Adventures of a Salsa Goddess (10 page)

“Who are they and who made them an authority on everything and what do
they
know anyway?” he said with an ironic grin.

Another perfect response. This guy should write a book on “How to Charm a Woman in Ten Easy Steps.”

“Now, can I ask you a personal question? How does a great woman like you get to be forty-one and never married?”

I was used to this question. At my age, it was a
Catch-22. The divorced women I knew felt as though they had the stigma of failure to deal with. But if you’ve never been married, people naturally wondered if there was something wrong with you because no one had ever given you the seal of approval. Was she normal? Was she a bitch? Was she really a man?

“My mother and my best friend, Elizabeth, think I’m too picky,” I told him. “But I’d rather be single than settle.”

“A woman like you should be picky,” he said, giving me the once-over, but in a nice not lecherous way.

Robert drove me back home and took the elevator up to my
apartment. We stood outside my door for an awkward second before he bent down and kissed me. At first, it was one of those shy, not-really-sure-if-you-want-me-to-do-this kisses that quickly became all arms and mouths as we fumbled and pressed against the wall in the hallway.

Robert pulled away a few minutes later and said in a husky voice that he’d better leave. He thanked me for a great time, and then stepped backward into the elevator. He stood there for a moment. His hair was disheveled, and the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow showed on his cheeks and chin. I heard a buzz and the doors slowly closed on my vision.

Maybe I should call men more often?

The Three-Date Rule

The day of her tragic death, “Auntie Mary” a never
-married forty-one-year-old spinster, had taken her niece to the Milwaukee County Zoo as a birthday present. The two of them were admiring the newly acquired warthogs when Mary bent over to pick up her niece’s pink hair ribbon that had fallen to the pavement. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a frenzied bull elephant that had escaped only moments earlier came charging up behind her and gored her up her rump. Her last words to her niece before she expired were, “Remember, Matilda, three dates are usually two too many.”

Because Mary had always been a kind and thoughtful soul, she was admitted immediately through the heavenly gates. But instead of going to the usual orientation session, she
was called in for a special audience with Angel Aphrodite.

Aphrodite began by flashing Mary’s entire dating history before her eyes, pointing out quite clearly that Mary had been in the habit of rejecting men after only one date. She had had her reasons of course.

The guy was unattractive, boring, didn’t make her laugh, or wasn’t financially settled. Then there were the men that Mary had really liked who’d never called again after a first or second date. Mary had spent much of her single years pining away for this latter group of men, elevating them in her imagination to knights in shining armor, certain that once they realized how wonderful she was, surely one of them would come to his senses and sweep her off her feet.

But that had never happened.

“Mary,” Angel Aphrodite asked, “do you now remember your date with Peter when you were twenty-five, with Fred at thirty-five, and your date last year with George?”

Mary remembered that, as usual, she had turned each of these men down for a second date. Peter was gangly and awkward and laughed inappropriately during
The Exorcist
. Fred was a struggling musician with no assets or savings. As for George, eleven years her senior, balding, jowly, and very conservative politically, he’d made Mary wish that she’d stayed home that night to organize her spice rack instead of wasting an evening with him.

“Yes, Aphrodite, I remember them. Why do you ask?”

“George was your soul mate.”

“George? Jowly George was my soul mate?” asked Mary, repulsed by the sudden image of her and George together in an intimate way. “Are you certain, Aphrodite?”

“Yes, Mary,” said Angel Aphrodite. “If you’d gone out with George just two more times, you would have fallen madly in love, married him, and had three beautiful children together. Peter and Fred weren’t your soul mates, but if you’d gone out with either of them just two more times, you would have seen them for the good men that they are, married one of them, had children, and been very happy.”

Mary was beside herself with remorse and guilt. She could now
see the superficiality that had guided her decision-making and how it had prevented her from finding true love and happiness.

“I’m so sorry, Angel Aphrodite
,” said Mary. “How could I have been so foolish?”

“My dear
,” the angel gently explained, “it wasn’t your fault that no one ever told you about The Three-Date Rule.”

Hazy cumulus clouds of cigar smoke hovered in the stale bar air as Lessie and I walked into Cubana. For a change, the downstairs was packed with wall-to-wall men. Cocktails in one hand, cigars in the other, they were all looking very Ernest Hemingway-esque as we walked up to the bar.

“Do you ladies want to try a mojito, two for one tonight?” asked the bartender.

“What’s in it?” I asked.

“Sugar, mint leaves, lime juice, rum, ice, and soda water,” he said. “In that order.”

I looked at Lessie, who shrugged her shoulders as if to say, why not? The bartender produced two tall glasses containing a faint greenish liquid sprouting mint leaves.

“Remember to chew on the leaves when you’re finished,” he said.

“Why?” asked Lessie.

“I don’t know. Tradition I guess,” he said.

I took a sip. It was a little on the sweet side, but refreshing. With our drinks in hand, we went upstairs, where Javier was giving a group lesson to two couples. He smiled and waved when he saw us. Eliseo apparently hadn’t arrived yet.

Lessie and I walked out to the balcony and I leaned against the railing, looking inside at the dance floor. I saw the usual salsa crowd, but then my eyes focused on someone new. A trim middle-aged man was dancing alone, making flamboyant arm movements and weird contortions with his face, as though his mustache were caught in his teeth.

“They call him the Lone Salsero
.”

I turned to find Sebastian Diaz looming behind and above me, invading my personal space. I smiled up at him, said a quick hello, and turned back to the dance floor.

“What does
salsero
mean?” asked Lessie.

“A
salsero
is a male salsa dancer and a
salsera
is a female salsa dancer,” Sebastian said. “The Lone Salsero never speaks to anyone, and always dances alone.”

“Sounds very mysterious,” said Lessie with a giggle. “Is that salsa dancing he’s doing?”

The three of us stared at him as his face contorted into spasms of apparent agony alternating with something approximating the kind of grin you see on a baby’s face when he’s passing gas.

“So how’s the research and writing going, Sam?” Sebastian asked.

“Wow, you look great! What is that?” asked Javier, who slipped up to me, put his hands on my hips, and bent down to my waist for a closer look at my tattoo. I hoped he couldn’t see that my stomach was flip-flopping like a dying fish on a pier.

“It’s a Cupid,” I said, trying to act nonchalant at Javier’s unexpected and rather intimate gesture. It was one thing to have him touch me while he was teaching, and quite another to have it occur off the dance floor.

Under Lessie’s peer pressure, I’d bought three midriff tops. The one I was wearing, a V-neck black cotton sweater, showed off more of my stomach than I was used to. I’d also splurged on a pair of tight, hip-hugging, black cotton/lycra pants and a strappy. pair of black spike-heeled shoes, the kind I’d seen the really good salsa dancers wearing. If I never learned how to salsa, at least I’d look good trying.

“Nice tattoo, Sam,” said Javier.

“The god of love,” said Sebastian. “How interesting.” I was certain that for a split second he’d been sneering, but then he’d instantly covered it up with a smile.

“Javier, where’s your brother?” asked Lessie. “I’m itching to dance,” she said, as she undulated her hips seductively and raised both arms in the air above her head.

“He’s going to be late tonight,” said Javier. Lessie froze like a statue, and Javier quickly added, “My sister has a new boyfriend. She brought him over to meet my family and Eliseo is there to translate for my parents. But by now he’s probably grilled the poor guy to the point that he’s sorry he ever met her.”

“Oh, that’s sweet,” Lessie said, looking relieved, but also a little embarrassed. She’d told me on the drive over that her date with Eliseo on Saturday night had gone so much better than the first, that instead of feeling happy about it, she had become only more insecure about him. I knew exactly how she felt.

“Hey, you guys should go out and dance,” she said, shooing us toward the dance floor.

Grabbing my hand, Javier pulled me inside through the double patio doors. The room was muggy, almost tropical. Ceiling fans swirled above us.

“I don’t think Sebastian likes me.”

“What? He told me he thinks you’re
... interesting.” I didn’t like that pause. That’s exactly how I would struggle to describe my boss, Elaine, or my mother to a third party to avoid coming off like a bitch.

“Now I’m positive he doesn’t like me,” I said wryly.

“Sam, Sebastian and I have been friends since I moved to Milwaukee five years ago,” he explained. “I know him better than my own brother. Believe me, he would tell me if he didn’t like you.”

We started dancing. The mustachioed Lone Salsero gyrated by us, looking like Saddam Hussein with a serious case of jock itch. No one seemed to be paying him the slightest amount of attention.

“Besides, how could anyone not like you?” asked Javier, as he led me into a double twirl.

My heart bounced up to the ceiling and back. I guess it didn’t matter what Sebastian thought of me as long as it didn’t influence Javier’s feelings about me.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Let’s drop it.”

“Everything you think matters,” said Javier, “to me.” I met his eyes, but then he looked away from me. It was the first time I’d seen him be anything but completely in control and at ease.

Tonight I was following well enough that I couldn’t help but envision Javier and I moving together so gracefully that we unquestionably mesmerized the other dancers who would form an awed circle about us, marveling at our performance. We finished with a spectacular dip as I walked off the dance floor feeling like a movie star stepping out of a limo to her throngs of adoring fans, although I had to admit, it didn’t look like a single person was glancing in my direction.

My feelings of euphoria lasted precisely nine seconds until Javier went up to the DJ booth and turned up the tempo of the music. Apparently he had slowed it down to toddler level for me. I hadn’t been salsa dancing after all. I’d been salsa crawling.

I stood on the side and caught my breath as I watched Javier and a stunning blond woman proceed to soar over the dance floor in one long string of dips and twirls, moving in perfect fluid motion. Their dance ended to a burst of applause.

“I want to dance like her,” I said, when Javier came up to me a minute later.

“You need to practice and have a little patience,” he said, flashing me his one-dimpled smile.

Patience was out of the question. As my dad used to say to me,
“Patience is a virtue, possess it if you can, seldom found in a lady,” and then it was supposed to be “and never in a man.” But he would change it to, “and never in Sam.”

“How much more practice do I need?”

“Irene’s been dancing since she was fifteen and winning salsa competitions since ... forever,” he said, tilting his head in the direction of the blonde. I looked at her. She wasn’t even out of breath. Not a drop of perspiration graced her forehead.

“I could give you a private salsa lesson, if you don’t mind that my studio isn’t fixed up yet,” Javier told me. “Eliseo and I live on the top floor of a duplex. I plan to remodel the first floor into a dance studio, when I get a loan.”

“A private lesson sounds great,” I said breezily.. I said “great” but was thinking “dangerous” as I was just beginning to realize that when I was with Javier, I no longer felt like myself. Something about Javier was causing me to lose control,

Javier put on another salsa and began dancing with another student. I stood watching him.

“A man doesn’t move like that unless he’s got the whole package,” said a beautiful Latina woman standing at my side. She was about my height, and her shoulder-length brunette hair had blond and reddish streaks running through it. I watched her as she watched Javier. The lower half of Javier.

Javier certainly was a pleasure to gaze upon. He kept his upper body perfectly still as his hips slightly swayed back and forth, a move far more subtle than the female dancers, but still incredibly sexy.

“Have you danced with him yet?” I heard her say. I tore my eyes away from Javier’s package to look back at her.

“Yeah, he’s giving me lessons,” I said, wondering, does she like Javier? Was she checking out the competition? Wait a minute, Sam. Stop flattering yourself. You’re way too old for him. He’s your instructor. You’re his student. And that’s all.

“They say he can make your spine melt,” she said in a low purr, before taking a wide detour through the middle of the dance floor and brushing up against Javier while pretending to ignore him. I’d give her a 9.5 for that move if what she’d just said about Javier didn’t annoy me so much. When she reached the bar, she met up with Sebastian Diaz, who hugged and kissed her.

I felt like an extra in a salsa soap opera, except that clearly I was the only one who hadn’t been given a script, had never met the cast of characters, and had no clue what the plot was.

After Javier finished his lesson, he came up and asked me if I wanted to try a merengue, a dance that was much easier than salsa. Javier took a moment to demonstrate its simple marching beat, one two, one two, right left, right left.

Eliseo and Lessie drifted by, their pelvises fused together as one unit, gyrating back and forth to the two-step rhythm. Good thing they had clothes on, because the thin material of Lessie’s cotton skirt and Eliseo’s jeans were their only means of birth control.

“Who is that woman talking to Sebastian?” I asked Javier, thankful that for once I could hold a conversation while dancing since I didn’t need to concentrate at all on these steps.

“Which woman?”

“The tall woman at the bar with the red and blond streaks in her hair,” I said, seeing that she now appeared to be throwing all of her powers of feminine persuasion Sebastian’s way.