They were the kind of couple that made you believe in couples.

Max lassoed a lot of people that night, and one of them, eventually, was me. I was surprised when it happened—almost like I’d forgotten I was there. I’d been watching from the sidelines for so long, I’d started to think I was safe—that I could just enjoy the view and the music without having to join in.

Wrong.

As Max pulled me onto the dance floor, I said, “I don’t dance in public.”

Max frowned. “Why not?”

I shook my head. “Too much humiliation as a child.”

And that was true. I loved to dance. And I was actually pretty good, probably. I had good rhythm, at least. I danced around my own house constantly—while cleaning, and doing laundry, and cooking, and doing dishes. I’d crank up pop music, and boogie around, and cut the drudgery in half. Dancing was joyful, and mood elevating, and absolutely one of my very favorite things to do.

But only by myself.

I couldn’t dance if anyone was looking. When anyone at all was looking, the agony of my self-consciousness made me freeze. I couldn’t bear to be looked at—especially in a crowd—and so at any party where dancing happened, I just froze. You’d have thought I’d never done it before in my life.

And Max knew enough about me to understand why. “Fair enough,” he said, not pushing—but not releasing me, either. “You just stand there, and I’ll do the rest.”

And so I stood there, laughing, while the band played a Bee Gees cover and Max danced around me in a circle, wild and goofy and silly—and it was perfect, because anybody who was looking was looking at him, and that meant we could all relax and have fun.

At one point, Max did a “King Tut” move that was so cringingly funny, I put my hand over my eyes. But when I took my hand away, I found Max suddenly, unexpectedly, standing very still—pressing his fingers to his forehead.

“Hey,” I said, stepping closer. “Are you okay?”

Max took his hand away, like he was about to lift his head to respond. But then, instead, his knees buckled, and he fell to the floor.

* * *

The music stopped. The crowd gasped. I knelt down next to Max, then looked up and called around frantically for Babette.

By the time I looked down again, Max’s eyes were open.

He blinked a couple of times, then smiled. “Don’t worry, Sam. I’m fine.”

Babette arrived on his other side and knelt beside him.

“Max!” Babette said.

“Hey, Babs,” he said. “Did I tell you how beautiful you are?”

“What happened?” she said.

“Just got a little dizzy there for a second.”

“Can somebody get Max some water?” I shouted, and then I leaned in with Babette to help him work his way up into a sitting position.

Babette’s face was tight with worry.

Max noticed. “I’m fine, sweetheart.”

But Max was not the kind of guy to go around collapsing. He was one of those sturdy-as-an-ox guys. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen him take a sick day.

Now Max was rubbing Babette’s shoulder. “It was just the long flight. I got dehydrated.”

Just as he said it, a cup of ice water arrived.

Max took a long drink. “Ah,” he said. “See that? All better.”

His color was coming back.

A crowd had formed around us. Someone handed Max another cup of water, and I looked up to realize at least ten people were standing at the ready with liquid.

He drank the next cup. “Much better,” he said, smiling up at us, looking, in fact, much better. Then he lifted his arms to wave some of the men over. “Who’s helping me back to my feet?”

“Maybe you should wait for the paramedics, Max,” one of the guys said.

“You hit the floor pretty hard there, boss,” another guy offered, as an answer.

“Aw, hell. I don’t need paramedics.”

The fire department was maybe four blocks away—and just as he said it, two paramedics strode in, bags of gear over their shoulders.

“Are you partying too hard, Max?” one of them said with a big grin when he saw Max sitting on the floor.

“Kenny,” Max said, smiling back. “Will you tell this batch of worriers I’m fine?”

Just then, a man pushed through the crowd. “Can I help? I’m a doctor.”

Very gently, Max said, “You’re a psychiatrist, Phil.”

Kenny shook his head. “If he needs to talk about his feelings, we’ll call you.”

Next, Babette and I stepped back, and the paramedics knelt all around Max to do an assessment—Max protesting the whole time. “I just got dehydrated, that’s all. I feel completely fine now.”

Another medic, checking his pulse, looked at Kenny and said, “He’s tachycardic. Blood pressure’s high.”

But Max just smacked him on the head. “Of course it is, Josh. I’ve been dancing all night.”

It turned out, Max had taught both of the paramedics who showed up that night, and even though they were overly thorough, everything else seemed to check out on Max. They wanted to take him to the ER right then, but Max managed to talk them out of it. “Nobody’s ever thrown me a sixtieth birthday party before,” he told them, “and I really don’t want to miss it.”

Somehow, after they helped him up, he charmed them into having some snacks, and they agreed to give him a few minutes to drink some water and then reevaluate.

They took a few cookies, but even as they were eating, they were watching him. Babette and I were watching him, too.

But he seemed totally back to his old self. Laughing. Joking around. When the band finally started up again, it was one of Max’s favorites: ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”

As soon as he heard it, Max was looking around for Babette. When he caught her eye about ten feet away, he pointed at her, then at himself, then at the dance floor.

“No,” Babette called. “You need to rest and hydrate!”

“Wife,” Max growled. “They are literally playing our song.”

Babette walked over to scold him—and maybe flirt with him a little, too. “Behave yourself,” she said.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You just—”

But before she could finish, he pulled her into his arms and pressed his hand against the small of her back.

I saw her give in. I felt it.

I gave in, too. This wasn’t a mosh pit, after all. They were just swaying, for Pete’s sake. He’d had at least six glasses of water by now. He looked fine. Let the man have his birthday dance. It wasn’t like they were doing the worm.

Max spun Babette out, but gently.

He dipped her next, but carefully.

He was fine. He was fine. He was absolutely fine.

But then he started coughing.

Coughing a lot.

Coughing so hard, he let Babette go, and he stepped back and bent over.

Next, he looked up to meet Babette’s eyes, and that’s when we saw he was coughing up blood—bright red, and lots of it—all over his hand and down his chin, drenching his bow tie and his shirt.

He coughed again, and then he hit the floor.

The paramedics were back over to him in less than a second, ripping his shirt open, cutting off the bow tie, intubating him and squeezing air in with a bag, performing CPR compressions. I don’t really know what else was going on in the room then. Later, I heard that Alice rounded up all the kids and herded them right outside to the garden. I heard the school nurse dropped to her knees and started praying. Mrs. Kline, Max’s secretary for thirty years, tried helplessly to wipe up a splatter of blood with cocktail napkins.

For my part, all I could do was stare.

Babette was standing next to me, and at some point, our hands found each other’s, and we wound up squeezing so tight that I’d have a bruise for a week.

The paramedics worked on Max for what seemed like a million years—but was maybe only five minutes: intensely, bent over him, performing the same insistent, forceful movements over his chest. When they couldn’t get him back, I heard one of them say, “We need to transport him. This isn’t working.”

Transport him to the hospital, I guessed.

They stopped to check for a rhythm, but as they pulled back a little, my breath caught in my throat, and Babette made a noise that was half-gasp, half-scream.

Max, lying there on the floor, was blue.

“Oh, shit,” Kenny said. “It’s a PE.”

I glanced at Babette. What was a PE?

“Oh, God,” Josh said, “look at that demarcation line.”

Sure enough, there was a straight line across Max’s rib cage, where the color of his skin changed from healthy and pink to blue. “Get the gurney,” Kenny barked, but as he did his voice cracked.

That’s when I saw there were tears on Kenny’s face.

Then I looked over at Josh: his, too.

And then I just knew exactly what they knew. They would wipe their faces on their sleeves, and keep doing compressions on Max, and keep working him, and transport him to the hospital, but it wouldn’t do any good. Even though he was Max—our principal, our hero, our living legend.

All the love in the world wouldn’t be enough to keep him with us.

And as wrong as it was, eventually it would become the only true thing left: We would never get him back.

* * *