Ballroom: A Novel

by Alice Simpson

  “So, Joe, when ya goin’ to Rome? Ya must be close to retiring. Am I right? I sure got a way of remembering, don’ I?”

  “You know, I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Ray, like the name of the place! ’Cept I’m not that Ray. Man, if only I was! Wouldn’t be here, that’s for sure. I’d be dancing like you. A few more seconds. Sorry. Those ladies’ll wait!” His laugh seems loud and ingratiating.

  “How’s your daughter?” Joseph asks, restless for his slice. He hates to be late. He must be there by seven. Watch everyone come in. Like a show is beginning, and he is the audience. To make sure she is there.

  “Nah, I never had no daughters—three boys. The youngest, Danny, he was the one born when you first came in—nineteen eighty-nine.”

  Joseph has never been stuck here so long. In this downpour his shoes will be wet, not to mention his jacket and pants, when he gets there. Sarah will be dancing. He won’t find her.

  “Here ya go, one pepperoni slice, Joe. Enjoy!” He rings up the sale. “Maybe sometime I’ll come with ya. Close up the place early. You’ll introduce me to the ladies. What do you say?”

  “Sure,” Joseph answers. He couldn’t be serious. Yet a guy like that would probably have a fine time. So friendly. Remembering everyone’s name. Things they said about themselves. Showing real interest in people. He wonders if Ray can dance, but he wouldn’t ask. Wouldn’t encourage him. At a table by the window, Joseph eats his slice and watches the storm.

  He looks forward to Ray’s Pizza when he goes to the Ballroom, the spicy bite of the tasty pepperoni, the thick, melted real mozzarella, the garlicky tomato sauce, flecked with red peppers and oregano, that reminds him of his mama’s gravy. He eats too fast, and the cheese burns the roof of his mouth, a sign that it is going to be a lousy night. Damp, sticky, his mouth burned, and worst of all, late. He can smell sour sweat and knows that it has permeated his jacket. Maybe Sarah won’t even be there. He checks his watch: almost seven, and he still has to get across Fourteenth Street. But the storm has subsided. The sky is clear. The people huddling under canopies are beginning to move along the street.

  “Thanks for the slice,” he calls out. Next week he’ll try another place, where the pizza man is less familiar.

  “Yea, Joe, knock ’em dead!”

  At seven, Joseph is one of the first to arrive at the Ballroom. Jimmy J, the DJ, is playing a slow fox-trot, “In My Solitude,” and Joseph wishes Sarah were there.

  On the banquette, changing into his dance shoes, buffing each one shiny before lacing them until they feel as secure as gloves, he taps his left foot to the music. He nods to women who pass. Where is Sarah?

  The flashier dancers, like Maria Rodriguez and her partner, Angel Morez, Gabriel Katz, Rebecca Douglas, Tina Ostrov, and Tony DiFranza and his Queens crowd, will show up late. In the twenty years Joseph has been coming to the Ballroom he’s never spoken more than a few polite words to them. He prefers it that way. He just comes to dance. The only person he talks with is Sarah.

  In the back of the hall near the stage Jimmy J plays the music. On one side of the room are tables reserved for the Queens crowd. Unreserved tables are on the other. A necklace of gray metal folding chairs surrounds the dance floor.

  Two floor-to-ceiling columns frame three wide steps that lead down into the grand ballroom. Drifting around the perimeter, one of his occasional partners, Andrea, occasionally stops to speak to someone. At the back of the hall Harry Korn, a wiry man dressed in brown and wearing a visored cap, dances with an older woman.

  Joseph stands in front of one of the two columns. At the soft drink bar four men, shifting their weight from hip to hip, watch the dancers and, with sideways glances, eye the seated women. He moves away from a jittery young man practicing a fox-trot alone. He prefers these early hours when the floor is less crowded.

  It’s too bad Jimmy J doesn’t play songs in a certain order. Then during the week he could think about who he’d dance each one with. Plan. He bows slightly to Andrea as she passes, and when she smiles and nods back, he takes her in his arms and steps onto the dance floor.

  Chapter 9

  Sarah

  A young lady should not fear to blush when the feeling that causes it is genuine; but she should not affect a blush, for blushing springs oftener from innocence than guilt.

  —Edward Ferrero, The Art of Dancing, 1859

  It’s past seven thirty. As Sarah opens the doors, it isn’t a panic attack she feels but an anxiety nonetheless, measurable at an eight and a half, almost a nine. “Adiós Nonino,” a tango, is playing, and by the time she’s paid her money and changed into dance shoes, she feels calmer. She loves being here, with the rumba love songs and fox-trot lullabies, always listening for a tango—and waiting for the perfect dance partner.

  It is too early for Gabriel to be here, and she’s relieved that Joseph is already on the dance floor, because she doesn’t want to be stuck with him so early in the evening. Not if there are better dancers available, or someone new. She reminds herself that the important thing is to be seen dancing. Dancing invites more dancing.

  She prays that it won’t be one of those awful, unexplainable nights when no one asks her to dance. Nights that leave her disheartened, asking herself if it was what she was wearing, if she was giving off bad vibes. Standing at the edges of the dance floor. Waiting to dance. Worse is to sit on one of the folding chairs that circle the floor. She makes it her rule never to join that circle. Better to sit inconspicuously in the shadowed corners or wait for a better song in the ladies’ room. Wallflowers, they used to call people who stood about, who were never asked to dance. When she watches Gabriel with Rebecca Douglas or any of the other glamorous partners he tangos with, she imagines one day dancing well enough to be his partner. She’d give anything for that.

  Tonight, there’ll be no standing around. She will notice those that dance well and ask strangers to dance; she’ll have a good time. It is important to be seen on the dance floor—even with Joseph; stiff, oh-so-polite Joseph, the man with no last name. She wonders if she could get him to take her to Roseland. She’s hinted at it long enough.

  Circling, Sarah looks over the crowded room, gives a quick nod to the women she knows, women who sit primly on folding chairs waiting to be asked to dance. She holds herself erect, trying to look pleasant and approachable. She’s uneasy about her beige outfit and heads toward the ladies’ room to check her makeup, her hair and breath.

  “Bubbala!” Big-bellied Tony D gives her a bear hug. His eyes are merry, his nose lumpy. In his shiny brown suit, balanced on brown street shoes, he reminds Sarah of a painted roly-poly toy, one that rights itself when pushed over. His sideburns are gray and grizzly, while his toupee is youthfully auburn and sleek. “Save me a dance, sweetheart,” he says.

  When she danced with him last week she felt good in his sturdy, ample arms, and the pointers he gave her improved her dancing. She wants to be embraced, held close, to feel attended to, to be one with a partner.

  Her spirits lift. She loves when he calls her “sweetheart,” although she isn’t attracted to him, and it would be almost unimaginable to sleep with him, even though she’s had no sex since her Monday-night Dance Time beginner’s Argentine tango instructor, Stefan, the Russian. That was a year ago. They would meet on the bus after class. If he didn’t recognize anyone, he’d sit with her on the way to his place, a cramped windowless studio on Avenue C with a mattress on the floor. The sex was exciting, but he needed applause. It infuriated her that despite sleeping with her, he never asked her to dance at any of the dances. He only danced with advanced dancers. Language was a problem, too. She barely understood what he was saying, and he didn’t seem to understand her either.

  On the last night of his group class, Stefan had whispered, “Privates improve dancing. Three, four lesson make difference. Then we go to dance at Triangulo on Fourteen Street, where all best tango dancers go.”

  “How much for privates?” She cons
idered what it would be like to have her own partner for an evening.

  “Seventy-five dollars an hour for lesson. We go to Triangulo—three hundred, ten to midnight . . . I only dance with you, Sally. Private partner.”

  “Sarah,” she corrected him. She had no interest in paid partners, and so she signed up for Carlos’s intermediate tango classes on Wednesdays, thereby avoiding Stefan. Still, she misses the sex.

  Most of the men in her classes are unattractive. They either dance without feeling for the music, or they are arrogant and critical. Despite their inadequacies, they want to dance with twentysomethings.

  The rotation of partners, the monotony of practicing steps, reminds her of her life. She had three ex-husbands by the time she was thirty, and a series of going-nowhere relationships over the past ten years. Work is constantly shifting as well—salesgirl, bank clerk, and administrative assistant. She has worked at jobs as though she were driving on a highway, concerned only with the side and rearview mirrors. She never thought about what lay ahead.

  Chapter 10

  Harry

  Do not create a disturbance, by making any apparent slight: an intentional insult is rarely ever given. If a lady is in the case, she will not thank you for making her “the observed of all observed.”

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

  Sloppy.”

  Harry Korn mutters under his breath as dancers waltz by. Same faces, same music, same everything. Nothing ever changes at the Ballroom. He worries about the time. Eight thirty. He’ll dance twenty more minutes, look for two new students, ten and ten. At five minutes to nine, before Maria and that Angel arrive, he’ll leave. Jimmy J is playing Hammerstein’s “This Nearly Was Mine” when a middle-aged woman approaches Harry.

  “Care to waltz?” she asks.

  Blond, well dressed, with expensive jewelry, she looks like she has money for private lessons. Not bad looking, either. Women in their fifties prefer private lessons because of the attention they get. Even old guys here want only to dance with the young girls. Who can blame them? He leads her onto the floor and, taking her in his arms, tries to lead her into the waltz.

  Six lessons, he’ll say. Tell her he’s tied up with a busy schedule for the next month, but could “squeeze her in” this month with several lessons a week. Get her to pay the floor rental, too. She looks as though she can afford the extra ten bucks an hour. That will bring in almost $400 clear. Maybe she’ll pay him to take her dancing at Roseland.

  “How can you follow me when you’re fighting me? Stop fighting me. Why don’t you relax and let me lead?”

  “I suppose you’re a dance instructor.”

  “As a matter of fact, I am.”

  “Well, I’m here to enjoy myself, not be given instruction, if you don’t mind.”

  “Madam, if you danced properly, you wouldn’t step on my feet.” She steps out of his arms and walks away, giving him the finger. He’s infuriated that she has left him on the dance floor in the middle of the song, and insulted him. Worse, he’s lost a possible student. Tina Ostrov steps into his arms.

  “Harry. How are you, darling? Still treating ’em rough?”

  He always has to laugh at Tina, despite himself. He’s known her a long time. In the 1960s he danced with her and other taxi dancers, paying for each dance with a purchased ticket, at the Broadway Dance Palace on Eighth Avenue. She was just off the boat from Moscow, with long black hair. Couldn’t speak English, but she could dance!

  In those days he bought enough tickets to dance with her for several hours, and he would slip her a twenty to go with him behind the velvet curtain. Ten years later, he ran into her in Vegas. Tina was blond then, working at a topless place. Now she’s a redhead and claims to be selling real estate. Still sexy, she moves against him in perfect Latin motion to a Tito Puente mambo.

  “You’re the best, Harry,” she whispers in his ear. “Too bad you lost your hair. You’d have the young girls all over you.”

  “You’ve still got it too, for an old broad.”

  When the dance ends, Tina gives him a hug.

  “No one dances like you, Harry. I mean no one—but I’ll deny I ever said it, ’cause you’ve become such a grouch. See ya, babe.” As quickly as she appeared, she is gone.

  Glancing at his watch, he can’t believe it’s five to nine. Grabbing his raincoat off the chair, he bolts out of the Ballroom, taking the stairs two at a time. Maria and Angel will be arriving at any moment. Safely across the street in Union Square Park, he stops for a few minutes in the chilly night air to catch his breath before heading home to Twelfth Street. He watches, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

  Chapter 11

  Joseph

  It is the gentleman’s part to lead the lady, and hers to allow herself to follow his directions.

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

  Though the Ballroom is crowded, Joseph manages to dance two fox-trots and a rumba with Sarah, and he enjoys how relaxed she is in his arms. Every dance is special with Sarah—except a mambo.

  “You’re losing the beat,” he reminds her.

  “It’s only a dance, Joseph.”

  One of these nights, he’ll ask her to dance at Roseland on a Saturday night. Since the next song is a mambo, he invites her to sit at an empty table in the shadows.

  “This is it,” she says.

  “Pardon?”

  “I’ve taken the plunge. Enrolled in classes in adult care. My final career. No more job-to-job. I read that it’s a growing industry because of the baby boomers, and offers job security. I’ll be doing something that matters.”

  “Sounds quite positive.”

  “Exactly.” She sighs and then, with a laugh, adds, “And . . . just when I had hopes of becoming a movie star!”

  Such foolishness, he thinks; talking about movies and movie stars, always telling him he looks like Adolphe Menjou. He isn’t the least bit interested in the movies.

  “Whatever you do, I’m certain you’ll do it well.”

  “What a gentleman! Most of the men here are rude. They don’t even say thank you for the dance. They just walk off.”

  “Some people have no manners.” It is these manners and customs of the Ballroom that he comes for. These are things he has never discussed with anyone before. How a woman feels. How Sarah feels.

  “I appreciate that you walk me back to where we begin our dance . . . the way you bow. It’s so . . . elegant.”

  He takes pride that she notices the qualities he considers important. His mind drifts as he considers what it would be like to come home from work, to sit across the dinner table from her and discuss his day. Would she respect the decisions he made at work?

  “. . . and some men are so critical. ‘Do this, don’t do that,’” she continues, emphatically. “So controlling, when it’s supposed to be fun.”

  “Yes.” He tries to sound casual. “It is supposed to be fun.”

  “You don’t do that.”

  “My parents brought me up to have respect. Those persons you mention have not been brought up properly.”

  “It’s because you’re European,” Sarah says.

  “I’m American.” He bristles. “Why, I’ve lived in New York since I was ten.”

  “I mean, you’re a gentleman, in the old-fashioned European sense.”

  Sarah clearly understands his values, recognizes and appreciates the person he is. Is there a chance that she could care for him more deeply? One can wait a lifetime, for that one special person who can see you as no one has before; who understands the things that are important to you.

  “You’re good company, Sarah.” Looking out across the dance floor, he pats her hand. Is this the right moment?

  “Just good company?” she asks. “Is that all?”

  “No. You’re an—interesting and intelligent woman.” He likes her mouth with its hint of pale lipstick. She looks clean. “Of course, I enjoy dancing with you,” he quickly adds.

  Jimm
y J plays “Where or When.” A good fox-trot. He’s eager to dance.

  The time has come; it is now or never. “Would you like to dance at Roseland next Saturday?” He waits for her refusal. “We could meet at seven.”

  “That would be lovely.” She moves her chair closer to his, and he notices the glisten of moisture on her plump lower lip.

  Leaning back, Sarah raises her arms, runs her fingers through her frizzy hair: like pubic hair, he thinks. What would it be like to smooth its copper wildness? Touch her pale skin? He has never experienced a woman’s bare skin against his own. Could he lie next to her, so still that he could feel the in and out of her breathing?

  As she stretches, her nipples press against the silk of her blouse, which is barely distinguishable in color from her skin, and Joseph can see the shape of her breasts.

  “That’s so impolite,” Sarah says, startling him out of his thoughts.

  “I’m sorry.” He sits up straight, feels the anticipation, his heart racing. He’s never had that feeling at the Ballroom before. “I’m really sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m still thinking about men who criticize you,” he says quickly, afraid she’ll read his thoughts.

  “You know, it’s hard to believe we’ve known each other for almost two years,” she says, moving her chair closer yet again, pressing her thigh against his. She’s so close that he can smell her fruity breath. She takes his hand, and when she squeezes it, he feels the delicacy of her touch.

  Standing up so quickly that his chair falls over, he takes hold of Sarah’s arm and leads her onto the crowded dance floor before anyone notices his clumsiness. He’s relieved that she may not have noticed him looking at her breasts, imagining her naked.