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isn't that brother a cabdriver?" she asked with growing concern.
"Yeah, but he got his weekend shift covered and he's bringing Judy Somebody, one of the other cabdrivers, and he says she's a really good cook." Esther tilted her head.
"It'll all work out just fine," I went on. "And I got a great deal on a school bus to take everybody up on Friday night. We'll leave here around seven, and when we get there, the table will already be elegantly set, the flowers arranged, a fire burning, and a luscious meal will await us." I waited to see if Esther could picture it. "And after a great night's sleep, we'll all get up, eat a big breakfast, and have all day Saturday for ice-skating—and all day Sunday, too! We'll leave on Sunday around six and be back to the city no later than eight, eight-thirty the latest."
Esther looked pale.
We opened our eyes Saturday morning to a crisp, icy-cold day The night before had been just perfect. The bus showed up on time, the dinner was truly gourmet, and while we ate and drank, we talked about what our office needed, what we all wanted, and what we all dreamed about doing together. We came up with a flurry of new ideas, so 1 grabbed a piece of junk mail and jotted them down. I starred someone's idea to produce a Corcoran Report strictly on new condominium prices. I liked it because we had never sold a condominium
and I wanted to get into that market. Then, like kids at a giani slumber party, we climbed into our beds and sleeping bags and fell asleep.
By 0:00 a.m. on Saturday, we had finished breakfast and were all sitting on the boathouse ledge, juggling sizes and putting on our skates. Despite her inhibitions, Esther laced up first and desperately clung to the boathouse wall.
"You look like a natural over there, Esther," I joked, and chinned in her direction. ""Now, hurry up, everybody, we don't want to keep Dorothy Hamill waiting!"
Although this would be my first skate on Whaley Lake, it sure looked like the kind of lake you'd want to skate on. It was one mile long, a half mile wide, and frozen over as far as I could see.
Ron Rossi, our leading salesperson, glided out onto the ice. He was resplendent in a one-piece Bogner snowsuit with matching chartreuse gloves. His ensemble's finishing touch was a long magenta and yellow Hermes scarf, which floated behind him as he pushed off the boathouse wall. In a previous life, Ron had been a world champion ballroom dancer, and from the looks of his first spin, we suspected he had been on the ice before.
"Follow Ron!" I gushed, and like ducklings doing their first waddle, we all got behind Ron as he demonstrated a large figure eight. After a few hundred falls, Ron had us looping large figure eights back and forth, back and forth, farther and farther out onto the ice. Esther staved behind practicing her glide close to shore.
We were almost to the middle of the lake when I noticed we had attracted an audience on the shore. Squinting my eyes against the sun, I recognized the man in front of the old Gloyde's Motel as Old Man Gloyde himself. He was waving to us, and I waved back with enthusiasm. He shouted, "That's nice, that's nic el"
"Thank s!" I acknowledged in the loudest voice I could muster. "Watch t h i s! 9 And with a quick tap of my right toe. I turned mv left foot and went into my best amateur version of a twirl. I made a point of holding my hands straight out with pinkies up, just like Ron had taught us.
Mr. Gloyde seemed to like my twirl because he waved even more vigorously, yelling again, "That's nice, that's n i c e!"
I was thinking about attempting a pretty pirouette, when I noticed Esther standing up on the boathouse ledge. She was waving just like Mr. Gloyde. When I heard the ice creak and begin to moan, it hit me. "Nice" wasn't "nice"—it was "ice." "Thin i c el Thin i c e/" And we were skating on it!
"Let's get the hell out of here!" I screamed, and the entire Corcoran Group shrieked in unison as the ice under our skates began
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