Hardly Working (14 page)

“Okay.”

He got up, left the room and came back with his bag. Then he sat facing me and carefully pulled off the bandage. I felt my insides slide into my shoes. Maybe it was just an aftereffect of being with Ian Trutch but I was like hot melting candle wax as he touched my face.

“It's doing well. I don't think you'll have much of a scar.”

“Too bad, Dinah. Scars are the big word this year,” said Kevin.

After that, Joey told us all about his latest job as an extra on the set of a new environmental disaster film in which the Pacific Northwest was supposed to heat up into a seething jungly swamp where giant flying cockroaches ruled supreme. It sounded extremely gooey and uncomfortable. We all grimaced.

I stood. “I've gotta get home, guys. Thanks for the drinks.”

“I'll come with you,” said Joey. “I have a big day in the swamp tomorrow.”

“Please, drop round whenever you feel like it,” said Jon. Kevin nodded vigorously in agreement.

On the way back to our place, Joey said, “You missed a great dinner. They were both counting on you to come. But then, you have more interesting things between your teeth now, don't you. Or do you?”

“Good night, Joey.”

He made a clownish sad face and I shut my door.

It was really late but I decided to take a bath anyway, just to meditate on everything that had happened. I was in the
middle of a reverie, replaying Ian's every move, when I was interrupted by the phone ringing. I dragged myself out of the tub, pulled a towel from the rack and ran to pick it up.

The voice at the other end hissed, “I'm going to dip you in yogurt and honey and have you for dessert.”

I was shivering and dripping all over the floorboards. White marks were appearing in the varnish.

“Get a life, you moron,” I yelled back, and slammed down the phone. Then I thought again and took it off the hook.

Tuesday

My first job was finding creative ways to make yawns look like livelier things, like exclamations and expressions of amazement. Ian, I learned, was out in the field with Cleo. Just as well. Maybe she'd seduce him and all my worrying would be over. But then just before lunch, he appeared in my doorway, as silent as a ghost.

I looked up and my heart leapt. “You scared me, Ian. Don't do that.”

He held a finger up to his lips and stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind him.

“Somebody's going to hear us,” I said, as he took my hand and pulled me to my feet.

“I'm just saying hello.” He pinned me against the wall and kissed me. His agile fingers were inside my clothes and running along my skin in seconds.

“If this is hello,” I gasped, “I don't need the rest of the conversation.”

“Are you sure? You feel tense.”

“But I'm
not
tense,” I said, through clenched teeth.

“I wanted to persuade you to come out with me later.”

“Persuade me? Ian. You could just ask me, you know. With words?”

“You have to have dinner with me. After work? Bridges?
I've heard it's nice and I've got some theater tickets for the Arts Centre.”

“What's the play?”

“Sex and the Single Celibate.”

It sounded dubious. But then it had been a long time since I'd had a night at the theater. Even a ticket for a dubious play was beyond my means. “Terrific.”

“That's a yes? That means you'll come. Say you'll come.”

I didn't have to say it. Coming with Ian Trutch was something I did really well.

I hesitated, then asked, “Ian, why me? Why am I getting all the attention? Why aren't you taking out someone glamorous? Like Cleo, for example.”

He smiled. “Cleo doesn't look like a woman who'd be easily surprised and I like surprising the woman I'm with. Correct me if I'm wrong, but she talks and sounds like a lady who knows her way around.”

But I felt guilty when Cleo came into my office later in the afternoon, shut the door, and said, “Ahhh, Dinah. I am
so
happy for you. You did it. You got it together with Ian Trutch. About time, too. I knew it was going to happen for you one of these days.”

“Is it written all over my face? I was going to see what happened before I told everybody in the office about it. How did you find out?”

“Get this. Ian told me himself. Just casually let it drop that you and he were ‘dating.'”

“He used the word
dating?
That's almost funny. Nobody
dates
anymore.”

“I know, Dinah.”

“People hang around together. They don't date.”

“Very unromantic, hanging around.”

“It's like he's come out in the open. I feel flattered.”

“You ought to.”

When Ian picked me up that night, I'd barely had time to
shower and cram myself into my white stretchy lace T-shirt and all-purpose long straight jeans skirt. He was wearing a high-collared black shirt and multi-pocketed beige safari pants. We were both the right degree of easy elegance but although we looked okay together, more or less, I still couldn't believe that I was with him, that I was his date. I couldn't help feeling as though I were the stand-in for some big star in the movie about somebody else's more impressive and glamorous life, and any minute, the real female lead, Catherine Zeta-Jones or Julianne Moore or Gwyneth Paltrow, would come along and take over from me, waving her hand and saying, “You, the stand-in, whatever your name is, you are dismissed.”

Wednesday

My first private tango lesson with Hector Ferrer. It was almost a relief to have a night off from Ian although I was still thinking about him, still feeling him all over my body. We'd snuck out of the play (as dubious as I'd suspected) before the end and gone back to the hotel, and our performance was definitely superior.

And so Wednesday night, I was distracted and thinking about Tuesday night as I walked into the room at Los Tangueros and came face-to-face with Hector. He had his coat on and was on his way out.

“Where are you going, Mr. Ferrer? We have a lesson.”

“So you have decided to show up after all,” he accused.

“I have showed up. I'm here,” I stammered. I looked at my watch. “And I'm on time.”

“You forget the warm-up. You must arrive earlier to allow time to warm up. Dancing cold can cause strain to your muscles. It is your responsibility to arrive well before the lesson to warm up.”

Fussy bugger, I thought. It wasn't as though it were a bal
let class, for crying out loud. I said, “I'm sorry but you'll have to teach me. I came halfway across town for this lesson and I'm not leaving until I have it.” Personally, I think he just didn't feel like it. He was probably on his way out for a drink.

He allowed a little smile to escape and then said, “Let me see what you can do.”

He gave me a second to throw off my coat and drop my purse then he grasped my hand with his, put his other on my waist and ordered, “Just try to walk with me.”

I walked.

Sort of.

“No,” he snapped, “across the floor, not across my feet. I do not wish to teach tango to a
flanes
.”

“What's a
flanes
?”

“A weakling, an insecure person who lets themselves be bent and swayed and thrown about like a rag on the wind. Even though the man is leading, the woman must still be strong within her moves.”

“I'm sorry,” I mumbled.

“Sorry does not help you learn the tango. Try again…now you are walking like a stevedore,” said Hector, becoming suddenly light with laughter.

I was starting to get mad, all my feelings bubbling up in one mean brew. I'd give
him
stevedore.

He pulled back. “Ha-ha. You are showing your
bronca.
You are angry with me? Ha-ha. Good. Tell me something. Why are you taking these tango lessons? Do you think you will find a man this way?” he sneered.

“I have a man, thank you very much.”

What a relief to be able to say that.

Finally.

It didn't matter that Ian wasn't technically mine, but the way we'd been going at each other, where was he going to find the time or energy to go at somebody else while we were together?

“Ah,” said Hector. “This man. Why is he not here, this man of yours, dancing with you?”

“I wanted lessons with you personally. Rupert told me you were a good teacher.
The
tango teacher in these parts.”

“Rupert?”

“Rupert Doyle.”

Hector narrowed his eyes and shot a withering black look at me.

“Victoria didn't tell you that it was him who put me on to you?” I said.

“No.” Hector had tilted his head sideways and was looking at me with greater curiosity. Reevaluating me. “You are Rupert Doyle's girl then?”

I laughed. “No, no. You've got the wrong idea. He's an old friend of the family….” And then I clammed up. I'd said too much.

He stared at me a little longer then said, “We will not talk about him. Now, the
paseo.
”

Now even doing what he called a simple
caminata
was a task. For an expensive hour, sixty dollars worth, Hector was harsh, overbearing, and even, for a second, toward the end, wolfish.

Was it my imagination or was he flirting with me?

Incest, screamed my Inner Prude.

But I realized I wasn't as put off as I should be. On the contrary. I was strangely drawn into it all. How amused Thomas would be when I told him all about it.

What I really wanted, deep down, was to make Hector jealous, please him, make him fall a little in love with me then tell him I was his daughter, make him suffer the way I'd suffered, make him act like the father I'd never had, the one who was supposed to chase potential boyfriends off the front porch with a shotgun.

Well, hey, Oedipus, you had your turn. Everybody deserves the chance to make up for lost time and go through the screwy parent thing.

Hector Ferrer was a challenge. He was a talented, grizzled, alcoholic and bad-tempered conundrum. I needed to know everything about him, and I wasn't sure how to go about it. It wasn't going to be enough to read him during lessons, to grab quick glimpses of his face when he was looking away. I tried to scour those slate-black eyes and their opaqueness, a murky dark sour shade that reminded me of a well, of unhealthy stagnant impenetrable water one minute, and the next minute the clarity of fizzing Coca-Cola.

I was curious to the point of agitation. What was lurking down there?

We did the basic walking step over and over trying to get the feel of moving around the room, which, he told me, was to be done only in an anticlockwise motion. I stumbled constantly at first. He stopped and murmured gently, “Imagine that there is music, the tango rhythm,” and then he did something complicated and rhythmic with his feet to keep the time for me.

“You must be proud,” he said, “like a proud
portena.
You have sad shoulders. You are stooping like an old woman. Why are your shoulders like this? Have you had such a hard life?”

I shook my head and lied. “No, not at all.”

“You must not let any of your defeats show in your body unless they are proud and stylized defeats. Not here and not in the
milonga
…when I finally let you dance there, which will not be soon, I can assure you. If and when you first start to dance with other people, it will be in a
practica.
”

Tired and ticked off at his constant insults and nonstop brow-beating, I finally pulled myself together and began to do the step again to the beat of his pounding feet, letting the meanest, bitchiest part of me take over. Hector stopped in midstep, looked as though he had just heard a hundred bells ringing. He seemed jubilant. He let go of me, squeezed my face between his two hands and exclaimed, “You did it. For eight, or maybe nine seconds, you felt like a true
milon
guita
in my arms. We must build on this sensation. Now tell me, what is your name, girl?”

“It's Dinah.”

“Perhaps there is hope for you, Dinah.”

That was when I first realized that there was no laxness in the tango. No loose ends. No wasted movement. It was thoroughly concentrated.

It was nothing like the kind of wild messy dancing Joey, Cleo and I did when we went out to the clubs. None of that shaking your limbs frenetically and carelessly all over the place and slamming into other bodies and getting generally sloppy and rowdy.

No.

The tango was completely energy efficient.

Only when your body had absorbed and memorized and synthesized all the tango steps to a point where they entered into your genetic imprint could you begin to relax. “Thank you, Mr. Ferrer,” I said, as I handed over my sixty dollars.

“You must call me Hector,” he said, and brushed my elbow with his fingers. “Do you have a ride?”

“I have my car.” I pulled on my coat.

“I will walk you to it.” He lit up a cigarette and narrowed his eyes at me. “Tell me, Dinah, do you, possibly, have some Latin blood in your family?”

I hesitated then said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”

“That is very interesting. I thought so. Your face is very much like the face of a
portena.
”

I laughed.

“Why do you laugh like that?” he snapped.

“Some of my family are from Buenos Aires,” I ventured.

His eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

I could tell he wanted to pursue the topic but by then we were nearing the bottom of the steps. I raced down the last ones to the ground.

As I hurried toward my car, I tossed a “Yes, really,” over my shoulder. “Good night, Hector.” I got in my car and turned the key in the ignition.

Hector stood on the bottom step, pulling hard on his cigarette, his black eyes scrutinizing me.