Adventures of a Salsa Goddess (14 page)

* * *

I’d been looking forward to my third date with Robert ever since he’d called me two days ago. All day I’d had that tingly excited feeling you get when you think maybe, just maybe, the search might finally be drawing to a close. Perhaps, in the very near future, I could finally look forward to hanging up my silk thong
underwear and permanently change into a comfy pair of old lady white cotton hipsters.

He picked me up at seven and took me to Louie’s, a seafood restaurant on Lake Michigan. Robert seemed to get better looking every time I saw him. At forty-four, he was in great shape. But it was those mile-long lashes that turned women’s heads. Okay, my head.

“Do you ever think about going back to the practice of law?” I asked Robert after we’d finished our crab cake appetizers. The waves softly lapped at the concrete barrier behind us. A sliver of a moon hung in the sky like an ornament dangling from heaven.

“I doubt it,” he told me and tugged on his ear. “When I bought my recruiting firm two years ago, I finally discovered my calling in life. I’m much more suited to the business world.” “Two years?” That didn’t sound right to me. I was sure that on our first date, he’d said he bought his recruiting firm three years ago.

“You’re so pretty tonight, Sam,” he said, reaching out to stroke my cheek with the tips of his fingers. “Your brow makes the cutest crease when you’re thinking hard.”

“It’s just that I’m curious, Robert,” I said. “When did you stop being a lawyer?”

A pained look flashed across his face.

“There were a few years between dissolving my law firm and starting Robert Mack and Associates when I didn’t do much because I was trying to get over Sarah’s ...” he paused, blinking his eyes hard, “
... to get over my wife’s death.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. I didn’t want to stir up painful memories for him. If he wasn’t ready to talk about this yet, I didn’t want to push.

“No, it’s all right,” he said. “Excuse me for a minute,” he said. He stood up abruptly, tossing his napkin on his plate as he walked away, looking more angry than sad. At that moment, I felt exactly like I had last year when I’d run into an editor from
Tres Chic
whom I hadn’t seen in a long time, and had congratulated her on her pregnancy only to find out that she’d gained thirty pounds after her husband had left her for a younger woman.

When Robert returned a few minutes later, he greeted me with a warm smile. He reached for my hand and waved the waitress ove
r to order another round of drinks. I returned the kind of nervous grin you give to the gynecologist just before he inserts the speculum. Was Robert always this touchy and moody?

But by a couple of drinks later, my anxieties had passed, and when we got to the blues bar, the awkward moment had been almost forgotten. We slow danced and swayed to the music and kissed, not caring who saw us. When he dropped me off, we did a repeat closure of date number two, just outside my door in the hallway.

Oh my, this was fun and a little ridiculous. Two forty-somethings tongue-slapping into the wee hours of the night. Being single had definite advantages. Married people didn’t do this anymore, at least not with their own spouses, and they were at home in bed hours ago with their hands folded over their gently rising and falling potbellies, keeping one ear wide awake for their teenagers to come home. We took it inside, continuing to make out on my couch until Robert left a couple hours later.

* * *

The next afternoon was game number two of five baseball games I’d be attending over the summer. Elaine’s theory was simple: male fans far outnumber female fans and businessmen, i.e., eligible men, would be at day games in droves, networking or entertaining clients.

At first glance it seemed that Elaine was right. Lessie and I constituted a tiny island of femininity in an ocean of men. Three cute late-thirtyish to early-fortyish guys wearing baseball caps and no
discernible wedding rings were seated directly in front of us. Two attractive similarly ringless men sat in the next section over in the same row. But I’d yet to even make eye contact with anyone but the peanut vendor.

I looked over at Lessie, who was staring off into the middle of the field, watching but not seeing the pitcher warm up on the mound. I’d told her about my date with Robert last night, but I don’t think she’d heard a word I’d said.

“I had mad, passionate sex last night with three men at once,” I said, testing.

“Really?” she said. “That sounds like fun.”

“Then my neighbor, a sixty-year-old widow, joined in,” I added.

“Good for you, Sam,” she replied.

“Lessie, what is going on with you?” I asked her, grabbing hold of a muscular bicep and giving it a little shake.

“Sorry, I’m a little distracted today,” she said, her blue eyes finally focusing for the first time that afternoon.

“Really? I’d hardly noticed,” I said, not a little embarrassed to see that I’d acted the same way too many times in the past upon getting a crush on a new man.

“I think it’s because I’m majorly in lust for the first time in years and trying desperately not to confuse it with love,” she explained. “You’d think that at forty-two I’d have more control over myself.”

“You could start by avoiding humidors,” I said.

“Very funny. Maybe this really is love?” Lessie frowned and brushed her auburn locks off her forehead. “This thing with Eliseo is so different than it was with Steve. But I was just twenty-two when I married Steve, and I didn’t know anything. How do you ever know when you’re really in love, Sam?”

How do you ever know? I’d thought I was truly madly deeply in love with my ex-fiance, David, and look what happened with us. Engaged, after three years together, and then, well, the chicken wing thing. I knew I should be over him by now, but whenever I thought about David I felt like a giant gaping wound that hadn’t healed properly. At least our engagement had been memorable, not just for the usual reasons, but because we had almost gotten arrested.

David and I had been in a horse-drawn carriage going through Central Park just after he’d proposed at dinner. I’ll never forget the sight of that little blue Tiffany box, David sinking to his knees to declare his love to me in a restaurant packed with voyeurs, the taste of Dom Perignon still tickling my taste buds and the two-carat marquis-cut ring flashing in the moonlight. All of these things had worked their dizzying romantic charms to temporarily disable the rational part of my brain. Without thinking, I had leaned over and unzipped his fly. When we had started, the dense foliage on that cool October night of three years ago had provided enough coverage. We were, however, so busy consummating our engagement that we didn’t realize the carriage had turned back onto Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue until a taxi driver parked at the curb had thoughtfully illuminated us with his brights. As a symphony of horns erupted, another turbaned taxi driver had hung his head outside his cab and begun making lewd hand movements to the effect of wanting to know if it was
going to be his turn next, which was when the mounted police officer galloped up to our carriage.

“Anyway, what about you and Javier?” Lessie said, elbowing me with a grin. “It seems like there’s more going on than just salsa. Dinner tonight, free private dance lessons. Has he shown you the pelvis-grinding dance yet?”

“First of all, it’s just dinner—everyone needs to eat,” I said. “If that’s what you want to think, fine, but I’m sure he doesn’t.” “As far as the hip-grinding dance is concerned ...” I began. “Pelvis-grinding dance,” said Lessie with a big grin. “There’s a difference.”

“You’re speaking, of course, of the bachata,” I said. “Am I correct?”

“What else?” said Lessie, raising her arms above her head and somehow, managing to gyrate her hips in a circular motion while remaining seated, a move that finally got the attention from the guys across the aisle. But a second later when Ken Griffey, Jr. came up to bat, we became invisible again as their eyes riveted back onto the field.

“Is that the most incredibly sexual dance in the world or what?” she added.

“That dance should be illegal,” I said in agreement. “But Javier was a perfect gentleman when he showed it to me,” I lied smoothly, and then felt myself blushing at the thought of how Javier and I had danced the bachata during my private lesson.

“Too bad for you,” Lessie said, taking a sip of beer. “You’re not getting off the hook. What do you think of Javier?”

“He’s a really nice guy,” I said. “An excellent teacher. Very patient, talented. And he’s kind of cute.”

“There’s a ‘but’ here,” Lessie said, raising her left eyebrow.

“He’s a decade younger for one thing,” I told her.

“Nine years younger, and if he doesn’t care why should you?” “Who said he’s even interested? I think he’s just being a nice guy,” I said.

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you. It’s obvious he likes you.” “He’s smart, has a great sense of humor, and he’s fun to talk to. It’s just that, well, he’s ...”

“A roofer? Is that the problem?” Lessie asked defensively. “Well, you know what my assignment is,” I said, trying to tread carefully here since Eliseo did the same thing for a living.

“Samantha Jacobs, I do believe you’ve turned into one of those girls I hated at Brown, the full-fledged East Coast, Ivy League snob.”

“Lessie, that’s not true!” I protested. But, the truth was, I hadn’t at all sorted out the issue of the suit versus non-suit guy in my own mind. I had never dated anyone who didn’t have at least a college degree and usually one or two more degrees on top of that. I wanted “La Vie,” but there was no way I was going to let my career goals or Elaine or my mother dictate who I would marry. Certainly, if I fell in love with a garbage man, I’d marry him. I’d just never had the occasion to cross that line before, until Javier, who made me feel wonderful, but who was so different than anyone I’d ever been with before.

“I think I’m really starting to like Robert Mack, the guy from the video dating service,” I said, trying to change the subject.

“Oh. So there’s potential with this Robert guy?”

He certainly fit the mold of the man that my mother and Elaine expected me to end up with. He was nice, smart, and fun to be with, but I wasn’t 100 percent sure about him yet. As for Javier, I knew that I should ignore my intense attraction to him and move him from the romance to the just friends department. But I wasn’t sure if I could.

“I guess you haven’t read my last article,” I said pulling the June 24 issue of
Tres Chic
out of my purse and handing it to Lessie.

“‘Blind Dating in 3-D, Could Video Guy Be the One?’” said Lessie, reading the cover. “Well, could he?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Lessie looked at me and shook her head.

“What?”

“You don’t sound very sure.”

“I am,” I said firmly. But the truth was, I wasn’t sure about anything.

One Simple Dinner

I opened the door and there stood Javier, looking perfectly adorable in jeans and a black linen short-sleeved shirt that had a row of embroidery running down both sides of the front. Javier put his hands on my waist and kissed me on both cheeks.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” he said. “I had a private lesson at my studio and we lost track of time.”

I told him not to worry about it, he was only a couple of minutes late, but I was surprised that I felt something bordering on jealousy at the thought that he’d been alone, dancing with another woman at his studio. And why had they lost track of time?

“I love your shirt, what’s it called?” I said, trying to shake off these ridiculous feelings. I’d seen quite a few Latin men wearing shirts like that at Cubana.

“It’s a Guayabera or Cuban shirt,” he said, looking at me intently. “Is something wrong, Sam? You seem a little, I don’t know, upset or distracted.”

Did Javier have mind-reading capabilities in addition to his many other talents?

“No, I’m fine. I’m just wondering if sometime I could have another private lesson?” I asked, telling myself it was just a lesson, although I might as well volunteer to be thrown into the lion pit while I was at it.

“I’d love to give you another lesson,” he said, with a grin that I swear said, “I see right through you, Samantha Jacobs.”

I invited him in for a tour of my apartment. When we got to my bedroom, I felt a ripple of nervousness. I trusted Javier completely. It was myself that I didn’t trust, so I stayed put in the doorway.

He walked over to my nightstand and picked up a photograph of Elizabeth and me that was taken at a black-tie fundraiser for breast cancer that we’d attended last year.

“That’s my best friend, Elizabeth,” I said, and then gave Javier her condensed biography.

“I was looking at you, you look gorgeous,” he said, staring at the photo. I just loved the way he tossed out words like
beautiful
and
gorgeous
whenever I was with him. He put the photo down and walked up to me.

“But, I don’t want you to think I like you only for the way you look. It’s the Sam in here that I really like,” he said, pointing to my heart, which was trying to break a hole through my breastplate.

“But you know almost nothing about me,” I said, wishing I had the strength to put a safer distance between us by taking a step backward.

“I know more than you think,” he said.

“Such as?”

“You’re smart, you laugh at my weak jokes, so you have an excellent sense of humor, you’re impatient
...”

“Wait, impatience is a bad thing,” I said laughing.

“Not if you’re impatient about trying to learn how to salsa. Then it’s a good quality.”

A momentary silence fell as we stood just kissing-distance apart, but not touching.

“And, I know that you are confused about your feelings for me,” Javier said in softer, far more serious tone ...

We stared into each other’s eyes. I’d never been with a man who could read me so well. If he kissed me now, I would be lost—so much for Elaine, my career, my mother ...

“Although it’s difficult to understand since I am irresistible,” he said with a huge dimpled grin, breaking the spell.

I laughed. If anything, Javier was too humble. He had his ego in check far more than most people I knew.

Javier took me to a Spanish tapas restaurant about a mile from my apartment. Over a bottle of red wine, and half a dozen different dishes, everything from calamari to prawns, we didn’t stop talking.

I learned that Javier is a risk taker. He’s tried sky diving and bungee jumping and went on a white-water rafting trip to Colorado, where he says he nearly drowned when his raft flipped and he got sucked under water for hours.

I gave him a skeptical look.

“All right, it was about thirty seconds, but it seemed like forever.”

“Besides salsa dancing and risking your life, what else do you like to do?”

“Well, there’s a lot of things I’ve tried,” he said. “I like to play chess.”

“You’re some sort of chess champion, right?” I was learning as the evening went on that Javier excelled at understatement, especially when it came to his accomplishments.

“I was in a chess club in high school and won a couple of tournaments, but that was a long time ago,” he said.

Silence. “Go on,” I said, touching his arm.

“I
love
to cook.”

“Really?”

“You sound so surprised, Sam.”

“Sorry, I just didn’t picture you spending a lot of time in the kitchen,” I said. “What’s your specialty?”

“I can’t reveal my secret recipe to just anyone, especially a writer. How do I know this won’t end up in a magazine or newspaper?” he said, leaning across the table with his hands folded together. I’d been hoping all night that he would reach across to hold my hand. “But,” he said, “I could make it for you. Of course you’d have to sign a confidentiality agreement first.”

“Of course.”

We finally left when we realized that all of the customers were gone and the waiters were standing against the wall, giving us the universal we-are-closed-it’s-time-to-leave stare.

As Javier and I rode up in the elevator to my apartment I did my best to act as though I wasn’t on the verge of cardiac arrest. At the doo
r I turned to thank him again for dinner. He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, but as he moved away, I put my hand at the nape of his neck, pulling him back to my mouth. We spent the next ten minutes kissing until he gently broke away. He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand and said good night.

What the hell was I doing? I wondered as I leaned up against the inside of my door trying to catch my breath. This wasn’t exactly a step in the direction of the “just friends” department. But I couldn’t help how much I liked Javier.

How could one simple dinner have complicated my life so much?