Dancing started at two a.m. and went on until nine in the morning. It was still early.
He nodded at his Tres Marías. “Yeah, fuck it, let’s drink and dance until the sun comes up on this town. Fuck Montserrat. Fuck Gracelyn. Let’s go make some new goddamn memories.”
They looked confused, frightened. His words had been filled with anger.
He calmed his voice, said, “
Yo quiero bailar
.”
One excited woman put on her coat and took his right arm. The other put on her coat and took his left arm. The third María danced and hurried in front of them, opened the door.
Señorita Raven was waiting.
He stared at her. She nodded as if she liked what she saw.
Medianoche pulled his arm away from the arms of his Marías. He moved by Señorita Raven. Marched to Señor Rodríguez’s door. Knocked. He answered right away. Dressed in slacks and a gray sweater. A book in one hand.
El Arte de la Guerra
. His weapon in the other.
He looked surprised to see Medianoche with a faux eye. He said, “Sir, yes, sir.”
“Take these beautiful women dancing. They want to tango. Show them a good time.”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Then bring them back to your room. If you’re shy, relax. They’ll take it from there.”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
Medianoche directed the women inside Señor Rodríguez’s condo apartment. Then he turned around, marched past Señorita Raven, and went inside his condo.
He left the door open. His pace slowed as he went and sat on his bed, the mattress sighing under his weight.
Seconds went by.
The door to his living quarters closed.
First silence.
He wasn’t alone. He smelled her perfume. Same sweetness he’d inhaled before.
Her clothes rustled. Then he heard the sound of tango shoes against the wooden floor.
She said, “Mind if I have a glass of wine, sir? I see some on your counter.”
He didn’t answer.
“How’s about this, if you don’t want me to have a glass of your wine, say something and I’ll about-face and go to Soho. Otherwise, I will take your silence as an okay to proceed.”
His heart raced. He centered his breathing. Waited.
She said, “Thank you.”
He heard her in his kitchen. Touching his wineglasses. Pouring his wine.
“You have nice pictures on your wall. Wow. You have one of an African.”
Minutes went by. Minutes filled with the loudness of her silence.
She said, “You stare at me. You always stare at me. And not like I’m a freak. I see the way you look at me. You look me in my eyes. You look at me the way men used to look at me. I used to hate when men looked at me that way. But now, I miss that. My injuries. My sacrifice. It makes people uncomfortable. People glance at me and turn away. Like the waiter did. Like the Italian men did. I pretend I don’t care. They want to ask but are afraid to talk to me. And parents look at me like I will terrify their child. You . . . you look at me like I’m a woman. Like you can see who I am without the . . . without this mess. I need that from a real man, a man like you.”
Then the sound of tango shoes walked across the wooden floor in his living room. The footsteps stopped. Music came on. “Tango Diablo.” A song from the show “Tango Porteño.” Tango. The dance of the poor. The dance that began in brothels. Africans had brought the dance, or brought the rhythmic dances that were the predecessors to the tango.
The footsteps came toward his bedroom.
Señorita Raven stopped in his doorframe, glass of wine in her hand, most of it gone.
Medianoche stared at Señorita Raven for a moment, her cleavage, the swell of her breasts, the shape of her legs. Carnal thoughts took hold. He licked his lips, then looked away.
She finished the wine, her heels clacking as she walked to the kitchen, and put the glass down, heels clacking as she paused in the living room. He thought she was leaving. Moments later, her shoes clacked as she came back and stood in the doorframe of his bedroom.
He looked at her again. Her breasts. Soft. Natural. The kind that made men betray orders and country. The kind that made men betray the families they had left back home. The kind that caused the savage part of a man to rise like the assault rates in the military. Her cleavage revealed just enough to frustrate and create fantasies. She raised her lowered head, her eyes focused, looked at him. Her coat was off. Some flesh revealed. Her long tango gloves were on. She had put them on after she took her wineglass back to the kitchen.
She smiled at him. A soft smile.
He put his gun to the side. He held eye contact as he stood.
Medianoche maintained eye contact as he pulled off his overcoat and let it fall behind him. Held eye contact as he first adjusted his suit coat, then adjusted his tie. Made himself into a well-dressed gentleman. Kept that eye contact as Señorita Raven walked backward toward the living room. He followed, his pace matching hers, never losing eye contact.
He held her hand. Adjusted into tango position as she did the same. Just like she had done in La Boca. Her upper body straight and tall. Knees bent and over her toes, weight back on her heels. He put his hand on her lower back and pulled her into a brutal embrace. Señorita Raven placed her left hand around his right shoulder.
They danced.
He gave in to the tango, allowed the dance to take over, moved around the living room, his moves more complicated than the dancer’s in La Boca, more dramatic. He tested Señorita Raven’s ability to follow, tested her ability to resign and let a man lead, found her skills and submissiveness surprising. Her moves were like the perfect partner, moving, moving, their dance taking them toward the kitchen, turning, turning, back into the living room. “A Don Pedro Santillán.” “Amor en Budapest.” “Pregonera.” “Yunta de oro.” “Loca.” Songs played. The moves intensified. The foreplay was over. He gave her momentum and she took to the air, kicked her feet like wings and did a wonderful
boleo,
hooked her legs around Medianoche’s body in the move called the
gancho
, put her body on his thigh, both of her feet off the ground. The career assassin. The arrogant woman who killed and tortured. Medianoche’s condo became his brothel.
In between songs, that was when the dancers were allowed to speak.
Señorita Raven said, “If a man dances two consecutive songs with a woman, he plans to take her to bed. And if she allows him to, she is willing to go to bed with that man that night.”
Medianoche inhaled the wine on her breath, held his serious expression, and nodded.
She whispered, “This will be our fifth dance.”
Then he pulled her up to him, held her close.
Her eyes. He couldn’t escape her eyes. Couldn’t escape her goddamn eyes.
Couldn’t escape the pain and rejection he’d felt after that phone call to Montserrat.
The same as it had been the day he was kicked off the island by her tears.
He lifted Señorita Raven like she had the weight of a newborn baby, lifted her high, her legs opening, resting on both sides of his neck, the heat of her vagina in his tarnished face. They stumbled toward the wall, that wall stopping Señorita Raven from falling to the floor. He held her up, felt one of her hands on his head, heard the other grabbing at the white wall, slapping the wall until she found her balance, her hands sliding, knocking glass-framed pictures off the wall. Photos crashed. Glass broke. He inhaled her, put his mouth on her lace underwear. Was surprised she had on underwear. His lips and tongue pressed against damp lace. Her weight pressed down on his mouth. Her dress covered him as she ground against his nose, his chin, moved on the hardness of his chin, moved on his chin as she held him and moaned.
Her labored breathing gave way to operatic sounds, a repetitive E-sharp.
The music played and Señorita Raven moaned.
He felt her shivering. She moved against his chin, his nose. She was juicy. The scent of her orgasm on his scarred and battle-worn flesh. She shifted on his face, lost her balance, started to fall, but he held her body, took control of her weight as she slid down his muscular frame. A smooth tango. Held her as she arched her back and moaned. He brought her down from his face, eased her down to the floor, her body shaking, her hand trying to hold on to him.
For a moment she was limp in his arms, back arched, head back, hair hanging, as lifeless as the dead. Barely breathing. Her hand moved in slow motion, touched his pants.
He was as erect as an araucaria tree.
Her hand rubbed him as her breath caught in her throat. The sound of amazement.
“Pequeña” ended. “La Yumba” began.
He carried her into the bedroom, dropped her down on the bed, yanked away her panties, made her sit on him facing away, entered her with her dress pulled up and his pants pulled down. He squeezed her breasts. They felt like heaven in his hand.
“La Yumba” ended. “La Mariposa” played and gave way to “Zum.”
Medianoche put her on her knees, took her that way.
“Grisel” and “De floreo” and “A Don Agustin Bardi” played.
Medianoche battled with her, let her adjust her tango dress and sit on him, let her close her eyes and ride the memories swirling around inside his body.
He turned her over hard. Took her with authority, controlled her the way a man was supposed to control a woman. Once again, her labored breathing changed into operatic sounds
.
E-sharp after E-sharp after E-sharp. The arrogant assassin wrapped her legs around his back, announced her orgasm. He pounded her, pounded and stared into her eyes. That combination of beauty desecrated by the horrors of the world. A work of art. Walter Pater said that it was the addition of strangeness to beauty that created the romantic character in art. He stared until he couldn’t see the marks left behind by war. He closed his eyes. Gave art his power. Uncontrolled power. Each thrust created another E-sharp.
First his labored breathing, his deep grunts mixing with E-sharps, then the inevitable.
He announced his orgasm with an elongated grunt, roared and pulled away from her, fought her as she moaned she was coming and pulled at him. He struggled to break away. He refused to deposit memories inside her, was barely out of her as she gripped him and moved her hips and moaned that she was coming coming coming, as he held too many memories to control.
Memories flooded like an unforgettable day in December of 1963.
Medianoche
caught his breath, then sat up on the bed, the mattress giving under his weight as his Italian shoes slapped down on the wooden floor in a hard one-two cadence. The room smelled of a new perfume. One more powerful than the sweet aromas the beautiful Tres Marías had left behind. A sweetness that mixed with the scent of Argentine cigarettes and Cuban cigars. Señorita Raven’s perfume. He looked at the mess they had made.
Señorita Raven whispered, “
Una vez más.
”
“
No más.
”
Medianoche turned his head away. He felt the bed shift as Señorita Raven found her balance and pulled herself to her feet. He heard the rich material of her soiled dress moving across her bare flesh as she yanked it down, her tango shoes clacking as she searched the floor for her torn panties, and then her shoes click-clacking as she flipped on the light and stood in front of the closet-door mirror. He saw her. She frowned at her stained dress. Her heels clicked on wood as she moved by the bed.
Medianoche looked at his soiled suit, saw the aftermath of lack of willpower.
“You turned my expensive dress into a milky Lewinsky. I’d be too embarrassed to take this to 5àSec. Damn. They will know what this is. I guess I’ll add this to our secrets, sir.”
“What secrets?”
“You froze on the roof. Like a DVD on pause. You lied to the team, told The Beast you threw that man off the roof. You froze again tonight. For a good half minute.”
He pulled his lips in.
She said, “I won’t tell. I’m not a snitch. People from East Saint Louis don’t snitch.”
A minute passed. A silent minute that was louder than being under enemy fire.
He said, “You trying to hold me over a fire, soldier?”
“I have your back. Understand, as long as you have my back, I have your back.”
“As long as I have your back.”
“We have to look out for each other.”
He frowned, her words sounding like blackmail on more levels than one.
Medianoche marched to his closet, opened a small safe, and took out a stack of banknotes.
Veinte pesos
.
Cien pesos
. Pictures of Argentine heroes and
BANCO CENTRAL DE LA ARGENTINA
printed on every bill. He took a stack of money and extended it to Señorita Raven.
She frowned at the money. “Is that for the dress or for the sex?”
“It’s so we don’t have a misunderstanding about what you think you saw or what we did.”
“I was offering to have your back.”
“I don’t need a dumb, ignorant, vulgar, and arrogant woman watching my back.”
“You’re nothing but an old broken-down GI Joe that has lost his kung fu grip.”
“A woman like you is made to be on her back. That’s all you’re good for.”
“You are really messed up, you know that? I might have a few mental issues, I may have made some bad choices when I was stressed, but you are as fucked up as they come.”
“You showed me what you were good for.”
“Fuck you, you one-eyed piece of shit.”
“Take the goddamn money.” He barked, “
Largáte, puta
.”
Señorita Raven regarded the money, then him. He let the bills go as she took the pesos from his hands. Six, maybe seven thousand pesos.
She said, “This all you think I’m worth?”
“Better than the going rate. Consider the difference a tip.”