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His hand now free of the tangled lanyard, Andrea went for the zipper of his duffel again, but looked up as a bus rumbled past on the road in front of them.

The boy froze, mouth hanging open for a moment as he watched the bus go by, then laughed, turning back to Azzo. "Well, like I said, I'm in no huge hurry either, and it looks now like I've got oh, thirty-five minutes of free time. So, yeah, I can go with you."

"Yeah, in eighteen minutes, I think," Andrea replied, frowning as he struggled a moment to remember the bus time-table. "Should be plenty of time to get you a flier for the other dance school."

He started down the sidewalk again in the direction they had been going before, then stopped in front of a wooden door. The paint was flaking slightly, particularly around the door knob, and around eight inches from the bottom, where a person's foot would land if they were pushing the door open with a shoe. Andrea twisted the knob and pulled the door open, and made a sweeping gesture inside to indicate Azzo should go in first.

"After you," he told the other boy cheerfully. "Looks a little sketchy, but the studio's nicer, I promise. It's at the top there, through the door."

The doorway led to a flight of sixteen concrete steps up to a landing; to the left at the top was another door, this one much more nicely painted in sky-blue. Opposite the door was a bulletin board covered with a few layers of fliers and posters.

Andrea followed the other boy up the stairs and through the doorway into the studio once they were at the top. There was no class going on at the moment, but the studio was not unoccupied; there was a lady at the front desk, and towards the back of the large open room, a twenty something-looking young man with a stubbly chin wheeled a yellow bucket out onto the wood floor, then returned to the back room to fetch a mop.

"I'm back already," he announced to the young woman standing bent over the desk inside the doorway. "Brought a friend over who wanted information for ...." he glanced back at Azzo. "Ballroom dancing lessons? For his grandma? He can tell you more about what he wants, I guess."

Andrea gestured between the woman and his newfound friend as he introduced them to each other. "This is Miss Regina, she's the studio owner's daughter. Miss Regina, this is Azzo."

Miss Regina shuffled some papers around the desk before looking up and smiling at the boys. "We do not have ballroom classes here, but our other school across town has some. I think I have a flier for you to take if you'd like." She nudged a few more pages to one side. "... And if I cannot find it, there is an ad out on the bulletin board outside with the other school's phone number on little tear-off tags; you can take one of those with you."

"Oh!" Regina exclaimed after a moment. "Here we go." She extracted a stack of twenty or so sheets of canary yellow paper from the collection on the desk, and licked her fingertips to take one sheet which she handed to Azzo. The page advertised several dance classes - ballroom and a few others - and gave an address and phone number for the other school.

"Sorry about the mess on the desk right now, I promise it's not usually this bad," she assured him with a laugh. "But if you call that number, they should be able to give you more information, whatever you need to know."

"The teachers there are pretty good," Andrea told Azzo. "They taught here for a bit before they started the new school."

"Hope you find something you like," Miss Regina replied cheerfully. Then, turning back to the papers, added, "Sorry, boys, but I probably should chase you out for now, though, so we can get ready for our next classes."

"Sure," Andrea replied. Then he hurriedly dug the reciept out of his pocket from teh printing job. "Oh yeah, I'll leave this on the corner for you. I dropped off the flash drive and they said they would have them ready by tomorrow."

"Oh, thanks, Andrea." The woman brushed a lock of hair back behind her ear, and waved to the two boys.

"Later," he said to his teacher, then turned to Azzo and headed back towards the door. "And yeah, I should be alright to get to the stop in time, but I should get going now just to be sure." He led the other boy down the stairs, glancing back over his shoulder to him every few seconds. "It was nice meeting you, though. I guess I'll see you around school somewhere?"