On Saturday night in the George Washington High School gymnasium, the local Jewish Senior Center holds its summer dance. Tattered paper streamers, used too many times before, hang over basketball hoops.
The boombox in the corner of the room is switched from its setting playing a worn-out cassette of Gloria Estefan’s song, “Abriendo Puertas,” to playing a Long Island radio station’s music nostalgia radio show.
Seventy-five-year-old Mae Poss, dressed in her navy blue velvet suit and yellowed string of pearls, sits on a folding chair watching the only two couples in the room dance. Other elderly women sit in the chairs along the sides of the gymnasium in their best clothes talking about their health problems and the deaths of the people they know. They drink sugary red punch and snack on stale potato chips. They are all feeling a bit bored and depressed.
Mae used to organize these dances before it became too much for her, after having a mild heart attack. More people used to attend, and they even once had enough money to hire a Klezmer band.
Now the young social worker, Hannah, organizes the dances. There are fewer people able to attend. The Jewish population of Washington Heights, Manhattan, many of whom fled the Nazis more than fifty years ago, are dead or dying.
The relaxing voice of an older male radio disk jockey introduces the romantic big band swing music on the stereo:
“This is Jim Masters on W.L.I.A. from Plainview, Long Island with The Jim Masters Show, bringing you the best in nostalgia radio.
“This program is brought to you today by Constipace...
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