Ballroom: A Novel (2 page)

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

J
anuary is Norma Shearer month on the American Movie Channel. Norma Shearer. Her close-ups. Her elegant profile. At eight o’clock they are showing
Marie Antoinette
, a film with lavish sets and magnificent costumes; Shearer’s defining role, for which she was nominated for Best Actress at the 1938 Academy Awards. Sarah adores 1940s movies—with the clothes, the hair, the glamour, and the make-believe that rarely exist in contemporary films, or real life for that matter. Lost in black-and-white romance, she wishes her life was more like the movies.

It is getting late, and if she is going to get to the Ballroom by seven thirty, she has to leave Brooklyn by half past six. On Sundays, Sarah is always on edge. She eats a late light lunch, skips dinner, just two glasses of water with lemon juice, then brushes her teeth and tongue, swirls mouthwash around her mouth. The dreadful time she creates for herself, deciding what to wear. Always at the last minute. Sunday at the Ballroom just catches up with her somehow.

It begins just before five. Rummaging through closets. Trying on this and that. Throwing things on the bed. Discarding one outfit after another. The blue tailored dress. Suitable for a secretary. She likes the swing of the skirt in the beige flowered print, but the top makes her look like Marian the Librarian from
The Music Man
. She’s already worn the sexy rust-colored skirt and black top at the last two dances. She doesn’t have panty hose without runs. Next month she’ll buy something new, brightly colored, low-cut, and clingy, a dress with a skirt that splits softly to reveal a length of leg. She’s asked Tina to go with her. Tina always looks together and sexy when she dances. Sarah needs something that says
tango
, so that Gabriel Katz will notice her.

At six fifteen she settles on beige slacks and a matching silk blouse. Not exactly a dance costume, but she looks all right. Looking in the mirror, she can’t help but notice that she looks washed out. Her eyes look tired. At thirty-eight she has lost the sexiness of her twenties. First too much makeup, and after she washes it off, too little. She tries a different eye makeup and blush. Of course, worst of all is her totally unmanageable, shoulder-length, hopelessly frizzy red hair, the bane of her existence. It is definitely going to rain; because her hair has become like Brillo.

Sarah wears Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue. She likes that it is a fragrance created during the Belle Epoque, before the Roaring Twenties, and inspired by the blue hour, the time when it’s no longer day but not quite night, when the stars just begin to appear. She believes it is a romantic fragrance, Catherine Deneuve’s favorite, and likely worn by the movie stars of the 1940s.

By six thirty, it is time to be out the door. Exhausted, she wonders, why go at all?

It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that dress, though often considered a trifling matter, is one of considerable importance, for a man’s personal appearance is a sort of “index and obscure prologue” to his character.

                
—Edward Ferrero,
The Art of Dancing
, 1859

J
oseph spits on the plate of the iron, pressing and sliding it along the damp shirt he will wear to the Ballroom. Moving along invisible paths, attentive to every wrinkle, he avoids the tears in the cover and adds “ironing board cover” to his long mental list of things that need repair or replacement in his life.

A sour smell rises from the underarm. He presses his nose to the shirt. It’s a weak and fleeting scent. He adds “new shirts” to the list.

Joseph always thought he would marry, but while he has hopes of a home and family, they elude him. He imagines coming home from work, his dinner waiting, kissing his children good night, and reading the newspaper in his favorite chair. He has worked for thirty years at the telephone company, is sixty years old, yet he’s never met the right person. That is, before he met Sarah Dreyfus at the Ballroom.

He has considered taking an early retirement in two years, 2001, and moving back to Italy, even though he hasn’t been there in more than fifty years. But he’s very comfortable in his apartment. Maybe he’ll finally fix the place up when he retires.

He pictures Sarah at the Ballroom, how she walks down the stairs, stops to pay, looks his way, and smiles. As though she is expecting him. Would she be disappointed if he wasn’t there? When she approaches and brushes her cheek against his, she exudes the scent of the season. In July her skin is warm and somewhat damp against his, offering a fruity fragrance that doesn’t offend him in its fragile freshness. In January, the evening chill issues from her skin, and there are rose petals on her cheeks and nose.

“Joseph.”

Her mouth is like a kiss when she says his name.

“Save me a dance,” she says.

Always. A fox-trot. He wants the first and last dance to be a fox-trot with Sarah.

T
urning the shirt, he discovers a spot on the pocket where one of his pens leaked at work. Damn. Stains don’t come out of polyester. But since he never takes his jacket off at the Ballroom, no one will notice.

Just as he’s never missed a day of work, Joseph has never in twenty years missed a Sunday at the Ballroom. The boredom of his job at the phone company, the solitude of his evenings after work, his unfulfilled plans, are all forgotten. He needs only concentrate on the music, the lead, and the woman in his arms. He hopes it will be Sarah.

As always on Sunday, like clockwork, he is up early to eat a hearty breakfast at the corner café, and then he walks from Perry Street in the village to the Upper West Side. He enjoys the vigorous walk, even in these cold days of January, counting out a rhythm to his pace, just as when he dances. After stopping on 100th Street for Spanish coffee at Flor de Mayo, he likes to sit on a bench in Riverside Park to read sections of the
New York Times
: Arts and Leisure, the Book Review, and especially Friday’s film and theater reviews. He searches for the articles that he thinks he could discuss with Sarah when they sit out a dance. At two, the sky begins to cloud up, and he reminds himself to take an umbrella with him later. He picks up his pace on the way home, to nap, shower, and get ready for the evening. If he is to get a slice at Ray’s, he must leave his apartment by six.

At the bathroom mirror, combing what little hair he has left neatly back, Joseph trims his mustache into shape and thinks how slowly Sundays pass. He can hardly wait for Jimmy J the DJ’s music, and all the familiar faces. Will she be there? Already dancing with someone? She rarely sits on the chairs that surround the dance floor. In the semidarkness of the Ballroom, without his glasses, it is difficult for him to distinguish individuals. That’s why he arrives at seven. To sit on the banquette, just outside the dance area. In the light. See her when she arrives.

It just isn’t the same when Sarah isn’t there. Maybe tonight he will finally get the courage to ask her to the theater or dinner. While putting on his jacket, checking that he has his mints, he sniffs his underarm and wishes he’d worn another shirt.

A neat boot gives a finish to a person, which it is impossible to obtain with an ill-made one. Those made of polished patent leather are much in vogue, and deservedly so, for evening parties.

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

O
pening the dressing room doors in his Forest Hills penthouse, Gabriel Katz heaves a deep sigh. How he loves the sanctity of the space, its cedar fragrance, its expanse of beveled mirrors, and the meticulous arrangement of its contents. Closing the closet doors, he slouches into his black leather Barcelona chair and stares into the mirrors that surround him. The singular act of deciding what to wear to the Ballroom clears his mind.

While his summer wardrobe of casual slacks, linens, and light gabardines rest the season in clothing bags, his winter wools, shirts, and silks hang on cedar hangers. Each sweater in a zippered bag. Everything is organized by color. At the end of each season, he retires anything that looks the least bit worn.

Running his hand across his silk shirts, he selects one to wear with a blue blazer, Armani wool slacks, crocodile belt, and matching Bally loafers with tassels. All his dancing shoes are shined and in their sleeves. He chooses the appropriate pair to add to his dance bag, which also holds an extra shirt, a tie, silk handkerchiefs, and a towel. All he needs are what he considers to be his signature. Blue-tinted glasses and his ring, an eighteen-karat yellow-and-rose-gold rattlesnake with two exquisite sapphire eyes and a tail set with rings of perfect pavé diamonds. Asprey of London appraised it at $80,000. It belonged to Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias. Gabriel’s grandfather, a jeweler in St. Petersburg, had supposedly done Nicholas some great favor, long since forgotten. Gabriel has had the ring resized for his pinkie and enjoys its touch of flamboyance. When asked about it, he mentions the emperor and the mysterious favor, believing it adds to his panache.

In his mirrored refuge, closed off from the apartment and Myra, he is able to see himself from every angle. He checks the back of his head to make certain his roots don’t need a touch-up. The few strands of gray at the temples seem appropriate for a man of thirty-nine who, he is certain, looks twenty-nine. He smiles at the variations of himself.

M
yra stands in the doorway of their bedroom, her hair in disarray, wearing a faded robe.

“Going dancing again?” The smoke from her cigarette curls up over one side of her upper lip, swirls around her flared nostrils, and blows across the space between them.

“Don’t start.” He waves away the smoke.

“King of the Starlight Ballroom! Do they beg? Dance with me, Gabe. Oh, please, Gabe. You’re so smooth, Gabe. Do they—do they all want to dance with you? Like Lila? Can you get it up for them?” Her laugh sounds as if there are stones in her chest. “Have a good time,
baby
?”

“I told you, don’t call me baby.” His mother called him that, and now Myra does it to taunt him. She enjoys mocking him about dancing with his mother. He can no longer remember a time when he cared for her; now he can’t wait to get away from her. It’s a relief to get into his immaculate black Caddy, leave Forest Hills, and drive through the tunnel into Manhattan. He likes to arrive at the Ballroom around nine. After all the women have arrived.

Pay constant attention during the evening that she may at no time feel alone.

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

A
ngel has plans. To create his own dance center. Club Paradiso. While the rest of his life is loose and spontaneous, these plans are precise and structured.

When he can’t sleep, he pores over his immaculately organized files, the contents of each colored folder considered and researched. Scouring magazines and newspapers at lunchtime, he finds articles on lofts, refinishing techniques, floor surfaces, lighting, and mirrors. He has collected information about sound equipment and brochures from dance schools all over the world. He has assembled a list of instructors to teach each dance.

L
OCATION
, A
RCHITECTURE
, F
LOORING
, I
NSTRUCTORS
. C
LASSES
, within which are files for individual dances: M
AMBO
, C
HA-CHA
, S
ALSA
, T
ANGO
, R
UMBA
, P
ASA DOBLE
, Q
UICKSTEP
, W
ALTZ
, and F
OX-TROT
. Each includes a choreographic language of dance symbols, like shorthand. The space will be broken into several rooms. He plans to paint the room for ballroom dancing romantic clay and peach colors, like in the pictures he’s seen of Tuscany. Another room he’ll varnish in Real Red, as glossy as Maria’s lips, for tango and Latin or
milonga
. There will be cocktail tables around the edges of the dance floor, with tablecloths and candlelight, as well as a small stage for live music.

On Saturday nights a musician will play tango music on a bandonion. Angel has plans for sprung dance floors, rubber ball bearings under plywood, covered with polished flooring. No one will dance in anything but leather shoes. There will be no black scuffmarks from rubber soles. He wants an area with comfortable seats, painted shades of cobalt, turquoise, and purple like a summer evening’s sky, where people can relax, talk, and watch dance videos. He will do the work himself, with the help of the guys from the blueprint shop. He has learned from his old high school buddy, Gino, who is really creative, that with sophisticated lighting and sliding walls the rooms can transform from classrooms to dance spaces. As a surprise, Gino even designed a logo and signage. Angel has planned a dance library to hold his collection of more than three hundred dance tapes, historical books, records, CDs, and magazines. He searches flea markets and eBay for them. He wants to offer lectures on the history of dance, with dancers from all over the world coming to teach and perform.

When he has the financing together, he’ll ask Maria to be his partner. With her business smarts, they would make a go of it. He wishes his parents were more accepting of the life he’s chosen. They come to the championship competitions, cheer him and Maria on with enthusiasm, but the air has never completely cleared of their higher expectations. Especially Papa. Whether talking about sports, cars, or work, Papa’s disappointment hangs unspoken above every sentence. Not that he ever says anything, but Angel feels it. The way Papa looks away ever so slightly when he tells him what’s going on at the blueprint shop or about his dancing achievements. Then, once the conversation turns to Mama or Fischer’s Auto Parts, Papa’s eyes are alive again.