The staked Goat

other’s clamoring for action.
    I put a twenty down on my check. The bartender took it, cashed me in, and returned my change.
    ”I’ll bet you just love the tourist trade in here,” I said.
    He smiled. ”Some more than others.” He was about twenty-three, maybe a high school pulling guard who had lowered his sights over the last five years.
    ”Look,” I said, ”is there anyplace around here where there’ll be some activity? I’m not”—inclining my head toward the departed trio’s end of the bar— ”looking to join those three. I just attended the funeral of a good friend, and I’d like to go to a place where there are people talking, dancing, and maybe laughing.”
    He dropped the smile and looked at me hard. Satisfied that I wasn’t just a variation of the Akron syndrome, he spoke. ”Two places. One’s diagonally across the street. Called the Library. Disco atmosphere, rock and soul music. Young professionals and a lotta foreign nationals, like students and fringe diplos, you know. The other place is called Dej^ Vu. It’s about fifteen blocks up M, take the left fork at the end of the business district.” He glanced at his watch. ”Probably okay to walk there now, but get a cab to go home. Older crowd, sixties music and swing. Lotta couples.”
    I thanked him, left thirty percent of the tab as a tip and got up.
    ”Hey, man,” he said, the smile back, ”the information’s free. I’m a tourist bureau, you know.”
    I winked at him. ”The extra’s for the fresh glasses, new coasters, workin’ the wipe cloth, you know.”
    ”Have a good evening.”
    ”You, too.”
    Since it was closer, I first walked across the street to the Library. A bouncer who had about thirty pounds on my bartender greeted me with a smile and opened the door for me. I walked down the flight of stairs in front of me and turned right into the place. It had an elliptical bar on my level and a postage-stamp dance floor a few steps beyond and below the far end of the bar. The ceiling was low. The walls were lined with bookshelves, and, to the casual eye, real books. A rock song came on the stereo system, and twenty or so people got up to dance.
    All the men in the place wore jackets. A lot of males were black, wearing continental three-piece suits. Many others were Asian, pencil-thin in dark two-piece gray or brown suits. The women were mainly American, black and white, in their twenties and secretarial in their clothes. I sat at the bar and ordered a screwdriver.
    A slim, light-skinned black woman on my right started a conversation with me. Not pick-up, just pleasant. Unfortunately for her, I wanted to be just a spectator and, fortunately for me, she got asked to dance. I found myself thinking how much this place reminded me of other singles bars in New York and Boston. There were nice people, and noise and dancing, but the smiles were like the ones you flashed for a wedding photographer and the laughs like the ones you trotted out at job interviews. I downed my screwdriver and left.
    It took me about twenty-five minutes to reach Déjà Vu. It looked like a greenhouse someone had tacked onto the Sheraton Hotel it abutted. A clone of the bouncer at the Library welcomed me in, asked if I wished food, drinks, or drinks and dancing, and gave me directions accordingly. I walked through an interior garden, overhung with huge plants of both the flowering and merely multicolored leaf varieties. I could hear swing music coming from around the corner. Benny Goodman plays the Amazonian rain forest.
    I turned the corner. The main room was like an airplane hangar. There were twenty or so couples twirling on a huge dance floor. There was a long bar on the right side of the dance area, tables on two other sides, and a wall with a grand piano and sound system on the fourth side. People of all ages, skin tones, and dress codes were arrayed around the outer ring of the floor. If I were twenty years older, I think I would have said the joint was jumping.
    The swing song ended, people applauded, and the Rolling Stones’ ”Satisfaction” came on. There was a whoop from the bar area to my right, and the world changed over, from 1943 to 1965. Probably two-thirds of the swingers left the floor, and their spaces were swallowed up by four-fifths rockers. A college-looking girl asked me to dance. I declined, a guy about my age next to me said he would, and they went stomping out there. I ordered a vodka and orange from a harried but cheerful