Ballroom: A Novel (27 page)

He hears Maria knocking on his door.

“It’s me,” she calls. “
Te amo, mi amor
,” whispers from corners of the room. “I’ll never leave you,” she promises in the dark. “Never,” in the sounds of dawn.

Sometime before morning, he wakens to the sound of his name being called, uncertain if it is Maria’s voice or his mother’s, calling to him in a familiar dream.

“Harold, Harold.”

He walks to the window, hoping to see his little girl again. On her way to school. In the gray dawn, the lights, the drone of passing cars, blend with the music, drums and violins, he imagines echoing off the walls. In the bathroom, standing shirtless at the sink, he speaks to his feverish reflection in the mirror, murmuring her name over and over until it loses all meaning.

He is struck by the droop of his eyes. His gaze travels down from his face, to his neck, the protruding bones in his shoulders, ribs, the gray hairs on his chest and his sagging stomach. When did he become so old? With his hand over his mouth, he stifles the fierce sobbing that rises from his throat.

Taking Maria’s gown from the closet, he places it gently atop his tuxedo, running his fingers across the fabric. After closing the suitcase, dragging it to the front door, he stumbles back to bed, where he lies on his side, facing the window so that he will see the morning light when it stretches across the room.

He doesn’t remember writing the messages that he finds etched in the residue of settled dust on the table next to his bed. The dust reminds him of tea leaves, and if he believed in fortune-telling, he’d look for his future there. But there is no future. She is gone.

Death means nothing to him. What future is there without his dreams? Or the music Maria brings to his empty life? What meaning do the songs have without her? Just passing hours. To be, to dance, to live, he must have her.

It is the duty of a gentleman to know how to ride, to shoot, to fence, to box, to swim, to row, and to dance. He should be graceful.

                
—Walter R. Houghton,
Rules of Etiquette and Home Culture
, 1886

C
lub Paradiso is going to be more than a dream. The marketing plan is in a folder in Angel’s attaché case, which he carries to his parents’ apartment for the meeting with his father. C
LUB
P
ARADISO
, N
EW
Y
ORK
is printed on its front cover.

“I’ll lend you the money, Angel.” His father pauses, holding his
café con leche
in both hands, slurping at the steamed milk floating on top. “But I want to see a business plan.”

“I got it right here.” Angel pulls out the papers.

“This is damn good. When did you do this? Very businesslike. Professional. The bank will love it.”

“Pop—” Pausing for drama, Angel pulls out more papers and says with a grin, “Here’s my registration for NYU.”

Julio’s dark eyes fill with tears, as his slow grin mirrors that of his son.

“
Dios mio
,” he whispers. “This will make your mama very happy.”

“Hmm, what time is it?” Angel asks. Pushing his fist forward, he looks at his watch, slyly glancing at his father’s expression. It is the Movado his father gave him for his high school graduation. When Julio sees it, he stands up and throws his arms around Angel, pounding him on the back until it hurts.

Everything seems within Angel’s grasp at last. His father and Maria’s, as well as his boss, have all agreed to invest.

“How ’bout you call it Morez Dance School?” his father suggests.

“Sorry, Pop. I decided a long time ago. I want to call it Club Paradiso.”

“Okay, okay,” Julio says. “I should be proud.”

“Maria’s agreed to be my partner.”

“Anything else?” Julio asks with a big grin of expectation.

“Yes, Pop. I asked her, and she said yes.”

Leaning across the table, Julio punches Angel’s forearm.

Young girls should never go about the streets of a city or large town unaccompanied by an older person or a maid. This rule is not so much for physical protection as for the example of teaching her that fine conduct and discretion which will forestall the possibility of unpleasant experiences.

                
—Edith B. Orday,
The Etiquette of To-day
, 1918

T
wo police officers come to Manuel Rodriguez’s door. They say they had a call from a Sarah Dreyfus about a Harry Korn who hasn’t been answering his phone for a week, and ask if he knows anything about the tenant.

“Four C? He keeps to himself. Never wants nothing. Not in all the years since I been here did I ever go up into his apartment.”

“Guess we should take a look,” says the shorter of the two officers. “See if he’s okay.”

“Maybe his phone’s out of order,” Manuel suggests. “He never fixes nothin’.”

“You got a key, sir? We’d appreciate if you’d come with us. Open the door, if you would.” They climb the three flights to Harry’s apartment, and Manuel opens the door.

“Jeez. Look at this!” The taller policeman looks at the floor in amazement. “Man, what’s with the grocery bags?”

“Some people! Really strange,” the short officer says to Manuel. “You wouldn’t believe the things we see.”

“I never seen anyone come to visit him. Never.” He doesn’t want to go inside Korn’s apartment. His throat is constricted, and he feels nauseated. All those grocery bags on the floor are really weird.

They carefully stay on the path of paper bags, looking into each of Korn’s dreary rooms. The living room drapes are closed, and in the dark Manuel sees the lonely pieces of furniture, a love seat, wing, and club chair, all shrouded with plastic covers. They appear suspended in somber shadow. No tables, lamps, or rug. No knickknacks, no family photos, none of the clues of a life you would expect to find. The apartment frightens Manuel, makes him afraid to grow old.

In the bedroom, on the Early American maple bed, Korn lies on his side.

The tall one places his fingers on Korn’s neck. “Nope, no pulse.”

Manuel approaches the bed. Korn lies there in his underwear, peaceful, as though he lay down to take a nap. Except he is dead.

“He looks like he’s sleeping,” says Manuel, watching them check the body. “I don’t see any blood.”

On the night table beside the bed is a cheap lamp, its shade long past its prime. Korn has made what looked like a decoration of paper clips around the base of the shade. Incongruously, a print of ballerinas hangs askew above the bed, all its colors faded into shades of yellow and green. Manuel wants to straighten it. On the table next to the bed are what look like words, written in the dust.

“I don’t see any signs. Looks like maybe he had a heart attack.” The short one looks around the room.

Manuel walks to the window and pulls the drape aside to peer onto Twelfth Street. Menus are strewn in front of the steps. He will need to clean up. Neighbors gather on the stoop. As Ms. Capinelli looks up at the window, he steps back behind the curtain.

“I ask him if he needs anything fixed. Always says no. I think he was cheap.”

“I’m sorry to ask you this, Mr. Rodriguez; did Mr. Korn know your daughter?”

“My daughter? She wouldn’t have nothing to do with him. Maria? Never.”

“Apparently they knew each other, sir. When Ms. Dreyfus called us, she said she was worried about Mr. Korn, that he might have had a heart attack on Sunday night at the Ballroom on Fourteenth Street. When he didn’t let her help him home, she telephoned us to check on him. She mentioned that your daughter was there. At that dance. Seems he was going after your daughter, or maybe her partner, Angel Morez. Do you know him? This Ms. Dreyfus says Mr. Korn was shouting your daughter’s name.”

Manuel’s body begins to tremble as he tries to stay in control. Maria and Korn?

“She just graduated from Barnard. With honors,” he argues. “She’s going to get married to Angel. He’s a good boy. No, she wouldn’t have nothing to do with Korn. No, not my Maria. Are you sure that woman said the Ballroom?”

“Yes, sir, afraid so. I’ll take you downstairs, Mr. Rodriguez. You’ve been very helpful.”

It can’t be. Maria being at the Ballroom with Korn. Dancing with him? Never. The thought makes him sick to his stomach. Frightened.

The front door is open, and people from the building are standing in the hallway outside his door and on the front stoop, whispering among themselves. Sitting on the couch, Manuel can hear their conversation.

“I think Korn had women up there sometimes,” he hears Mrs. Ramirez saying.

“Yeah, I could hear salsa music . . . like he was dancin’ or somethin’,” says Mrs. Ortiz.

“Probably dancin’ with his self,” says Ms. Capinelli, out on the street in her bathrobe like it’s summertime.

Gossip. They don’t know nothing about Korn. They’re probably making it all up. Dancing in his apartment? Manuel slams his door so he won’t have to hear anything more.

O
nce the police give him the go-ahead, Manuel has to empty the apartment. There isn’t very much in any of the rooms, and he figures it will take two days. Everything is so old he can’t stand to touch it, even with gloves. There is the stench of age, and of death.

Beginning in the living room, he drags the furniture to the basement; couch, chairs, the old lamp. Everything in Korn’s closet is brown: suits, shirts, pants, belts, shoes. In a pocket of a jacket, he finds a passbook from a local savings bank. He can’t believe how much money the old man saved, money he withdrew when he closed the account a week ago. He wonders if Korn knew he was going to die and had himself one last fling. A brand-new suitcase sits by the front door. Opening it, he finds a dance gown on top of a tuxedo, shirts, and dance shoes. Everything brand-new. Going somewhere; somewhere with a dance partner. He can’t figure the guy out. Never figured him for a dancer. Went out, came in, no guests, no visitors. “Good morning,” “good evening,” that’s all, in twenty years.

He hadn’t really realized how many years have passed. Korn has been living there since when they moved in, he and Vivianna and Maria, who was just a baby. Such a long time. Paying next to nothing for the place, too. Never giving him a little something at Christmas like the other tenants. Not Korn.

There is an old scrapbook under Korn’s bed, with page after page of photos of people at what must be an annual company picnic. In each picture there’s a Simon Shoe Factory banner. As he turns the pages, photos fall out. Baby pictures, communion, confirmation, graduation pictures. All pictures of Maria.

There is a picture of himself and Maria in her red silk graduation suit at Barnard. He has never seen that photo. Korn must have been there, in the crowd, taking pictures.

There she is in her white bikini at Jones Beach when she was seventeen. At sunset. He remembers, because he took the picture with Maria’s friend Anna’s camera. They’d gone in the Ortegas’ car and stayed till sunset. The girls had such a good time. It was such a great day. Like old summers in San Juan. How did Korn get that photo?

When he discovers a lock of Maria’s hair in an envelope, Manuel’s stomach turns queasy. The history of his child’s life in this stranger’s scrapbook. His head throbs as rage builds in his gut. He throws the scrapbook across the room, and its pages crumble into dust as they hit the walls and floor. For years he wished Korn would move out, upset that his apartment never brought in any extra tip money. All that time there was something going on between him and Maria. Behind his back. The goddamned pervert.

He gathers the photographs of his daughter and presses them to his chest.

Determined to find more proof, he searches through all the rooms, looking more closely for clues. In the kitchen, he is surprised to find a large, elegant, beveled-glass mirror in a fancy gold frame between the wall and the refrigerator. It seems a strange place for it, and Manuel wonders why Korn hasn’t hung it over his couch or in his bedroom.

He slides the mirror out. A small envelope, tied with a red ribbon, is taped to the glass. Inside are two round trip tickets to Buenos Aires. On one is the name Harold Carl Korn; the other, Maria Rodriguez.

Manuel’s head, neck, and shirt are soaked with sweat. He can hardly breathe. This can’t be. Last week Maria told him she would marry Angel at Our Lady of Sorrows before New Year’s. She never lies to him. They also told him about their plans for Club Paradiso, and he’s written them a check. He wanted to help.

There is a sudden flood of memories. His beautiful Vivianna. How she too had betrayed his trust. He adored her, worked hard to provide everything she wanted, and she ran off and broke his heart. All that he’s put out of his mind for twenty years is happening again.

Picking up the huge mirror, seeing his reflection, Manuel throws it at the wall. Stunned, he listens to the shattering sound of the elaborate frame breaking and watches as pieces of slivered glass shower around him, fracturing the terrible reality he must face.