Dance With Me

Sometimes, Karen and I get off work at the same time and we then walk home together.
One night Karen tells me, “Gary, my mother is really sick. I don't think that she's gonna make it. Sometimes I feel like just giving up, but we gotta make some money at the diner to live on. I'm so depressed.”
On impulse, I hold out my hands to Karen and say, “Dance with me!”
Neither Karen or I really know how to dance, but we hold hands and kind of whirl around in the light under a street light. Karen then pulls away and I bow to her. Karen turns and runs from me.
A couple of nights later, I again meet Karen on the way home and she asks me, “Gary, why did you do that?”
“Ask you to dance with me? Karen, you're a good looking girl. Every guy wants to dance with a good looking girl.”
Karen starts to cry and I ask, “What's the matter?” Karen says, “Except for you, everyone else treats me like trash. Okay, I don't have all the clothes that some of the other girls have, but that doesn't mean that I'm trash.”
“The other kids, they have parents to support them. They got clothes, they got a home for free, they got spending money. You and me, we gotta work just to eat, to survive. If I had time and money, I'd take you to a real dance. Dance with me.”
We hold hands and again kind of whirl around in the light under a street light, this time we also reverse and whirl around the other way. Karen then pulls away and I bow. Karen curtsies and then walks away from me, maybe too overcome by emotion to talk.
One day, I get a visit from the oil company that supplies my station's gas and oil. The guy tells me, “They gonna put a major highway upgrade through, somewhere in the area. The upgrade might be here.”
I reply, “A major highway upgrade would mean that I'd have to upgrade my station in a big way. I got an in at the local bank, but I don't know how much money I could get on a loan.”
The oil company guy says, “If it comes to that, we can work something out.”
The next few days, there's a survey crew working the area, The survey guys stop at my station for gas. They want to do some sort of survey thing through my property.
I ask the guys, “Why do you want to survey across my property?”
The head of the survey team says, “If they should decide to upgrade the highway, could be that they'll need an, oh, access road.”
I tell the guy, “Okay, you can survey across my property, as long as you don't interfere with my customers.”
The survey guys do what they do and they even put in survey stakes.
(They don't put in survey stakes, just in case. They intend to use the survey stakes to put in a road. The question is what kind of road? I check things out and I see at least a four lane road. They don't put in four lane access roads. I do some further checking and I find that the ground on the other side of the intersection with the big crossing highway is unstable. I scope out the situation, using my good old oil company highway map. If they upgrade the highway past my station, they gotta put in an interchange. The interchange gotta cross my property and Karen's mother's property. Karen, her mother and I gonna make some real money when they put the interchange in. Things gonna change for the better!)
It's Saint Patrick's Day and there's a big party, down the road. Everybody, who's anybody is going to the party.
However, Karen and I are nobody and we won't go to the party.
By now, Karen's mother is in a hospice and they say that she's not gonna make it.
I wait for Karen, Saint Patrick's Day night. I have a basket. Karen sees me and says glumly, “Gary, everybody else is at the party.”
“I have our party, in the basket. Dance with me.”
Karen and I whirl around for a bit and even add a few maybe dance steps. Kern then pulls away and I say, “Now, for the cake.”