Ballroom: A Novel (29 page)

After dancing, a gentleman should conduct the lady to a seat, unless she otherwise desires; he should thank her for the pleasure she has conferred, but he should not tarry too long in intimate conversation with her.

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

Y
ou saved me a dance,” Sarah says.

Joseph takes her arm, leading her onto the dance floor. He wonders if she’s forgotten all about the night she came to the apartment. He hopes so; it was almost a year ago. She’s so comfortable and familiar in his arms. He’s pleased that she’s come early for this closing night, and still remembers all his fox-trot steps.

“Wish you hadn’t shaved your mustache. You looked like Adolphe Menjou.”

“Really? Adolphe Menjou?” He doesn’t mind the movie-star references now. He’s almost forgotten how easy it is to talk to her. He wishes he could tell her he’s missed her.

“It definitely added to your elegance.”

“Well, then, I’ll grow another.” He’ll ask her to go to Roseland again. This time he’ll take her to dinner and buy that new suit.

After their third fox-trot, she excuses herself. When the DJ plays a rumba, he looks everywhere for her.

Every lady should desist from dancing the moment she feels fatigued, or any difficulty in breathing, for it no longer affords either charm or pleasure, the steps and attitudes lose that easy elegance, that natural grace, which bestows upon dancers the most enchanting appearance.

                
—Elias Howe,
The Pocket Ballroom Prompter
, 1858

S
arah sees Harry’s brown ghost everywhere. Wishing she’d been a better friend, she remembers his words. “I don’t have no friends. I’m just your teacher. Our relationship is purely professional.”

She believed that Harry had nothing in his life other than the simple, uncomplicated world of teaching dance, and that he thought he was in complete control of everything. As if it was like a dance. This step, that step. Quick-quick-slow, just that simple. Always moving counterclockwise around the floor. But it isn’t like that. Life has no simple steps you can follow.

No, she didn’t know him at all. For that matter, did she know any of her partners at the Ballroom? They dress up on Sunday nights for a masquerade; private, no commitments, some not even willing to tell their last names; just one quick dance after another with different partners.

Music beckons like a siren’s call, and you respond. That feeling of moving to the rhythm and believing, somehow, that the song is meant for you.

It’s enough for now to be at the Ballroom for its closing, and certainly better than spending another night alone. Sarah looks at the place and for the first time notices how shabby it is. The leather banquettes in the waiting area are torn; paint is flaking off the Corinthian columns; the dance floor has lost its luster. Worst of all is the stew of smells from the free buffet of baked ziti, slaw, and hot dogs. Other than these first few fox-trots with Joseph, it is a dreadful night. Nothing is right. Jimmy J doesn’t show up. There is an awful DJ, and the music is off—too many mambos.

As she looks out across the room, it is as if each person has been cut out of black paper with a small scissors and placed on a background of fireworks. She recognizes the familiar contours, the distinctive postures and movements: Gabriel, Joseph, Angel, Tony, and Hernan. The women, too: Tina, Rebecca, Maria, dreary Andrea, who introduced her to Harry, and those she’s never met, who are still waiting to dance.

As the songs play, one after the other, she prefers to watch the evening unfold in the dark, like a film. To occasionally notice someone with whom she’s danced only once, the blur of silhouettes and the changing of partners. To try to understand all that has happened.

Dance after dance, song after song: the dazzling blur of Viennese waltz, the provocative pulse of mambo and salsa, the frenzy of a hustle, exhausting its dancers like contestants in a marathon, the heartbeat rhythms of fox-trot and tango, the giddy Peabody and quirky quickstep, each creates a different pattern of motion.

Then, just before midnight, the DJ announces the last waltz, and the mirrored ball begins to spin again. It seems as though she is the only person in the glittering room—in the world—not dancing. Without a partner.

Joseph waltzes adequately by with Andrea, both dusted with a spatter of light. Tony D is here, moving smoothly along the outside edges of the floor, his round belly and Tina’s dress capturing polka dots of light. As he whispers in her ear, she smiles with pleasure. Between them, they probably know everyone’s secrets. Rebecca Douglas, looking more animated than Sarah has ever seen her before, is dancing with Hernan.

Maria and Angel have returned to the Ballroom for its closing night, and hold their position in the center of the room, shimmering like stars, like bride and groom.

Gabriel whirls by with his partner, and together they look out across the dance floor with disdain. As they pass, his partner’s skirt rises, revealing graceful legs and accentuating the precision of her technique. Gabriel’s profile and torso look as though they are brushed with snow. Sarah closes her eyes and tries to imagine the perfection of that dance in his arms, the lost moment of naive possibility.

She likes being an observer, feeling a cool distance from her emotions. Caught up in the grace and romance of this last dance, she forgets and even forgives.

Opening her eyes again she is dazzled by the lights, which skip off the walls and dance across the table. She holds up her hands as if to catch the escaping stars. The song is almost over, and soon it will be time to go home. She realizes that it is the days ahead she looks forward to now.

Someone is walking toward her, tall and slim, with a confident stature and gait, his hand outstretched. She hopes he will ask her to finish the last dance, and that he knows the steps, so at the very least the evening will end well.

The usual form of asking a lady to dance is, “May I have the pleasure of your hand for the next dance?”

                
—Rudolph Radestock,
The Royal Ball-Room Guide
, 1877

T
he song is “Dos Gardenias,” and in the center of the Ballroom with Maria in his arms, Angel watches her eyes momentarily close, as they always do at the start of a dance. She holds her breath while she finds her center. He waits for her body to relax against his. He senses her stillness. Her familiar gestures.

Particles of light fall on her cheeks like tears, flicker on her shoulders like petals. Her fragrance is like the song, a rain of gardenias. He savors that moment when his cheek first touches hers, and the first fleeting scent of a flower. He closes his eyes for a moment. A whirlwind of brushstrokes depicting an evening sky, the indigo and violet colors of music, dance, and the Ballroom fill Angel’s vision.

Stepping forward, they are alone, part of the music, part of the Milky Way, part of creation.

The answers to the questions he asked himself on the edge of the roof, looking into Harry’s window, are beyond him. They are adrift in the unknowable formation of the universe.

Angel once read in an astronomy book that what you see in the sky, the stars and galaxies, is your past. Therefore it no longer matters. The future is his and Maria’s. For now, nothing matters but this dance, the movement of Maria’s body against his, this moment in time.

At a party, where all of the guests know each other, it is inexcusable for any man to go home alone, and let the women go home unescorted. It is the gentleman’s duty to see that all of the ladies are properly escorted home. He should escort one or two, or three if necessary.

                
—V. Persis Dewey,
Tips to Dancers
, 1918

S
he’s gone, yet the enclosed, overheated bedroom still reeks of cigarettes. He empties the butt-filled ashtray into the toilet and opens the windows, despite the cold, then sits down on the bed to read the letter again.

He turns on the television. “Stay here with me. Say you’ll love me forever . . . that nothing will ever change.” The black-and-white war romance illuminates the darkened room. “You know I love you, but we only have these few hours together. I must get back to the front.”

Hanging his blazer in his dressing room, breathing in the sweet smell of cedar, he removes his tie and opens the buttons of his shirt. He looks at himself in three-quarter view. There are pouches under his eyes, and he tries to smooth them away with his fingers. Before closing the doors, he runs his hands along his clothes, assuring himself of their order.

In the kitchen, he likes the clear, clinking sound the six ice cubes make in the tall cut-crystal glass as he pours himself a soda. Feeling his way toward his Eames chair in the dark living room, he sinks into its perfect curves and lets out a slow, audible sigh.

He feels nothing, except for the dull pain coming from the torn meniscus in his right knee and a sharp, insistent pain in his lower back. Lately his feet have been swelling after a night of dancing. He needs to pace himself better. He listens to the hissing carbonation and watches the ice dance in the glass. Old and tired, the Ballroom is past its prime. Hopefully Club Paradiso will attract a young, hipper crowd.

He gets up from his chair, forcing the glass balcony door open. Stepping out onto the balcony, he is punished by a wash of noise, the whooshing and honking sounds twenty-six floors below. Every minute or two an airplane heads toward or away from Kennedy Airport, and the balcony vibrates from its thunder. He watches the planes disappear. On the Long Island Expressway, a parade of iridescent dancers undulates like a chorus line. He practices a dance turn, and the sky, studded with stars, spins like the mirrored ball on the Ballroom ceiling. Staring out into the night, he doesn’t want the dance to end.

As I entered the gilded doors

of the Ballroom,

walked down the carpeted staircase,

my heart thrummed to the sounds of violins and bass.

The Latin rhythms touched something in me—something visceral and erotic.

Recognizing familiar love songs with stories of promise,

I believed that in the shadowy splendor

someone waited for me.

Two Corinthian columns, like Greek goddesses

dressed for the ball,

coiffures adorned with acanthus leaves,

reached to embrace an indigo ceiling,

while below, torsos, arms, and legs were a blur of motion.

The spinning mirrored ball exploded the room

with fractured light that

dressed our masquerade.

This book is dedicated to all Dancers wishing to know the details of Ballroom Etiquette, and desiring to overcome self-consciousness, uncertainty and embarrassment.

                
—V. Persis Dewey,
Tips to Dancers
, 1918

De Valcourt, Robert.
The Illustrated Manners Book: A Manual of Good Behavior and Polite Accomplishments
. New York: Leland Clay, 1855.

Dewey, V. Persis.
Tips to Dancers: Good Manners for Ballroom and Dance Hall
. Kenosha, WI, 1918.

Ferrero, Edward.
The Art of Dancing, Historically Illustrated, to Which Is Added a Few Hints on Etiquette
. New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1859.

Hazard, W. P.
The Ball-Room Companion: A Handbook for the Ball-Room & Evening Parties
. New York: D. Appleton, 1849.

Hill, Thomas E.
Evils of the Ball: Etiquette of the Party and Ball
. Chicago: Hill Standard, 1883.

Houghton, Walter R.,
Rules of Etiquette and Home Culture
. Rand, McNally & Co., Chicago, 1886.

Howe, Elias.
The Pocket Ballroom Prompter
. Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1858.

Hughes, Kristine.
The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England from 1811–1901
. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest, 1998.

Orday, Edith B.
The Etiquette of To-day
. New York: Sully & Kleintelch, 1918.

Radestock, Rudolph.
The Royal Ball-Room Guide: Etiquette of the Drawing-Room
. London: Walker & Sons, 1877.

Smiles, Samuel.
Happy Homes and the Hearts that Make Them
. U. S. Publishing House, Chicago, 1882.

Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. Daily Gullet forums, egullet.org.

For the music that inspired—
La Revancha del Tango
, the debut album of Gotan Project, whose tango heartbeat is at the core of the novel. Gardel, Piazzolla, Sinatra, and Fitzgerald, who understood romance, and Fred and Ginger, who knew the steps.

To those who listened—Eva Baer-Schenkein, Sheila Gordon, and Elsie Blackert, who believed in me from the beginning.

To writers, readers, and friends from New York to California who responded to early drafts on my journey to this dream coming true—you’re next!