Adventures of a Salsa Goddess

by Hornak, JoAnn

  “I don’t want to talk,” I said.

  Javier looked genuinely puzzled. “Have I done something wrong?” he asked. But before I had a chance to say anything, he grabbed my hand and pulled me to the dance floor.

  We started dancing, but halfway through the song I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I unleashed all my pent-up feelings. “Alright, Javier, I am—”

  Twirl.

  “angry. Extremely—”

  Twirl.

  “angry. You told—”

  Double twirl.

  “me you—”

  Triple twirl.

  “loved me and—”

  Twirl.

  “then a minute—”

  Twirl and dip.

  “later you—”

  Twirl and dip.

  “got back—”

  Quadruple twirl.

  “together—”

  Dip.

  “... with her,” I said, jerking my head in Isabella’s direction as best I could from a forty-five-degree angle. Just add some bolts to my neck and I’d look like Frankenstein. I looked over and caught Isabella’s eye. She gave me a sweet smile, which seemed genuine enough and made me wonder if Javier had told her anything about me.

  “What about her?” he asked as he brought me up into a vertical position.

  “I saw you with her at one in the morning going into your house just a few days after you told me you loved ...”

  “Sam, come with me,” he said, starting to lead me in her direction, while I pulled back like a small child who is about to be dragged into the dentist’s office. But when he said please and flashed that damn adorable dimple of his, I let him take me over to Isabella, who looked devastatingly beautiful in a black spaghetti-strap dress and three-inch heels. She was standing by herself, sipping what looked like an orange juice.

  “I’d like you to meet Isabella,” said Javier. She looked at me with an open, friendly face and smiled, which was when I noticed that she also had a single dimple on her left cheek. “Sam, Isabella is my sister,” Javier said simply.

  Now would’ve been the perfect time for the dramatic refrain of a daytime soap opera orchestra to swell, signaling a shocking turn of events. I felt like a fool. But then again, why should I? I had believed Sebastian when he had lied to me and told me that Isabella was Javier’s ex-girlfriend.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you, Sam. It’s nice to finally meet you,” Isabella said, and held out her tiny hand.

  “It’s nice to meet you too, Isabella,” I stammered.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” said Javier to his sister, as he guided me to the back of the club, away from the band and the dance floor.

  “Now, why were you so angry with me?” he asked.

  “I thought Isabella was your girlfriend. When I dropped Lessie off the other night, I saw the two of you walk inside together and well, I just assumed ...” I hung my head. “Javier, can I ask you a question?”

  “You can ask me anything, Sam.”

  “Sebastian Diaz is a friend of yours, right?”

  “My best friend,” said Javier.

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “What does Sebastian do for a living?”

  For a moment, Javier assumed a guarded expression. “I think you should ask Sebastian that question. I’m sure he’ll be at Cubana next week.”

  If Sebastian had lied about who Isabella was, then I’m certain he’d also lied to Robert when he had told him he was a lawyer. But why? Well, one thing was obvious: Javier, who seemed a little overprotective of his friend, wasn’t going to tell me anything. I’d just have to find out for myself why Sebastian had lied. Then again, did it matter anymore?

  “By the way, how is Lessie doing?” Javier asked.

  “Better than expected, under the circumstances,” I said.

  He nodded stiffly. “I love my brother, but I can’t respect a man who never seems to grow up and keeps running away from his responsibilities.”

  “What do you mean ‘keeps running away’?”

  “This is going to be his second illegitimate child,” said Javier, who then caught the look of surprise on my face. “I thought Lessie would’ve told you.”

  Oh God, I wonder how she’d felt when she’d found out. I looked over at her dancing. She was so wonderful, smart, and beautiful. What the hell was wrong with Eliseo?

  “Javier, I feel terrible about everything,” I began, but then found that I didn’t know how to go on.

  What do I tell him, I. think I could’ve fallen in love with you but you were all wrong for my assignment? I needed to give Robert a chance because he’s the perfect great-on-paper guy I’ve been ordered to find this summer?

  “Sam, I’d be lying if I told you that I wasn’t hurt,” he said while looking directly into my eyes. “I fell in love with you. I’m still in love with you.”

  He searched my face and waited for a response. The upbeat salsa music pulsing in the background suddenly sounded like a sick joke.

  “Javier, you are a wonderful man,” I said, feeling hot tears spring to my eyes. “I don’t regret a moment we’ve spent together. But you deserve someone better than me,” I said, which was all true but hardly expressed the depth of my feelings for him. I wanted to tell him everything, that if only I’d known that Isabella was his sister, then ... Well, then what? Would I have slept with Robert?

  A moment later, as Javier slowly turned and walked away, my heart cleaved in two and the tears started spilling down my cheeks.

  Seventeen

  Que Sera Sera

  “We need to choose the motif for the wedding by the end of this week, Samantha,” my mother told me. It had to be another call from her car since she sounded like she was zooming through a wind tunnel. “Alfredo really can’t do a thing without it.”

  Alfredo was the wedding planner my mother hired last month. I wondered exactly what he was planning since, yet again, I couldn’t help but observe the conspicuous lack of a groom. Was I the only sane person who’d noticed what should be blazingly obvious to everyone around me?

  “Weddings have motifs, like theme parks?”

  “Really, Samantha, sometimes I can’t believe you sprang from my loins,” she scolded me, as if I’d had a choice in the matter. “But, as Alfredo has pointed out, and he’s quite right, you don’t choose the motif, the motif chooses you.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “The motif is based on something you share with your fiance, a symbol that embraces your oneness, your special bond. Don’t you remember Susan’s shovels?”

  “Those were shovels? I thought they were some weird fertility symbol,” I said. Here it was two years after my sister Susan’s wedding and I’d finally gotten it. Susan had met her husband on an archeological dig. Aha! Shovels. They had been everywhere at her reception: chocolate shovel-shaped candies on every plate, shovel-shaped tea light holders, and shovel place card holders.

  “But we don’t want something too whimsical,” my mother added.

  Had my mother actually said the word whimsical? Apparently, along with his other wedding planning duties, Alfredo had brainwashed my mother. It was either that or New York had been invaded by pod people and she’d been one of their first victims.

  “Are you there, Samantha?” she said through the jet stream of air that sounded through my telephone.

  “Yes,” I said, “whimsical would be tragic.”

  I couldn’t deal with my mother under the best of circumstances, but I’d cried myself to sleep two nights ago after finding out that Isabella was Javier’s sister. I knew that things could never work out for Javier and me, but I couldn’t help but think that everything might have been different if I’d found out sooner.

  “Susan was fitted for her matron of honor dress on Saturday,” continued my mother without skipping a beat. “She likes the crepe and chiffon in silver. I agree. It’s better for her line.”

  “Susan? Mother, assuming
I do get married I’m not sure that I would choose Susan as my ...”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Who would you choose other than your own sister?”

  “Well, Elizabeth. Remember, she was going to be my maid of honor for me, when I was going to marry ...”

  When I’d planned my wedding to David, this issue had been decided for me. My sister had taken a year off after earning her master’s degree in architecture, and was in the middle of a one-year dig in a remote part of Nepal. That’s where she’d met Stan, her husband. Susan doesn’t have an actual degree in archeology of any formal training, but when we were kids, she was always digging up animal bones and calling them fossils. Growing up, I had dolls in my bedroom. Susan had bones.

  “Speaking of your prior engagement, funny little coincidence, Alfredo is also planning David’s wedding.”

  “David? My David? He’s getting married?” I said, beginning to hyperventilate.

  “Well, Samantha dear, I know you cared for him, but he’s hardly your David anymore, is he?”

  “Who is he marrying?” I asked and swallowed hard, but there was no saliva in my mouth. I sprinted over to the kitchen faucet, turned on the cold water and lapped some up with my freehand.

  “... No one I know. Alfredo says she’s a lovely girl but I must admit, I’m a bit surprised. He didn’t seem the type to plunge into a ready-made family.”

  “What?”

  “Her husband died, poor thing. She has identical twin boys, just three years old.”

  David was getting married to a woman with my twin sons! My dream family.

  “Samantha, I thought you were over David.”

  “I am. I’m fine, just surprised, that’s all,” I said, forcing my voice to sound breezy.

  Of course I wasn’t fine. It was the slap heard round the world, the call you never wanted to get. Everyone liked to imagine that, after a breakup, your ex has spent countless months and many anguished nights regretting that the relationship had ever ended. You wanted to imagine that he was still pining away for you and wishing he could find the strength to call and beg you to come back to him. It didn’t matter who dumped whom, or how abysmal your relationship had been, the second you heard he’d chosen someone else, anyone else, you’d been rejected, and it hurt like hell.

  “Oh dear, I shouldn’t have broken the news to you like this,” she said, in a rare moment of insight.

  “I’m fine, but, um, I need to ask you something, okay Mom? How do you know when you’re really in love?”

  “What has gotten into you, Samantha?”

  “Well I ...” and then I heard a sound like a needle scraping across an old-fashioned LP.

  “... all very simple. When you’re in love, you just know it,” she said. “Now, I’ve got to run. Think about your motif. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Well, that was a big help. Anyway, looking at my watch, I saw that I had just enough time to get ready. An hour later I opened the door. Robert stood there in a black double-breasted suit and a white collarless shirt without a tie.

  “These are for you,” he said, handing me a dozen of the most gorgeous white long-stemmed roses I’d ever seen in my life. I didn’t want to cut a millimeter off those lovely long stems.

  “Oh, they’re beautiful! Come in.”

  He gave me a sweet kiss on the lips and then I sprinted to the kitchen, where I scoured the cupboards for a vase.

  As we drove to the restaurant, Robert kept glancing at me.

  “You seem nervous,” I said.

  “No, no nothing to worry about,” he said mysteriously. “I’ve done this before.”

  What did that mean? Driving? Going on dates? I decided that this momentary awkwardness was probably just the temporary phase that often happened after that first intense intimate physical encounter with a new lover, particularly if it was followed by a couple days of breathing space, which gave your mind plenty of time to start playing tricks and making you wonder if you’d imagined how wonderful it had all been.

  “How was your business trip?”

  “Very productive,” he said. “I was able to place another client in an accounting firm in Houston. They’ve hired me to fill another opening.”

  “That’s great. So you’ll be taking another trip there?”

  “Probably in a few weeks,” he said, with another glance and smile in my direction. “Traveling for business is very tiring. But I knew that’s what I was getting into when I bought this business. And,” he added, frowning, “I’m going out of town again. Tomorrow morning, I’m afraid. I’ve got a flight at nine.”

  Leaving again, already? David had never traveled much, but he’d spent so much time at the office that he might as well have. Was Robert planning on traveling this much for the rest of his life? Our life, if we ended up together?

  The restaurant was beautiful. The walls had murals of gondoliers floating in moonlit canals, the coliseum, and another of a couple kissing in front of the leaning Tower of Pisa. The hostess, a girl of twenty dressed all in black, led us to the best table in the restaurant, next to the windows that looked out onto the street.

  I could see we were in for the kind of long leisurely dinner during which the wait staff was only too happy to let you dine for hours and make you feel as though they were born to serve only you. Our waiter, Todd, brought a loaf of crusty bread and a plate with a pool of olive oil and capers for dipping and then handed Robert the wine list.

  “Don’t you love dinners like this?” I said, taking a bite of French bread that I’d dipped into the olive oil. “The Europeans really know how to live; eating, sleeping, making love, and more eating.”

  “I love to watch you eat,” Robert said, smiling for the first time that night. “You look so sexy.”

  When Todd returned to take our orders, I chose the pasta with asparagus and anchovies, while Robert ordered ravioli filled with artichokes and mushrooms in a creamy vodka sauce.

  “Anchovies?” Robert said, with a grin, after Todd was out of earshot.

  “Anchovies are an aphrodisiac as you know,” I said, trying on a sexy smile.

  “I hope you’re not trying to tell me you need them to get into the mood for me?” he said.

  “Definitely not. I’m in the mood right now,” I said quietly. I wanted to slip my stocking-covered foot out of my shoe and rub it against Robert’s crotch, but glancing at the side of our table, I could see it was too dangerous. Not enough tablecloth to cover the maneuver. I forced myself to stifle the urge to do something that people could only get away with in the movies.

  After dinner, feeling comfortably full, I leaned back in my chair and sighed. For a moment we were silent, as I listened to the tinkling of forks against the china, murmured conversations, and soft laughter.

  “Sam,” Robert said, “do you remember when I told you I had to decide whether to hire another associate or merge with another recruiting firm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about maybe selling my business. I could get a job with a firm in New York. What do you think?”

  “But how would you feel about not being the boss anymore?” I said, suddenly realizing that Robert had clearly been doing a lot more concrete thinking about the future of our relationship than I had.

  “It would just be temporary. After a while, I could start my own firm in Manhattan, if that’s what we decided to do. Unless, you don’t want me to move there?” he asked, with a hopeful look in his eyes.

  “Of course I do,” I assured him. “But are you sure you want to leave Milwaukee? You’ve spent a lot of time building up your business here.”

  “When you leave, Sam, there will be nothing here for me other than my business. I don’t want to live without you in my life,” he said, lifting my hand to his lips and kissing it.

  Now, Sam, I told myself. Now was the time to tell Robert what you were really doing in Milwaukee. But before I could say anything, our waiter brought a bottle of champagne to our table.

  “W
hen did you order that?”

  “I don’t know, maybe Todd just read my mind?” said Robert, who was acting very odd. Todd handed us dessert menus and then opened the bottle of champagne with a loud pop.

  “What can I get you for dessert, miss?” the waiter asked.

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t. I’m stuffed,” I said, holding the menu out for Todd to take back.

  “Sam, choose something,” Robert urged me. “I’ll eat most of it.”

  “You’re acting very strange, you know.”

  “Just humor me, Sam.”

  Crepes, homemade gelatos, sorbets, tiramisu ...

  And then I came to the last item: Samantha Jacobs, will you marry me?

  Robert stood up walked over to my side of the table and got down on one knee. Somewhere, part of my mind realized that all of the conversation in the restaurant had stopped. I sensed that all eyes were on us. Robert reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a tiny black box and handed it to me. I opened it. A round solitaire diamond ring set in silver sparkled in the light from the candle centerpiece.

  “Sam, will you marry me?” he said, and I noticed tears in his eyes.

  I looked at him, this man who was handsome, smart, successful, and so clearly in love with me. I would be crazy to say no. With a simple “yes,” the deck of cards that was my life would magically fall into place. Elaine and our readers would be happy. I’d get “La Vie.” My mother would be thrilled. And me, yes, finally answering a question that had been lingering in my brain unanswered for most of the summer, yes I think Robert could make me happy.

  “Yes, I will,” I said. Robert threw his arms around me, holding me close. We kissed.

  I heard a spark of applause. We broke apart and I looked up to see everyone in the restaurant standing and smiling.

  Robert took the ring from the box and slipped it onto my finger. He stood up and then handed my champagne flute to me. He clinked his glass to mine and then turned. Silence descended again.

  “A toast to my beautiful bride-to-be.”

  Eighteen

  Escape to New York

  Was it just twenty-four hours ago that my fiance left my queen-sized bed, which now felt like a vast empty wilderness without him? I hadn’t stopped staring at my ring since Robert slipped it on my finger at the restaurant the night before last. I held it under a ray of sun coming in from my bedroom window. It was beautiful, and sparkled like an ice crystal. I grabbed his pillow and brought it to my face and caught a faint whiff of his cologne, something with eucalyptus and very outdoorsy.