Adventures of a Salsa Goddess (25 page)

I’d been doing a lot of forgiving when it came to Robert. But he seemed so vulnerable this afternoon, as though he might break in two if I said the wrong thing. Before I could answer, Robert came over to me and put his arms around me and then Plan D, which wasn’t planned at all, happened.

* * *

The fire in the fireplace crackled and tiny flames from candles around the apartment flickered and danced. A ghostly stream of light from the moon came in through the skylight in the kitchen.

“This arrow is pointed directly away from me,” Robert said, tracing the Cupid tattoo on my stomach.

His clothes did a good job of hiding his pudgy stomach. He didn’t have a beer belly exactly, more like the stomach of a reasonably fit middle-aged guy who hadn’t done a sit-up since high school. But the extra pudge hadn’t lessened Robert’s lovemaking abilities. He was far more passionate and skilled than my ex-fiance, David, had ever been. Then again, Robert was older, and had been married before.

“You don’t seem like the tattoo kind of woman.”

“You don’t like it?”

“I do,” he assured me, bending down to kiss it. “It looks good on you.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Do you salsa?”

He laughed. “Salsa? Only with chips.”

“I’m serious, I don’t know what it is but I love it, I can’t get enough of it. Are you at least willing to try it, for me?”

“I don’t think dancing is my thing, Sam,” he said.

“What is your thing?”

“You,” he said, kissing my collarbone and breast before propping
his head back on his hand with his elbow jammed into a pillow.

“The other one is getting jealous,” I said playfully.

“We can’t have that,” he said, bending down to kiss my right breast. It tickled and felt sensuous at the same time.

“So maybe dancing is out, but don’t you have a passion, something you love to do?”

“Besides making love to a beautiful woman who I’m crazy about?”

“Yes, besides that.”

“My job, I guess. I’m proud that my business is a success,” he said. He leaned over and we kissed for a while, but I couldn’t fully enjoy the moment because his last statement made me wonder if he was a workaholic like David had been.

I told Robert I was starving and he offered to cook for me. In his kitchen, the Spanish tiles felt cool on my feet. I stood on the other side of the island in one of his long-sleeved button-down shirts that just covered my behind. As I watched him cook, we talked about one of my favorite topics, traveling, and about
going to Hong Kong together some day, a city both of us had always wanted to visit.

“So what are you doing for the rest
of your life?” he asked me as he handed me a plate of steaming fettuccine Alfredo. “Are you busy?”

I smiled at him, not knowing what to say. Was he the right man for me? I certainly hoped so.

Double Dipped

I’d like to say it ended happily ever after, but that only happens to a few select women, the ones for whom the grass really is greener. And not just during the summer months. You know this type of woman. We hate her.

She floats through life and every good thing the universe has to offer comes to her effortlessly, as if she were a giant walking sponge—great jobs, her parents and siblings for best friends, oodles of cash netted through every investment she makes. She was the kind of woman who, if she hadn’t marr
ied her soul mate at twenty-one, was having the time of her life being single. She’s turned down five marriage proposals by the time she’s twenty-nine and hasn’t spent a single Christmas, birthday, or Valentine’s Day without a man since puberty. Usually, in fact, she’s dating three or four men at once, juggling them with the ease of a short-order cook at Denny’s. All of them, of course, are madly in love with her and jostling for her attention. But, if she does choose serial monogamy, then she’s doing “The Amazing Overlap.” Before giving the current guy his pink slip, she’s already met and cultivated the new one, who drops off the vine plump and juicy into her welcoming hands, at just the right moment.

I didn’t have any female friends like this, thank goodness. Otherwise I’d have to have
her assassinated. But I’d certainly hoped for the best for Lessie. When we had driven over to Javier and Eliseo’s after our movie marathon, I’d left in a flood of tears after seeing Javier with Isabella. But I had assumed Lessie and Eliseo had worked things out since she hadn’t come out in twenty minutes. But Lessie had finally called me this evening to tell me that Eliseo was not going to take any role in the raising of his child, much less ending up with Lessie as she’d hoped.

I’m not in the habit of kidnapping people, especially when they happen to be dear friends of mine, but I didn’t have much of a choice given the emotional state Lessie was in. After talking to Lessie, I drove straight over to her house.

“We’re going out dancing,” I said to Lessie, who was sitting on her couch staring zombielike at a sitcom on TV. A string of canned laughter erupted from the television.

“I don’t want to salsa
dance ever again,” she said. She was capable of holding a conversation, but it was like she wasn’t really there.

“You love salsa,” I said during another burst of canned laughter. It sounded like a bad joke that had fallen flat at a funeral.

“I don’t want to run into Eliseo,” she told me, eyes still focused on the screen.

“We won’t, we’re going to a new club.” I turned off the TV and Lessie finally looked at me.

“You let the pony come out of the corral for a ride,” she said in a flat voice.

“What?” Had she really gone off the deep end? What did horses have to do with anything?

“You had sex. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

I was startled. I’d assumed she was too deep in the fog of her own problems to notice.

“But you’d better be careful, Sam. Did you know that sex can lead to pregnancy?” Her attempt at humor nearly broke my heart. I felt so bad for her, but what else could I do?

I helped her pick out her sexiest short black dress from her closet and told her to take a shower. While Lessie got ready, I went outside to her patio and sat down. The night was perfect. I could see stars—not many, but more than I’d ever seen in Manhattan. I sat there for a moment, just basking in the feeling that my life had changed, hopefully, for the better.

Lessie tapped me on my shoulder and I jumped.

“Do you want to talk about him?” I asked Lessie as I drove us to the club.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said, staring straight ahead through the windshield.

“Is Eliseo going to be involved at all?”

“Sure, once a month when the check arrives,” she said. “But at least I know that decent men still exist. Javier was wonderful about the whole thing.”

“He was?” I said, momentarily jolted to hear his name.

“Two days after I told Eliseo, Javier called me at home,” Lessie explained. “He told me he was ashamed of the way his brother was behaving and wanted to know if I needed anything,” she said. “Javier will definitely make some woman very happy someday,” she added, and once again I felt a stab of regret that it was not going to be me. Javier’s heart had been with Isabella all along. I was with Robert now, and he’d be back in just a few days.

Lessie and I walked into Babalus. It had a tropical feel, totally different from Cubana. Well-dressed couples and foursomes sat around white tables, potted palm trees were here and there, a tropical wall mural was splashed behind the bar, and the walls were covered with the warm oranges, yellows, and reds of a sunset scene. Babalus reminded me of Latin nightclubs that had flourished in the 1950s when couples went out for a night of cocktailing, dinner, and
dancing. I half expected that at any moment I might bump into the white-tuxedoed Ricky Ricardo.

A twelve-piece band was playing on a small raised platform in the corner of the club. A disc jockey was one thing, but a live salsa band was absolutely mesmerizing. Each member of the band moved in unison, playing with the kind of contagious energy that could raise the dead. The lead singer, a plump Latina woman, wore an outfit that showed off every curve, a low-cut silver sequined midriff top with cleavage to her navel, and a short black skirt that skimmed the top of her chubby thighs, which were encased in black fishnet nylons. She belted out lyrics in Spanish while gyrating her hips and swinging her plump arms in time to the brassy, pumping rhythms.

“Is that the Lone Salsero over there?” Lessie asked me.

I’d never seen the man stationary before. With his back against the bar, he stood watching everyone coming in while sipping a glass of white wine. As Lessie and I walked by him, he winked and smiled at me. Yikes!

The first person I saw after Lessie and I had grabbed a table near the band was the woman who had been fixated on Javier’s “package” at Cubana about a month ago. Whenever she passed under the overhead lights, the red and blond streaks in her hair lit up like they were on fire. At the time I talked to her, I remembered her saying that Javier could make your spine melt, a comment I could finally begin to appreciate as I’d become more and more passionate about salsa.

And then I saw the Lone Salsero approaching and prayed to the powers that be that he wasn’t coming for me. But a moment later, he was at my side.

“You are very beautiful,” he said in a thick accent. “Will you dance with me?” He stood there patiently, twirling one end of his mustache as he waited for my answer.

“Go on, Sam, I’ll be fine,” said Lessie, who lightly elbowed me and flashed me a wicked glad-its-not-me smirk. Seeing that smirk made all the difference. At least she was feeling better. I let the Lone Salsero lead me to the center of the dance floor and a minute later saw Lessie dancing with a man who came up to her chin. I made sure I caught her eye over the Lone Salsero’s shoulder. She rolled her eyes, but was smiling.

The Lone Salsero was an incredible dancer, not to mention astonishingly athletic. He twirled and dipped me a dozen times and by the end of just one salsa song, I was suffering from near hypoxia. Back at our table, as I tried to catch my breath, I looked for Lessie and saw her standing on the other side of the club at the bar talking to someone I didn’t recognize. I was just about to take a sip of water when I saw something that made me stop breathing once again.

Like royalty, the crowd parted when Javier and Isabella walked in. They went straight to the dance floor and the crowd circled around them. Short bursts of applause broke out when Javier flipped Isabella over in a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn, and again when Isabella dipped Javier, a move I’d never
seen before. When they were through, I heard an enthusiastic round of clapping.

I sat there wishing I could make myself disappear. It was bad
enough that he got back together with her, but to flaunt it in my face like this was just outrageous! I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. I crossed my arms and stared dismally at the band, hoping somehow he would leave me alone for the night.

“Hi, Sam,” said Javier, a
nd then a moment later, “I think we have some things to talk about,” he said.

How dare this man who said he loved me and then
forgot me a nanosecond later have the nerve to even speak to me.

“I don’t want to talk,” I said.

Javier looked genuinely puzzled. “Have I done something wrong?” he asked. But before I had a chance to say anything, he grabbed my hand and pulled me to the dance floor.

We started dancing, but halfway through the song I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I unleashed all my pent-up feelings. “Alright, Javier, I am—”

Twirl.

“angry. Extremely—”

Twirl.

“angry. You t
old—”

Double twirl.

“me you—”

Triple twirl.

“loved me and—”

Twirl.

“then a minute—”

Twirl and dip.

“later you—”

Twirl and dip.

“got back—”

Quadruple twirl.

“together—”

Dip.

“... with her,” I said, jerking my head in Isabella’s direction as best I could from a forty-five-degree angle. Just add some bolts to my neck and I’d look like Frankenstein. I looked over and caught Isabella’s eye. She gave me a sweet smile, which seemed genuine enough and made me wonder if Javier had told her anything about me.

“What about her?” he asked as he brought me up into a vertical position.

“I saw you with her at one in the morning going into your house just a few days after you told me you loved ...”

“Sam, come with me,” he said, starting to lead me in her direction, while I pulled back like a small child who is about to be dragged into the dentist’s office. But when he said please and flashed that damn adorable dimple of his, I let him take me over to Isabella, who looked devastatingly beautiful in a black spaghetti-strap dress and three-inch heels. She was standing by herself, sipping what looked like an orange juice.

“I’d like you to meet Isabella,” said Javier. She looked at me with an open, friendly face and smiled, which was when I noticed that she also had a single dimple on her left cheek. “Sam, Isabella is my sister,” Javier said simply.

Now would’ve been the perfect time for the dramatic refrain of a daytime soap opera orchestra to swell, signaling a shocking turn of events. I felt like a fool. But then again, why should I? I had believed Sebastian when he had lied to me and told me that Isabella was Javier’s ex-girlfriend.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Sam. It’s nice to finally meet you,” Isabella said, and held out her tiny hand.

“It’s nice to meet you too, Isabella,” I stammered.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” said Javier to his sister, as he guided me to the back of the club, away from the band and the dance floor.

“Now, why were you so angry with me?” he asked.

“I thought Isabella was your girlfriend. When I dropped Lessie off the other night, I saw the two of you walk inside together and well, I just assumed ...” I hung my head. “Javier, can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask me anything, Sam.”

“Sebastian Diaz is a friend of yours, right?”

“My best friend,” said Javier.

“Do you trust him?”

“Of course I do.”

“What does Sebastian do for a living?”

For a moment, Javier assumed a guarded expression. “I think you should ask Sebastian that question. I’m sure he’ll be at Cubana next week.”

If Sebastian had lied about who Isabella was, then I’m certain he’d also lied to Robert when he had told him he was a lawyer. But why? Well, one thing was obvious: Javier, who seemed a little overprotective of his friend, wasn’t going to tell me anything. I’d just have to find out for myself why Sebastian had lied. Then again, did it matter anymore?

“By the way, how is Lessie doing?” Javier asked.

“Better than expected, under the circumstances,” I said.

He nodded stiffly. “I love my brother, but I can’t respect a man who never seems to grow up and keeps running away from his responsibilities.”

“What do you mean ‘keeps running away’?”

“This is going to be his second illegitimate child,” said Javier, who then caught the look of surprise on my face. “I thought Lessie would’ve told you.”

Oh God, I wonder how she’d felt when she’d found out. I looked over at her dancing. She was so wonderful, smart, and beautiful. What the hell was wrong with Eliseo?

“Javier, I feel terrible about everything,” I began, but then found that I didn’t know how to go on.

What do I tell him, I. think I could’ve fallen in love with you but you were all wrong for my assignment? I needed to give Robert a chance because he’s the perfect great-on-paper guy I’ve been ordered to find this summer?

“Sam, I’d be lying if I told you that I wasn’t hurt,” he said while looking directly into my eyes. “I fell in love with you. I’m
still
in love with you.”