You have only to apologize, to crawl about for a moment, to resume
flattery or a suggestion thereof, to dance again, to put your hand
gently on her--in such a way that she would remove it firmly. Then
everything will be stardust again. She will be a beautiful young woman
enjoying, with world sanction, the company of a suitable guy. Toying,
perhaps, with the thought of an affaire. Toying would be her word and
toy, her inept function.
And what had I been doing?
I looked for the waiter. If he had been visible in the smoke-spun,
light-pulsing, low altitude of the big room, I would have asked for the
check and taken her straight to her door and to hell with her. This was
my night to howl, maybe. It was turning into my night to die. I had the
right--or intended to make the right--to howl and die as I pleased and
with whom I chose.
But while I was looking, she sensed my intention. "I'm sorry," she
said. "I didn't mean to be rude! You hurt my feelings."
So I dissembled. "I was hunting for our waiter. Let's go someplace
else."
We walked down the staircase of a Latin spot off Eighth Avenue called
the Cuban Paradise. A spot with a still lower ceiling, and no air
conditioning or ventilation. Two small rumba bands alternate, so the
music is constant, and nine-tenths of the customers are Cubans or
Puerto Ricans or South Americans. The orchestras are not pretentious,
but such as may be heard on a hundred side streets in Havana.
We took a little table at the wall. New Yorkers spend a good deal
of their lives with their backs to walls, looking at things, eating
things, drinking. We ordered coffee and the waiter dutifully told us
there was a small minimum. It was Cuban coffee--thick and sweet--and we
listened to rhythms musically naïve but emotionally more sophisticated
than those of the big, smooth, uptown bands. Music is like accent in
speech, and very few foreigners learn the language of another nation so
well as to lose all traces of their own tongue--to talk like natives.
At the Cuban Paradise, the Latins danced as they were supposed to and
wanted to. Working people having fun. Immigrants remembering tropical
nights--and sounds never heard in Manhattan--trees never seen on its
streets--flowers never sold in its markets.
There were pairs of girls dancing together--hopefully--and when I saw
them, executing the slow, insidious steps of a bolero--I glanced at
Yvonne. She was watching them, too--watching them so intently that my
glance became a stare. She noticed and swept from her face its look of
participation.
Again, I felt terribly sorry for her. Sorry as one feels sorry for a
bird that has failed to migrate and sits on its branch in the dreary
rain of autumn, knowing the world is wrong, feebly sensing a lost,
warmer climate, but unable to resolve the quandary of the dream and
the pain of its present. A bird can be a sharp thing with a reptile's
appetite--a bright bundle of vanity and vengeance. She smiled, though.
"Those two girls--the redhead and the one with blue-black hair--are
very good, aren't they?"
"The dark one's beautiful--like an Indian."
"Probably is part Indian--and also probably a Dodger fan who chews
bubble gum and works in Macy's stockroom."
"I wish I could lead--the way she does!"
"That's the boy's department." I laughed. "Sorry! Maybe you're right.
Maybe I am prejudiced. Though I regard it as merely the extreme and
necessary product of my constant effort to keep track of prerogatives
which are defiled and trampled every few seconds in this fair land!"
I then added, "If you really want to learn dancing, you have to learn
both parts. Yours--the girl's."
She was easily mollified. And she was--not tight--but less cautious
about herself. "I never thought of that! It would be interesting!" She
looked at me thoughtfully. "Did you ever dance with a man?"
"Of course."