Adventures of a Salsa Goddess

by Hornak, JoAnn

  “Well, I ...”

  “Excellent. On the way out, tell Sally to call Raul and let him know you’ll meet him here at ten.”

  I knew that Robert wouldn’t mind spending the day being photographed. In fact, it seemed to me that he couldn’t get enough of the publicity. Me? I’ll admit I loved it at first. But I was looking forward to returning to blessed anonymity after Robert and I were married and the public finally forgot about us.

  I raced home, hopped off the subway, and jogged up the stairs to my usual stop at Union Square. At my favorite gourmet grocer’s a couple blocks from my apartment, I picked up a mixed bouquet of flowers, champagne, Brie, and French bread.

  “Special weekend planned, Miss Jacobs?” asked Mr. Wong, the owner, as I dumped my purchases on the black conveyor belt.

  “You could say that,” I said, feeling a smile on my face as wide as the shop.

  “Did you see today’s USA Today?” he asked me as he scanned each item.

  “No.” I silently groaned, no doubt another Mystery Woman story.

  Mr. Wong skirted around the register, and pulled a copy of the paper off the stand. He pointed to the bottom of the front page and then handed it to me. The headline read: “Milwaukee Reports Apartment Shortage: Surge of Single Women Flock to Mystery Woman’s Mystery City to Relocate for Its Fabulous Singles Scene.”

  This was my fault. Elaine had altered my articles, but I’d let her do it. I could’ve given up “La Vie” and gone public with what I knew. Sure Milwaukee was a nice town. But wait until all these women found out the dating scene there was just like it was everywhere else, a crapshoot with choices ranging from a very few select cuts of prime sirloin to the overabundant run-of- the-mill meat loaf.

  I sprinted the two blocks home and opened the door to a ringing telephone. The caller I.D. showed Robert’s number.

  “Are you ready for some of the hottest sex of your life?” I said in my most sultry voice.

  “Sam,” he said, “I can’t come to New York this weekend.”

  “What?” My voice was shrill.

  “I’m sorry. I got stuck in Denver yesterday and I have to fly to Houston tomorrow. Do you remember that firm ...?”

  “I don’t care about fucking Denver or Houston! This is the second weekend in a row you’ve cancelled,” I shouted, and then realized, it was the first time I’d ever yelled or sworn at him.

  “I need to put the time in now to get my firm in the best possible position to sell it, so I can move to New York and never have to leave you again,” he said patiently.

  I didn’t say anything. My chest felt heavy. I was trying not to cry, but the tears started spilling down my cheeks.

  “Sam, please try and understand,” he said, pleading.

  “What about next weekend? Am I still coming out for your birthday?”

  “Are you kidding?” he said. “If I’m on my deathbed, and between now and then a shark bites off both of my legs, and I’m kidnapped by bandits and have to escape and drag myself by my knuckles fifty miles to meet you at the airport, I’ll do it. Next weekend is ours. I promise.”

  I laughed through my tears.

  “I love you, Sam,” he said.

  “I love you too,” I said hoarsely, willing myself to push away the thought that I’d gotten engaged to another workaholic. Everything would be fine once Robert moved here. I just needed to calm down.

  How could I salvage my weekend, I wondered after we hung up. I looked at my watch. I had plenty of time to get ready and try out one of the many Manhattan salsa clubs I’d been dying to sample. I hadn’t been dancing since Milwaukee and was going through serious salsa withdrawal. If nothing else, at least for a few hours tonight, I could just be—having incredible fun while a salsa high temporarily made my worries disappear.

  Twenty

  Wedding Blues

  “So, Mother, what’s this big news you couldn’t tell me over the phone?”

  “I got Robert a job!” she said with a huge smile and a self-congratulatory, delighted gleam in her eye. If it had been possible, she would’ve given herself a pat on the back as well. I couldn’t have been less delighted if she’d told me she was planning on moving in with Robert and me after our wedding and sharing our king-sized bed.

  She stood in the corner of the dressing room looking chic as usual. Over the summer she’d changed her hairstyle, going from a straight black bob to a short, choppy cut that made her look years younger, and she was finally letting a little of the gray show through, as well. Her black blazer with silver buttons and white Palazzo pants fit her perfectly and were no doubt very expensive. But that style of designer sportswear that shouted, “I’ve-just-stepped-off-my-yacht” wasn’t for me.

  “I like this one,” said Elizabeth, who stood behind me buttoning up the thousand and one silk-covered buttons on my dress.

  “Hmm, I don’t know,” I said, looking in the mirror with my hands on my hips. I liked the draped neckline, but the skirt was a little too poofy and flouncy for my taste. It was the kind of wedding gown that would’ve appealed to me ten years ago, but now it seemed a little silly.

  I was just about to ask Elizabeth about her weekend with Judge Doug, but could see in the mirror that my mother was practically about to burst.

  “Tell me about this job you found for Robert,” I said to humor her. Later would be time enough to let her know that of course Robert would choose his own job.

  “He’ll be working for Martha’s nephew at his recruiting firm,” she said.

  I cringed inside. My mother’s best friend, Martha Smith, was the kind of woman that people didn’t say no to. This wasn’t going to be easy to get out of.

  “Martha was very impressed with Robert when she met him at the engagement party,” said my mother smoothly, as if she’d barely had a hand in the matter, but still deserved all the credit, something I’ve always wondered how she’s managed to do. “I happened to mention to her that he was in the market for a position in recruiting, and she was kind enough to talk about it with her nephew.”

  My mother and Robert had taken to each other like two old school chums who hadn’t seen each other since their wild carefree university days. As they talked about everything from Robert’s career, to the stock market, to sharing the same favorite movie of all time, North by Northwest—and this was just in the first five minutes after they’d met—I had stood there feeling like the uninvited party crasher, thinking how dare this perfect stranger get on better with my mother in mere minutes than I had in forty-one years. Why couldn’t Robert be like all my previous boyfriends, especially David, men whose relationships with her had been perfectly normal and acceptable—in other words, abysmal.

  “I like this one,” Elizabeth said, lifting the train and tossing it over her arm. “I’m practicing.”

  “It makes me look like a giant meringue pie,” I said, shaking my head. I leaned into the mirror and wiped a stray spot of mascara from under my eye.

  “You mean I have to spend three days now unbuttoning you?” Elizabeth demanded, grinning broadly. “My fingers are going to fall off.”

  “These are just one of the many duties of the maid of honor,” I said. “You get all the grueling work. I get all the glory.”

  I caught a short grimace from my mother. She was still upset that I’d asked Elizabeth instead of Susan. But I’d talked to my sister about it beforehand and she’d understood completely.

  “Robert hasn’t been able to get a job yet,” my mother continued. “How is he going to support you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, posing for a side view in the mirror. “I suppose we’ll go on welfare and start selling crack cocaine to make ends meet.”

  “How about this one?” Elizabeth suggested, holding an ivory satin number in front of her.

  “What’s that on the bottom?” I asked the sales clerk, who wisely hadn’t said much since the four of us had entered the cavernous dressing room a couple hours ago. We’d been carrying on several strains
of conversation at once, so it would’ve been quite a feat for her, a total stranger, to jump in, a little like trying to board an airplane in the usual manner, but in mid-flight.

  “That’s a fishtail train,” the clerk told me.

  “But I can’t dance in that,” I said, shaking my head.

  “It’s removable,” she said. She was the quintessential sales-clerk, helpful but not too helpful, friendly but not too friendly, and didn’t make me feel like if she didn’t get a sale off me, she’d wind up sleeping on a street grate that night.

  “Really? Can I see the back?” I asked. Elizabeth turned it over. There was a big beaded bow over the bustle area. I shook my head, saying, “I don’t do bows.”

  “Martha says Robert will be making in the low six figures the first year,” my mother continued in her typical unrelenting fashion. “And if he puts his time in, it should jump up within a few years.” Puts his time in. I knew what that meant. Working sixty to eighty hours a week and beholden to one of the richest families on the East Coast. I would rather go on welfare.

  “Excuse me, Miss Jacobs,” the clerk said. “I think I’ve got the perfect gown for you. I just remembered it came in yesterday. Let me just go get it.”

  “Mother, I don’t want Robert to think I arranged this behind his back, that somehow I doubt him. I’m sure he’ll be able to find something once he settles here. He’s busy concentrating on selling his firm in Milwaukee.”

  “It’s too late,” said my mother, who’d turned away from me just enough so that I couldn’t catch her eyes in the mirror.

  “Too late for what?” I said evenly, but my heart was hammering.

  “I already talked to Robert about this job,” she said.

  “What! When?” I whirled to face my mother.

  “Before he went back to Milwaukee,” she said smoothly. “He thinks it’s a great idea. Now calm down, Samantha, what could be bad about Robert getting a great job?”

  The fact that you arranged it behind my back and were interfering in my personal life, not to mention, the real problem, that Robert hadn’t discussed this with me. Why?

  I heard a knock at the door. The sales clerk slipped in with a dress.

  “We haven’t had time to press it yet, please ignore the wrinkles,” she said. “I think this is the dress for you.”

  There’s that moment in a woman’s life when she stands on the pedestal in front of the three-way full-length mirror and sees herself in her wedding dress for the first time. This was it, the perfect dress. An A-line cut in Thai silk, with a low V back, a beaded tip of the shoulder neckline, and no train. It was beautiful, the most beautiful dress I’d ever seen. Elizabeth and even my mother were speechless. All of the other customers and clerks in the store had stopped what they were doing to stare at me.

  I burst out crying.

  * * *

  “Do you know, I think it’s five months to the day that we were last here and I told you I was going to Milwaukee,” I said later that afternoon.

  It felt good to be with Elizabeth in our usual booth at Heavenly City bar. We’d barely seen each other since I’d come back to New York.

  “Sam, what’s wrong?” Elizabeth asked. I’d covered up my outburst at the bridal salon with a lot of talk about wedding jitters and not getting enough sleep. But the truth was very different.

  I took a sip from the thin lip of the chilled martini glass and carefully set it back down on the table. “I’m worried that Robert is going to turn out to be a workaholic like David was,” I said.

  The heavenly smell of garlic wafted up from the plate of

  camarones al aljillo the waitress dropped off.

  “Because he cancelled his last two visits to New York?” said Elizabeth, who was pretty—so pretty that she should be pressed inside a book like a rare delicate flower and discovered perfectly preserved in a hundred years—until she opened her mouth and went into lawyer mode.

  “That and it seems like all he does is work, work, work; He doesn’t have any outside interests, no family, no friends, at least none that I’ve met,” I said, stabbing a shrimp with my fork.

  Elizabeth nodded and didn’t say anything. She was the best listener I knew, an incredibly valuable skill that most people think they excel at. But let’s face it, when most of us are listening, we’re actually just wondering how we can turn, the conversation back to ourselves.

  “And there are other things. Before I left Milwaukee, I hadn’t told him who I really was. By the time I got a hold of him, he’d found out I was the Mystery Woman from the news like everyone else. I was sure he was going to be upset, but ...”

  “What?”

  “He was thrilled. A little too thrilled with the publicity if you ask me. And you should’ve seen him after the Larry King show. He was acting like he was a movie star or something.”

  “I don’t think you can blame him for that,” she suggested. “It was his fifteen minutes of fame. You’ve had all summer to prepare for it.”

  Not really, I told her. I’d never experienced fame before, not , even the temporary I’ll-be-forgotten-in-a few-months type that I was currently experiencing. In a word, it was bizarre. I felt like my life had taken on a life of its own, that it didn’t belong to me anymore. People recognized me everywhere I went and acted as though they had the right to ask me intensely personal questions like, “So, Sam, how long did you wait before sleeping with Robert?” I don’t know how anyone could prepare for this.

  Although, one of the unexpected side benefits of my temporary fame was that I’d had the best salsa night of my life the evening I’d gone out after Robert cancelled his trip last weekend. I’d danced for three hours straight and had been dipped and twirled so many times I was on a salsa high for the rest of the weekend.

  “Sam, I talked with Robert for a long time at the engagement party and that night the four of us went out to dinner,” she said, referring to the night Elizabeth, Judge Doug, Robert, and I had gone out. It was the first double date Elizabeth and I had ever been on together. Amazing. We’ve known each other almost our entire lives, but we’d had to wait until we were forty-one for our romances to overlap at just the right stages to schedule a double date.

  “I like Robert, a lot. I think he’s great for you,” said Elizabeth. “After this weekend with him everything will be fine, I’m sure of it.”

  I told myself that she had to be right. I’d talked to him this morning before I left for the bridal salon. Everything was set for my trip to Milwaukee tomorrow. But I couldn’t shake this feeling that something was wrong.

  “So, what about Javier? Did you ever call him?” asked Elizabeth.

  Javier. At the sound of his name my feelings jumped from pangs of guilt to waves of regret. Lately, everywhere I turned I heard some reference to Milwaukee, salsa dancing, bike racing, or something that reminded me of him. It popped up in the most unexpected of ways. Like yesterday, I was taking a taxi home from the gym and the cabbie had NPR on his radio. I was zoned out in the back of his cab not thinking about anything when I’d heard a reference to the Dominican Republic. As I listened to the announcer, I couldn’t help but remember that afternoon in Javier’s studio when we had made love:

  “In a country long associated primarily with the merengue, bachata, a back-country music that originated among rural peasant populations of the Dominican Republic, is attracting a growing audience of Latino and mainstream audiences in larger cities in the United States. Mainstream record stores are beginning to market bachata albums ..."

  “Yeah, but he hasn’t returned my calls, not that I can blame him,” I said.

  I felt so terrible that I’d had to leave Milwaukee without having a chance to explain anything or say good-bye to him. Javier found out through the press that I’d lied to him all summer.

  “Uh-oh, you’ve got that look in your eye,” said Elizabeth.

  “What look?”

  “You know what I’m talking about,” she said.

  “No, I don’t
.”

  “Sam, how do you really feel about Javier?”

  I didn’t know what to tell Elizabeth, because I couldn’t understand myself how I truly felt about Javier. I knew that Javier was good and kind and really loved me. If the timing had been different, if I’d had another job or a different mother, maybe things would’ve worked out with him.

  Although I had doubts about Robert being a workaholic, hopefully that would all change when he moved here. It was the distance that was putting so much strain on our relationship right now. It wasn’t right for people who were engaged to go weeks being apart. Once we settled down and started our lives together, Robert and I would be just fine.

  Twenty-one

  Disappearing Act

  It didn’t take us more than three seconds beyond crossing Robert’s threshold to get all of our clothes off. The first time, we made love a little wildly and desperately, as if it were our last time and we both knew it. Separation will do that to you. It reminds you of how precarious everything is, that nothing is guaranteed. But by the third time, the fears I’d expressed the day before to Elizabeth had melted away.

  “I don’t think I can stand being apart from you, even for a couple hours,” he said, as he held me in his arms the next afternoon. I had lunch plans with Lessie, and Robert had a meeting downtown.

  “Good,” I said with a big smile. I was still a little upset at his two cancelled trips to New York over the last month. But the previous night and that morning had almost made up for it.

  “When do I get my birthday present?” he asked. He had me up against the wall of his kitchen. I started to get that tingling feeling in my loins again, even though they’d just cooled down after being on fire for the past twelve hours straight.

  “I don’t know,” I teased, thrusting my hips against him harder. “Have you been a good boy?”

  I’d spent the last week shopping for the perfect gift for Robert. What do you get for a forty-five-year-old man with no hobbies? I’d ended up buying him an abstract watercolor called “Urban Myths.” I’d left the painting in New York, but had brought him a photo of it already hanging in my apartment. We’d seen the painting in a gallery on one of our only free afternoons in New York. It had bright splashes of reds, oranges, and blues and looked vaguely like a child’s finger painting, but we’d both loved it on sight. I smiled at the memory of that day. It had been one of those perfect unplanned days that we’d spent meandering in and out of galleries and shops, stopping to have lunch, later a glass of wine, then dinner.