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Published:
2019-06-22
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Lost In The Crossfire Talk

Summary:

Baby goes out into the world hoping to change it - but ultimately she's drawn back to Johnny when her hitch in the Peace Corps ends.

Notes:

Prompt: Dirty Dancing (1987), Johnny/Baby, Just a boy and a girl

Work Text:

There was a great, enormous feeling of smallness welling up in Frances (Frances, now that she was off to join the Peace Corps) as she packed a small suitcase. She was going to an entirely different continent – her first time out of the country – and the realization that she was going to have to deal with life sans Johnny was bearing down on her. The Peace Corps instead of Mount Holyoke – which had been deferred for an indeterminate amount of time – had been an unusual change, but her father had supported it. Her father was, to be honest, good at supporting

They’d written after the summer had ended – he’d promised, and he was good at trying to keep up with the flow of her longhanded angst, which constantly overspilled the page and left inky stains on the page like tears pouring down the cheek of a Madonna. Johnny had been calm, assured and confident. He informed Baby that he was moving to New York to try his luck on Broadway. That would require sharing an apartment with Penny, something they were used to after years of hoofing it on the circuit. Penny sometimes interjected into Johnny’s letters; giving her news of Greenwich Village, and the political climate that was getting hotter and more impassioned as time went on.

Baby’s participation in the protest culture was limited. She had houses to build, people to feed, mountains to climb. She was determined to make the world better, to improve her mind and improve the state in which she lived. And so, for months, she squatted in the dirt and created warmth, heat and light for strangers. By the time she looked up it was 1968 and the whole world had changed again. She was deep into her twenties, and the promise of Mount Holyoke still lingered in the distance, a fat plum on a tree waiting to fall into her open palm.

Her hitch was up. She was going home. And Johnny was waiting, though she was sure time hadn’t stood still for him either.

It stood still for none of them.

***

Once she was back on American soil, Baby once again became Baby – though she was indeed beginning to mind it. In Hadley, she enrolls in various classes that will get her a degree for advocacy work; perhaps as a defender in the juvenile court circuit. She gets a job as a simultaneous interpreter at the Holyoke District Courthouse with the fluent Spanish she’s attained working overseas, which is the first step to supporting herself once she graduates. On the first weekend the leaves turn red – a stunning sight, one she’d forgotten about when she was turning buckets of rice with a pizza paddle and hammering nails into boards – she got on a bus and went to New York. Baby had kept in regular contact with Penny and Johnny both, and as time had passed and life had pulled them all in differing directions, she had tried to keep contact but lost the two of them. All she had was his last address, clutched in her hand, shining and tiny.

Baby had to be buzzed up to the fourth floor of a comfortable-looking but knockaround brownstone, which was large enough to feel bewildering as she stood at the foot of it, and labyrinthian enough to make her feel like she was entering an institution instead of an apartment. She knew the number – 15 – and found the right door. Or so she hoped.

When she knocked she heard the sound of children. Alarm filled her – this couldn’t be right – but then Penny’s beaming face greeted her when the door flew open, and she was wrapped up in a hard bear hug.

“Why didn’t you call?” she asked. “I would’ve put together some kinda cake!”

“You can’t cook!” Baby peeked up at her. Penny looked healthy; good and rosy-cheeked.

“Since when has that stopped me?” she looked Baby up and down, holding her at a distance like a relic. “How did you manage to get so grown-up looking?”

“The Peace Corps helped,” Baby said. “I had to make a lot of choices on my own for the second time. I tried to turn it into a habit. What about you? You look good! Is that spot in Hair still working out?”

“I’m understudying Sheila!” said Penny. “It’s working great!”

Baby peered over Penny’s shoulder. There were a number of kids bouncing off the walls – stuck inside during Columbus Day vacation. Roughly five of them. “Congratulations?” She asked.

Penny snorted. “How many letters did you miss? Baby, we watch people’s kids in the mornings for extra money. Or we used to. Considering what you said, I don’t know if you got Johnny’s latest letter.”

“I think I missed a couple, coming home from India,” she said.

Penny slid the latch closed, and she drew Baby close. “His number came up in the draft.”

A chill ran across Baby’s spine. “What’s he going to do?”

Penny shook her head. “You know him, Baby. You know how he is.” A crash sounded from within the apartment. “Hey!” she yelled. “Careful of the record player! We just paid it off!”

“Do you know where he is?”

Penny’s expression turned stony, serious. “Canada,” she said. “He’s supposed to be going to Toronto until the war’s over.”

Baby’s resolve solidified. She didn’t know where to find him, but she knew, somehow – even in the huge, broad expanse of New York City – she would.

****

Baby’s feet ached as she rested her back on a bench in Central Park. She racked her brain, trying to remember more names and places he’d spoken about in his letters, but couldn’t recall anything more, any further haunts or friends to check in with. The sun was starting to go down, and she’d have to get back on the bus and Massachusetts before it was too late.

“Your timing’s a lot better than it used to be.”

Baby looked up and all of the air pressed out of her lungs. Johnny was still Johnny: in a leather jacket, with longer hair, and a motorcycle at his hip.

“You look…” she shook her head. “Penny told me what you’re going to do.”

He gave her a crooked smile. “Not as if I have much of a choice.”

Part of her wanted to childishly tell him that she’d just found him and he was going to have to leave. But she knew it was bigger than that. Were she the old Baby, she would have told him to stay and fight – but who wanted to participate in a wasteful war that was none of America’s business, that daily took the lives of kind and honest men? “I hate the war too,” she said.

“You doing marches up in those fancy society circles of yours, baby?” he asked. It was a casual barb.

“I don’t have any fancy circles,” she protested, then held out her hands. “See? They’re still scabby from working.”

“Should’ve realized. Fancy was more Lisa’s thing,” Johnny said. She shook her head. He sat on the bench, and automatically Baby put her head on his shoulder and they cuddled up.

“Would you like to come with me?” he asked.

She glanced at him. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?” he asked.

“Shake up all of my plans with a wave of your hand?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I guess I’m just special that way,” he said – so dry of voice she rolled her eyes at the statement. “And that’s no answer, girl. Do you want to come with me, or not?”

What could Baby do? She had plans – of course she did – but this was Johnny. And what was life, without this man beside her?

She answered him with a kiss, wondering how she’d be able to switch her credits up to Canada – how she’d be able to find an interesting job. How she’d be able to hang on to the back of his bike all the way to the Canadian border.

She would figure it out . They were just a boy and just a girl, torn apart by a world that was ripping at the seams and then pressed together again. Though they were tempest-tossed; though they were just two people stuck among the roiling see of humanity, they had hope and a need to make the rest of their lives meaningful. And they would each have to mend the rent pieces together in tandem, hand in hand, to save themselves.