“You can go right up,” Clay told me. “He can’t see you, nor can you change anything.”
I took a few steps. The man had a full head of hair and no beard, but I recognized that nose, those eyes, and the smile from cheek to cheek.
“That’s…Grampy?” I grinned. He looked a lot slimmer. His face looked smooth and young. He was handsome in his youth.
“Yep.” Clay smiled. “I think he told you this story a couple of times—the one where he met your grandmother? But now you can see it first hand.”
Clay snapped his fingers and the world began to move. People were walking around, laughing—full of joy. I could hear music in the distance, in the direction Grampy was walking. I followed him as we walked down to what I assumed was Main Street.
“This is amazing!” I said to Clay. “How come you never told me you could do this?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t know I could when we were young. Once you left, I spent a lot of time inside the journal, and I figured it out.”
I watched Grampy stop outside the door of a small building. The music was loud on the other side of the door. He took a deep breath.
“Come on, Rudy. Let yourself have fun,” he said to himself before he walked inside.
I always cringe at men giving themselves pep talks. It just seems so corny, and Grampy wasn’t exempt from that.
We followed Grampy inside; the music was too loud and lots of people were sweaty and dancing. Grampy went straight to the bar and ordered a drink. A young black woman passed him a scotch. Ew. I couldn’t handle that stuff. He took a sip and I could see the nerves on his face—his eyes were darting around the room. Then he ordered another drink. And another one, and another one. He fiddled with the buttons of his vest, with a look of uneasiness. It was strange; he always came off as overly confident to me. This had to be the night when Grampy met Nan. The dance floor, the bar, being well dressed. It went along with how he used to tell the story. He told me he won her over with his moves, then asked if he could buy her a drink, and next thing he knew they were madly in love. At least that’s what he told me when I was a kid.
I watched Grampy edge towards the dance floor. He was awkwardly trying to break through the crowd. Everyone was surrounding a young black woman in the middle of the dance floor who was moving so fluidly and carefree. I assumed this was Nan and my smile extended into something stupid. Eventually Grampy made his way towards her. They made eye contact.
Then Grampy opened his mouth, and instead of a smooth line about buying her a drink, he stuttered, “H-hi…miss!” He tried to get her attention. “I like y-your…h-hair. Can I buy you a beer?”
I groaned and put my head in my hands. “C’mon, Grampy!” I shook my head. “Ask her to dance. Say something sweet. Stop being weird.”
“It’s all downhill from here.” Clay grinned.
“Don’t tell me that.”
Grampy didn’t say anything else. He just kind of moved back and forth, trying to dance with a serious lack of rhythm. I didn’t know if this was real life, or if Clay had taken me to an alternate universe. I was flabbergasted at the idea of Grampy being nervous. But I could feel him becoming anxious; he wobbled a bit. I facepalmed, knowing he drank all that scotch way too fast. The dancing woman in the middle took note and asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah…I’m fine.” Grampy replied. But the next thing I knew he fell backwards, hard.
“How did Nan fall for that?” I asked, looking at Clay.
“It’ll make sense soon.” Clay snapped his fingers and everything sped up, like a movie on fast-forward. The woman on the dance floor left, and two men picked Grampy up and carried him towards the back exit. Clay and I followed. They sat him down against the brick wall outside and the bartender from earlier approached. Clay snapped his fingers again and time resumed normal pace.
“I’ll take it from here,” the bartender was saying to the bouncers.
She put a wet cloth to Grampy’s forehead, and eventually he came to.
“Hey. Woah. Woah.” He moved her hand away. “What happened?”
“What happened? What happened is you got drunk and passed out on the dance floor.” The woman laughed. “But to be fair, I was the one giving you those drinks.”
“I don’t believe that,” Grampy said. “Did someone hit me?”
“No,” she said. “This isn’t one of those places. The only thing that hit you was the floor you fell on.”
“I don’t believe it,” Grampy repeated. He shook his head.
“Gosh, you must be a city boy. You got a chip on your shoulder or something?”
“Or something.”
He tried to stand up but the woman pushed him back down. “Where do you think you’re trying to go?”
“Back inside. I can’t go out like that.”
The woman laughed. “We are well beyond dance floors right now. You are not going back into that bar.”
He sighed with a look of defeat across his face.
“What’s your story, anyways?” the woman asked. “You a tourist? We get all kinds men like you in the summer.”
“No. This ego grew up here for the most part,” Grampy said. “I’m going to university in Halifax right now. Tried to catch a boat down here, missed it, so I thought I’d make the best of my ‘vacation’ here.”
“Huh,” she replied, looking at him closer. “You do look familiar now that I think about it. Maybe we’ve into run into each other in passing.”
“I guess I should properly introduce myself,” he said with a smile. “My name is Rudy Brooks.”
