Free Ballroom: A Novel by Alice Simpson Page A

the mahogany strands streaming behind her like banners in harmony with the horse’s carved tail. Her hair has come loose from her brightly flowered scarf, which circles her neck as she arches toward him, her face flushed.
    “Mama,” Maria calls out, and there is that one vivid moment in the dappled sunlight, through trees barely leafed, when her mother turns to her, throws her a kiss. Her mother’s pink horse rises and falls at a different pace than her own, its hoofed legs flailing the air, and Maria is forever unable to catch up. Who will stop her on her runaway horse? Only that last kiss good-bye, as her mother disappears into the shadow. Lost.
    It is here that the bittersweet memory fades. Maria wanted her mother to ride with her, hold her, protect her from a world racing forward, madly turning. She’s never truly believed that her mother died, as her Papi said. Instead, Maria secretly believes, she simply galloped off on her flower-decked pink mount, through the park, over the trees, her hair flying, her cowboy’s arms around her waist.
    F or as long as Maria can remember, on Friday nights Papi has played dominoes at Uncle Julio’s with friends. He changes out of the dark blue jumpsuit he wears all day, showers, and dresses with great style, slicking back his thick hair with pomade. In the summer he looks particularly handsome in his embroidered white guayabera shirt, white pants, and white shoes. She loves watching him stop in front of the mirror by the front door; smoothing his hair with the palm of his hand, smiling, and then running his tongue over his pearly white teeth. He stops for a moment at the bottom of the front steps as though testing the weather, turns to blow her a kiss as he crosses the street, then waves as he walks west on Twelfth Street toward Union Square Station. It seems to her that men do everything exactly on time. Once he is out of view, she climbs the three flights, two steps at a time, to Harry Korn’s apartment on the fourth floor.
    She waits on the top step, listening for the music to begin. Then, tapping on the door lightly, she listens for the distinctive shushing sound of his shoes on the path of brown paper grocery bags. Harry’s apartment smells of cooked carrots and onions. When he opens the door, she knows, without ever being told, that she must never step off the paper path. He has been giving her dancing lessons every Friday night for the past twelve years since she was eight. She has always dreamed of being a Latin ballroom champion, and Harry is a patient teacher.
    On Friday nights Harry leans a mirror against the refrigerator and takes up the eight bags that cover the section of the kitchen floor where she has her lesson. At seven thirty sharp he faces the mirror and begins dancing with her in a tight square of nine gray linoleum tiles. She’s memorized those tiles like a tic-tac-toe grid, giving them numbers. She is on two, facing Harry on eight. Her tile has a black scuffmark. Harry’s has a dent in it like a footprint, as though over time his hard weight has pressed into the floor. There is a triangular chip out of five. Five and nine are a lighter gray than the others.
    Harry doesn’t want her to look down when they dance, or step outside the nine-square perimeter of those tiles. Going over the same steps repeatedly, he attempts to perfect her Latin motion; the movement of each knee, which moves the opposite hip. He holds her upper body firmly to isolate it from the motion of her hips. He leads her in the tight square of floor.
    Movements are minimal and contained. Always instructing, very patient, Harry arranges her posture, corrects the way she moves, the way she holds her arms, her hands, her fingers. With his warm, hard hands, he moves her head into the proper position, pushes her chest up and out, and presses her pelvis toward him with palms against her buttocks, as though she is a piece of clay he is molding. Over the years, he has taught her to rumba, mambo,