon he would become. Someone named Crazy Dancer couldn’t aspire to any of those positions.
    â€œRobert’s such a gentleman,” Mandy went on.
    I laughed inwardly at the thought of Crazy Dancer being a gentleman.
    â€œAnd he dances divinely. . . .”
    Ah, here we were on common ground. Or were we? I visualized Robert Whitaker with Mandy on his arm doing a box-step fox trot; I could see his black polished patent leather shoes treading lightly.
    What did Crazy Dancer wear when he danced? Probably he painted his body and wore a corn-husk mask and bells on his ankles and moccasins scuffing the earth and maybe a breech-clout. This time I laughed out loud.
    â€œWhat are you laughing at?”
    I could see Mandy was offended so I changed the subject.
    Â 
ANOTHER NIGHT LATER in the week, with our window wide open and spring in the air, Mandy whispered from her cot to mine. Robert had three tickets for Delormier Stadium. They were hard to come by and expensive. So when she urged me to go with them I was tempted. I figured out I would have to miss three Saturday movies to see a game. But I was pretty sure Crazy Dancer would show up, so I said no. It crossed my mind once or twice to wonder how Robert was able to afford such things. Supposedly he was a poor boy from a poor family. But somehow he seemed always to have money.
    Toward the end of the week we had another bed-to-bed talk. Mandy had gotten to know a lot about Montreal. Robert was alert for any local color and passed it on to her. There was a section in the French quarter that no respectable girl would venture into. Certain hotels rented rooms for twenty minutes at a time all through the night. The town, according to Robert, was wide open—sports betting, lottery tickets, chemin d’fer, baccarat, roulette, blackjack, craps, and barbotte. While even the war failed to put an end to drug smuggling. But the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul said their novenas, sang their prayers, and kept sin away. They attempted to do the same with the wounded and dying—but they kept coming.
    I had expected to hear from that crazy Indian, Crazy Dancer. I hadn’t. Mandy too was without a date for Saturday night, as Robert had been preempted by Dr. Finch for an evening at his home. “To meet his ugly daughter.” Mandy made a face and mounted a campaign to get me to go with her to the canteen that was set up in a high school gym. “It’s not the Victoria Rifles’ Ball or the debutantes’ coming out or even the St. Andrew’s Annual, but for heaven’s sake, Kathy, it’s all there is, and I don’t want to go alone.”
    I agreed, mainly to get some sleep. Next day I discovered she wouldn’t be alone, Ruth was going too. Mandy lent me a flowered scarf to dress up my outfit, and we started off.
    Harsh unhooded lights revealed an upright piano, but no visible player. A handful of servicemen hung around a couple of card tables. They held paper plates with potato chips and not much else. A Crosby record was wobbling on the phonograph.
    We stood uncertainly in a bunch. Two sailors homed in on Mandy. I didn’t blame them. Mandy was the girl next door, or at least what they wishfully remembered the girl next door to be.
    Ruth, on the other hand, was self-conscious about her braces and the cheap silver fillings, which she was replacing out of her meager