Ballroom: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 considered 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