Salsa Lessons

I stared at the newspaper clipping hanging on my fridge every time I reached for milk. Free Salsa lessons every Wednesday night at 8 p.m. on the Plaza! I almost didn't attend. Babysitters aren't cheap. But the paper taunted me, whispered dreams of a man who would pull me too close, be dangerous with his arms and legs, lead my hips from the dance floor while his breath blew blue flames above my head. I found myself shuttling my young boys to a neighbor's home while I zipped up the back of a sexy black dress and buckled my best heels.

I left my aging green convertible behind the Plaza Hotel. Two young women in low-slung jeans smoked cigarettes, swapped a square compact back and forth. They leaned against a Camaro, wide hips splayed in provocative gestures, dark eyes painted with blue shadow and lined with more mascara than I use in a year. Tiny beaded roses dotted their hair, and I felt underdressed, old, missing the necessary traditional background of ground pork tamales and complicated saints.

The music caught my attention first, grabbed my ears and slung them like gunfire onto the gazebo floor, the sound of accordian and guitars from a black boom-box. Unsure couples faced the young instructor, lifted feet and hands in almost unison and moved with the unpredictable wave of wind through an oak tree. My heart couldn't contain the rhythm of boots against floor. I wanted to fuse with them, to be the music, be a worn guitar, a woman's stacked heel, wanted to melt into the cement beneath me in some strange captured surrender. The sound turned to whisper and the dancers rested, breathed one shot of air together.

"Excuse me, Miss? May I have this dance?" A man stood before me, the tip of his chin reaching the exact center of my forehead. "Just be warned, I haven't danced in some years."

He apologized as a delivery truck idled along the Plaza perimeter, setting the floor to rumble, the music CD to skip a beat. The dancers idled, too, moved legs in practice shuffle and arc.

"That's ok. I'll probably step on your shoes." My eyes studied his cream-colored shirt, the way it draped a body thick with muscle. I could feel his heart beat through his jacket, down his arm, into my right hand, chaotic, aware. He wore boots and a bracelet made of twisted leather.

He smiled at me, his hair thick with gel that smelled of amole. "Please don't worry. We can be useless together."

I liked the words he used, the way he hid something behind them. Couples shuffled into position as our instructor counted beats. My partner snaked his hand behind my back in a delicate wave as if he were afraid of breaking me into tiny pieces. I heard him suck the air through my hair, breath the scent of my skin, and I felt my body respond in the ways dance promises.

My feet slid back, then forward, forgotten steps from some class six eons ago, but my partner kept me steady. His frame covered mine, led mine, pulled me from the scratched floor to a dancehall in heaven, or hades, I didn't know which. I closed my eyes, my thoughts, tried to understand the pattern of light and emotion we demonstrated in sidewinder grace for strangers who circled the Plaza.

I watched my partner walk to his car at the end of class. His body cast a shadow like Godzilla against the slats of the gazebo. The third-quarter moon stared at me, seemed to send me a message, something like laughter, something only the celestial can understand, something like love.

Free Salsa Lessons every Summer Wednesday night at 8 pm on the Plaza. Go. You won’t be disappointed.