Ballroom: A Novel (10 page)

“
Mi amor
,” Papi says when he calls. “I’m leaving. I’ll be home soon. Sweet dreams,
muneca linda
.”

Create not the heart-burning of jealousy, and perhaps lasting misery for yourself, by forgetting a lover for some newer face in the ball-room.

                
—Robert De Valcourt,
The Illustrated Manners Book
, 1855

O
n Maria’s sixteenth birthday he wanted to surprise her with a special birthday present. Lately, something has been gnawing at his stomach. He was having difficulty sleeping through the night. He was remembering things he wanted to forget. He was waking at four in the morning, with terror in his belly. He thought about his mother, who had disappeared, and all the faceless women he had danced with at dance halls. He had hoped to put Belle Fine out of his mind forever.

I
can’t come next week, Harry,” Maria had said the week before her sixteenth birthday. “I’m going to the Copa. There’s going to be a live band.” It was almost a quarter to ten, and her hand was already on the doorknob.

“On Friday night?” As he stood up, his chair fell over. “What about our lesson?” he asked. He remembers holding on to the table’s edge until his knuckles hurt.

“I’m sorry. I have to tell you the truth. I have an uncle—Uncle Julio Morez, who is not really my uncle. They’re just old friends, and that’s where Papi plays dominoes.” Maria spoke rapidly without even taking a breath, and the words poured out of her as though she had been practicing them. “He’s got a son—Angel Morez, but he’s not my real cousin—and we dance together at Our Lady of Sorrows on Sunday nights, and he asked me to dance with him in the competition at the Copa. I really want to go, more than anything. He’s a really good dancer, too, almost as good as you . . . and besides, it’s my birthday and I think we’re going to win . . . and Papi bought me this satin dress and real dance shoes. Everybody thinks we’re going to win, Harry. It’s all because you taught me to dance so well. Please don’t be mad at me. Please. I’ll come the next Friday, I promise. I swear.” She looked so fragile, almost frightened. “I promise, I’ll never miss another Friday. I have to go. It’s almost a quarter to ten.”

Sixteen. Too young to be going dancing with Angel Morez. Her father should never have given permission for her to go to the Copacabana. Especially with someone like Angel Morez, arrogant, with his dark good looks and that fake smile. Harry’s seen him dancing at the Copacabana, Sigh Street, and at the Ballroom, with the array of women he escorts. Like a gigolo.
So
charming. Gallant. Rodriguez should know from Angel’s conceited gaze that he’s thinking dirty thoughts about Maria. A thief. Yes, Angel is a thief, who has waited for Maria to grow up and, after Harry has taught her to dance better than anyone, is stealing her from him.

H
arry was beginning to feel unsettled. Maria was no longer a child. Her gentle nature, her touch, the look in her eyes, was stirring ideas he could not allow himself to consider. Yet in these hours with her, his loneliness was assuaged. She was a soothing presence. More and more he thought about the possibility of more, of taking her to Buenos Aires when she turned eighteen, and this filled him with hope.

The Friday after her birthday, he placed sixteen votive candles on the kitchen table. He could never give her a present, because the dance lessons were his present to her, and a secret. A gift might raise questions with her father. They danced in the flicker of candlelight.

O
n a bus to the Cloisters, a Sunday trip he made fairly regularly, Harry carried his newspaper, and, in a brown paper bag, a cold chicken sandwich. Generally he enjoyed riding the bus and reading, but when he opened the paper, he couldn’t concentrate. A clutter of conversation was filling his head, like several radio stations playing at the same time.

It infuriated him that Maria had gone dancing with Angel. Of course they had won. In all the years of dancing and teaching, Harry had never had such a student. She was his creation. It wasn’t fair that he couldn’t take her dancing. He’d taught her every step, every detail of her dance, and she had listened and learned.

He had always feared that someone would take her from him. Once he’d been twenty-two like Angel—young, handsome, the man with whom all the women wanted to dance. The temptations. The nights with the women who wanted to dance with him, make love and commitments. He wouldn’t allow himself those memories anymore. There was only Maria.

An elderly woman with numerous grocery bags sat next to him. She kept rifling through them looking for things. He gave her an evil stare. Turning, he looked to see if he could move to another seat farther back. The bus was full, and he was lucky to have a place. The smell of freshly ground coffee was making him hungry.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

He turned and looked out the window, as though he hadn’t heard her, and continued daydreaming.

Angel would try to take advantage of her. She was impressionable. What if Angel took her out to dance, and then forgot about her for some old woman with lots of money to pay for lessons? Then other men, maybe some old ones, would take her in their arms to dance. Harry had seen those lizards at Roseland. They were at the Copa, too.
Machismos
. Thinking only of sex. He should warn Rodriguez. What if he wrote an anonymous letter?

“I only wanted to buy a pound of coffee”—the woman next to him on the bus laughed and tried to move her bags away from his leg—“and ended up with all this.”

He pretended he didn’t hear her, continued looking out the window. Yes, he would write an anonymous letter.

The words of the letter kept changing, and there was much he wanted to say, but then, he didn’t want any trouble with Mr. Rodriguez.

“I just adore Zabar’s,” the woman continued. “I come downtown every week, supposedly for a loaf of bread or a pound of coffee and”—she paused—“then I can barely get home.”

He nodded his head, with barely a smile.

He’d die if he lost her. She was what he lived for.

“
Te amo
.” Her soft arms around his neck. He felt chilled at the thought of her fingers touching his face, wanted to tell her how much money he had saved, talk about Buenos Aires. She had told him that she wanted to go to college, so he had made new plans. They would go away when she graduated. That seemed an eternity. When she did, he’d ask to meet with Manuel Rodriguez, explain how much he loved Maria, how he wanted to marry her, reassure him that he’d always take care of his daughter and cherish her.

He was startled when the woman next to him reached across to press the exit strip, near Columbia University. “Excuse me,” she said, and got off.

When Mr. Rodriguez gave his blessing, Harry and Maria would leave for Buenos Aires.

Never give all your pleasant words and smiles to strangers. The kindest words and the sweetest smiles should be reserved for home. Home should be our heaven.

                
—Thomas E. Hill,
Evils of the Ball
, 1883

I
magine,” her father says. “This summer you will be graduating from Barnard after only two years, and with so many honors—and soon, your masters. In business, too. You get an education, you get respect. You are the first one in the Rodriguez family to graduate from college. Maybe we’ll celebrate and take a trip to Puerto Rico to see the family.”

“You would really take a vacation, Papi? Take time off from work? Take an airplane?”

“Why not? Since you were born I have never taken time off. We deserve a vacation, don’t we? You’ve been awarded such a good scholarship to graduate school.” He is beaming with pride.

They usually eat at home—her father is so tired after work, and he prefers her cooking. But tonight he suggests they take the bus across town to Sevilla, his friend Bienvenido’s Spanish restaurant on Charles Street. They have a feast, mussels in garlic sauce and shrimp in green sauce made with olive oil, parsley, and garlic.

“You’re almost twenty,” he says as they eat dessert, guava with cream cheese and a flan. “How come you don’t meet anyone to go with?”

“I’m shy. Besides, you know, I’m either studying or dancing with Angel. Those are the only things I want to do right now. The rest can wait.”

“Is there any romance between you two?” Papi asks.

“No. I’ve got to study if I’m going to graduate with honors. The higher I graduate in my class, the better job I’ll get. You’ll see—I’ll make you really proud.”

“You don’t think about Angel no other way? He’s a good boy. Respectful—and he always brings you right home from dancing. He never finished high school. Like me, I guess. I look in his eyes, and I know he treats you with respect.”

“Sure he does, Papi. He’s a gentleman, through and through!”

“That’s what counts. He knows I know his father, and if he ever messed with you, I’d kill him.” Manuel laughs. “How come you’re blushing?”

“I’m not, Papi. We’re only dance partners. I swear. He’s always got a gorgeous girlfriend, you know that—and he’s smarter than you realize.”

“Maybe he’s not educated enough for you? Working in that blueprint shop like he does. Julio and Sylvia keep hoping he’ll go to college. You should encourage him to go back to school, you know? Like a friend.”

“I try, but he hated high school. He set up an awesome computer program for his boss, and now he’s the manager. His boss, Mike, just promoted him. Sometimes he talks to me about opening a dance school. He has wonderful ideas. His plans for the dance school could be my dissertation. It’s that good. I mean it.”

Papi shrugs. “Some future. A dance school.”

If you make an engagement to dance a future set with a lady, be punctual at the time the set is forming; you could not commit a greater rudeness than to be dilatory or forgetful.

                
—W. P. Hazard,
The Ball-Room Companion
, 1849

W
hen Sarah Dreyfus arrives at Roseland Ballroom at a quarter to seven on Saturday night, she hesitates before paying the $12 admission—just in case Joseph offers to pay when he arrives. Though over the past two years they have frequently danced together downtown on Sundays at the Marc Ballroom, it is the first time he’s invited her to dance at Roseland. At seven she buys her ticket. Maybe he’s waiting inside.

Sarah loves the history of Roseland. It originally opened eighty years ago in 1919 in a dirty brown five-story building on Fifty-First Street, before moving to Fifty-Second Street off Broadway in 1956. Hundreds waited on line for the ballroom’s grand opening. Billie Burke, Flo Ziegfeld, and Will Rogers appeared. In the 1920s and ’30s hundreds of dance hostesses were available to any man sober, orderly, and willing to pay. In 1942 the price was eleven cents for a three-minute dance.

Hostess Ruby Keeler was said to have met Al Jolson, her husband-to-be, at Roseland. But by the 1950s hostesses had disappeared; there were too many beautiful women freely available.

In those days, gum chewing and alcohol were banned, and men and women had to be properly attired. There were even rules about the depth of necklines, and how much back a woman’s dress could reveal.

Sarah’s read that Rudolph Valentino danced at Roseland, as well as James Cagney, George Raft, Mrs. Arthur Murray, the Astaires, Joan Crawford, Betty Grable, Ray Bolger, Anne Miller, and June Havoc. Sarah wishes it were still the 1940s. They might all be here tonight.

L
eather banquettes for relaxing, under smoky mirrors, line the ruby walls. A fence made up of vines, leaves, and crimson-glass roses defines the polished, golden dance floor. On the stage a ten-piece Latin band plays “Besa Me Mucho.” Solitary figures wait and watch. Sarah heads downstairs to check her coat.

She has a special bag for her new dance shoes, and in the ladies’ lounge, as she changes into them, she admires the transformation of her legs from every angle. Shoes make all the difference.

“Don’t you dance at the Ballroom?” asks the hefty blonde sitting next to her, her shoes off and her feet up. “I’m Andrea.”

“Yes, I do. I’m Sarah.” Andrea is a dreary Kathy Bates look-alike, wearing a matronly blouse, a long green skirt, and worse, black practice pumps with socks, yet at the Ballroom she’s always on the dance floor. “Are you taking classes anywhere?”

“I’m mostly taking privates now. Do you know Harry Korn? The old guy—dresses all in brown? Polyester, like from the seventies! Teaches Latin and tango. I take privates with him at the Hungarian Ballroom over on the Upper East Side. He only charges fifty dollars an hour, but he really teaches you good. If you want his number I can give it to you. He’s old, but dancing with him is really something. Besides,” Andrea whispers, “I think he can use the money.” Without waiting for Sarah’s answer, she writes the telephone number on a piece of paper towel. Sarah tucks it into her bra. “If you call, tell him I gave you his number. Ya know, you have red spots all over you. Are you allergic to something?”

“I just get that sometimes. Maybe I’ll give him a call. I’ve never taken private lessons. I imagine you get plenty of attention?”

“Yeah. Harry gives you a
full
hour.”

“Are you here with anyone?” Sarah asks.

“Nah, I came alone.”

“That’s brave! Nice to see you, Andrea.” Sarah decides to wait in the powder room for Andrea to leave.

T
ina accompanied Sarah the day she went to Randy’s Dance Shoes, a cramped store overlooking Seventh Avenue on Twenty-Third Street. Boxes of shoes lined every wall from floor to ceiling. Racks showed off samples: flat, soft-soled practice shoes, basic practice pumps, tap shoes, tango boots, a wide range of dressier dance shoes with heels of all heights. The shoes were primarily black, with an occasional flesh-colored pair, and satins that could be dyed to match any gown. Silhouetted against the fogged window, on a stepped rack, were the sexiest Argentine tango styles, with stiletto heels, strappy and naughty.