some sort of community program organized to allow pensioners to socialize.
I stood in the doorway and watched the last dance of the afternoon. A portable stereo on top of the piano played an upbeat rhythm with a Latin feel and I guessed the class was practicing the cha-cha. For most of them, practicing was the operative word. They moved uncertainly through the steps and often stopped to confer with each other about what move came next. But Stan and his partner were in a different league entirely.
He was dancing with a girl about his age wearing a faded pink shift and a pair of old running shoes. She had dark straight shoulder-length hair that looked dull and unwashed and a lot of the time she kept her eyes on the floor. They were the youngest there by far but they moved with confidence through the whole of the dance.
This was something of Stan I had not seen before-my bouncing, stampeding brother was suddenly graceful. It seemed that in this controlled world of set moves he was able to feel sure of himself again, certain of his abilities. That he was able to claw back some of what he had lost at the lake.
When the lesson was over Stan and I walked out to the parking lot. The girl he’d been dancing with had beaten us outside and was standing by an old orange Datsun. She had her keys in her hand but she hadn’t opened the car. Stan waved to her. The girl didn’t meet his eyes but she lifted her hand and smiled.
As we pulled out onto the road Stan turned his head to keep her in sight. Then he straightened and let out a breath.
“What do you think, Johnny?”
“You were great. You’re far too good for the rest of them. I had no idea you could dance like that.”
“What about Rosie?”
“The girl you were with? She was good too.”
“I like dancing with her.”
“You dog!”
Stan laughed, embarrassed but pleased at this man talk.
“Have you asked her out yet?”
“Nah…”
“Are you going to?”
“She might not want to.”
“What are you talking about?”
Stan shrugged and looked out his window.
“I don’t know…”
“Looks like she likes you.”
Stan turned back from the window and smiled quietly to himself. “Yeah.”
We were silent for a while, then, as we drove through Old Town, Stan spoke again.
“Johnny, did you think about my idea?”
“The plant thing?”
“Yeah. I thought of a name for it. Plantasaurus. What do you think?”
“Like a dinosaur?”
“Yeah.”
“Like it’s some kind of plant-eating dinosaur?”
“You don’t get it, do you? Planta-saur-us. Planters are us. Planters are us! We could be the Godzilla of the plant industry.” He pointed out the window. “Look at all the stores. There are so many places that’d like plants, I bet. Don’t you think it’d work?”
“Plenty of stores have plants already.”
“But not proper ones. Not displayed all nice and looked after. People don’t know how to, Johnny. They don’t have time. We could deliver them, set them up in planters, and every week come around and water them and clean them and replace them when they needed it. Rich people might even want them in their houses.”
“So, all we have do is buy a van, buy the planters, find a supplier to get the plants from, do some advertising so people will know about us, and find an office to work out of.”
I’d run through this list as a joke to try to make him see things in a more practical light, but by the time I’d finished I felt bad for stamping on his idea so hard. To my surprise, though, he didn’t seem fazed.
“Yeah, and we’ll need a place to store our plants. Like a warehouse or something.”
“You’re serious about this?”
“Serious as a heart attack. Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”
“I think it’s a lot to think about. You can’t just start doing something like that.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve got to arrange things, put things in place. Think it all through.”
“All you gotta do, Johnny, is just start doing it.”
“Stan-”
“What are we driving?”
“A car.”
“A pickup. So we don’t need a van. There’s a place in Burton we can buy planters from, and I can ask Bill where to buy plants. We don’t need an office, but we do have to have a place to keep the plants and Bill has that other warehouse he doesn’t use. He’d let us use it, I bet he would.”
“He’d let us rent it, you mean.”
Stan rolled his eyes like I was splitting hairs.
“No, Stan, it’s important. All this stuff has to be paid for.
It isn’t free, you know.”
“I know that, Johnny. I’ve been saving all my pay, Dad told me I had to. I’ve got almost nine thousand dollars.”
“You’re joking.”
“That’s what I’ve got.”
“I don’t know if it’d be enough to start a business, though.”
“But you’ve got money too, don’t you?”
“Yeah, a few grand.”
“So we could put it together. We could be businessmen. Come on, Johnny. Please? I want to be someone people say hi to on the street. Please, Johnny. If I’m a businessman people won’t think I’m so dumb.”
“You’re not dumb, don’t say that.”
“Johnny!”
“Okay, okay… Let me think about it for a while. It’s a good idea, but I need to think about it some more.”
Stan smiled and punched the air. “Yes!”
In bed that night I turned the problem over. It didn’t seem possible to me that a business could simply come into being the way Stan thought it could. Businesses, I assumed, needed detailed planning, market research, the raising of capital, prolonged evaluation of particular strategies…
In a way, though, the mechanics of starting a business weren’t the issue. Stan believed that being a “businessman” would compensate for his reduced mental capacity, that it would place him on more equal footing with the rest of society. If that was so, if there was a chance that his life could be made better or happier this way, then however naive the attempt might be, I owed it to him to do all I could to make it happen.
It would consume our savings, and our lack of experience would probably doom the business from the start, but I had caused him to be as he was and this was my opportunity to make some small payment toward the debt of my past.
Later that night while I was still awake my door opened and Stan poked his head into the room.
“Did you think about it yet? I couldn’t get to sleep, I’m too excited. Did you think about Plantasaurus?”
“Yeah, I thought about it. Count me in, dude.”
Stan gasped. For a moment he was frozen, then he started running on the spot, shaking his hands in front of him.
“You mean it, Johnny? Really? Really?”
“But I don’t want to tell Dad about it just yet, okay? We have to be certain about things first. And before we can do anything we have to sort out that warehouse with Bill.”
“You bet, Johnny. Oh boy, my head’s spinning round!”
