Juba! by Walter Dean Myers Page B

happy for me and Stubby that he didn’t mind. He told everybody he sold fish to that I was the world’s greatest dancer.
    â€œAnd to prove it, he’s pushing fish down Ninth Street,” a woman with a big bosom said.
    Jack started to argue with her that one thing didn’t have anything to do with the other, but I wasn’t sure. Something good had happened to me and I needed to figure out how to handle it, just as Jack had said something good had happened to Stubby and he needed to step back and think it through.
    We sold fish all morning, and Stubby ran his mouth a mile a minute all the time. He reminded me of Mr. Charles Dickens, because he was loving cooking and serving food as much as Mr. Dickens loved writing.
    We put the cart up at two o’clock, and Jack said he had to lie down for a while. He didn’t look too good and he was coughing, so me and Stubby put everything away. Stubby wanted to go over to Almack’s, and I didn’t think that was a good idea. If Miss Lilly was saying she did the cooking, it was because Peter Williams put her up to it. Stubby was eager smart, and Jack was old smart, but Peter Williams was mean smart, and I got the notion that maybe mean smart was stronger than what me, Jack, and Stubby had.
    â€œIf I’m going to think everything through, like Jack said”—Stubby’s shoulders were jerking up and down a little from him being nervous—“I think I should do the thinking over where I did the cooking and serving.”
    My friend made me smile, but I went over to Almack’s with him. When we got there, Peter was talking to Fred Flamer and two dandied-up gentlemen. The gentlemen were young, maybe twenty-eight to pushing thirty. One wore a suit that looked a little tight, like he wasn’t comfortable in it. The other one wore a short jacket, pants that didn’t quite match, and a silk scarf around his neck. He was the talker.
    â€œWhen we heard about the show and how you and Mr.Flamer danced, we knew immediately that you were the fellows we needed for a show we’re going to be putting on in Washington,” he said after shaking my hand for too long. “We want to start the performance at a theater that is a terrific place in the heart of Washington. We’re willing to pay you seven fifty a week apiece for the first month—we need to recoup some of our investment—and after that we’ll give the two of you one percent of the total profits along with the seven fifty. But we need to get the whole thing going pretty soon, because the Majestic Theater won’t be available for very long.”
    â€œWe’re seeing it as an opportunity we can’t pass up,” the other fellow said.
    â€œAnd what they’re telling me is that you’ll be dancing there four nights a week, and you can come here and work at Almack’s for two nights,” Peter said. “That’s a lot of traveling, but it could work out good. We could bill you up here as performers from the famous theater in the nation’s capital.”
    â€œIs it really famous?” Freddy asked.
    â€œWhat we want to do is to make it famous,” the gentleman with the scarf said. “And I think we can do that. What do you say?”
    â€œSounds good to me,” Freddy said.
    â€œI’ll think about it,” I said, remembering what Jack and Stubby had been saying about thinking things through.
    The two gentlemen asked me a lot of questions about howmany more dancers I would need to create a show as good as the one at Almack’s. I asked them if they had seen the show and they said they hadn’t, but that word of mouth was what made show business successful. That if you had enough people talking about you, the money would follow.
    Fred was nodding and agreeing with everything they said, but I wasn’t sure. What I would have liked to know was what kind of deal they were working out with Peter Williams, and why