All the Beautiful Girls

by Elizabeth J. Church

  A tendril of pink ostrich feather tickled Ruby’s lower lip and then drifted to the corner of her eye. She swallowed a reflexive sneeze. The feather caught in her false eyelashes, and she blinked rapidly to try to free them.

  With elegant precision, Ruby descended the calf-killing stage stairs, the other showgirls trailing in her wake like geese in flight. She turned in time with the music, revealed her G-string-clad ass to the man. She faced him again, performed several high kicks, her bare breasts bouncing. Now, she thought, now is when a pastie will pop off, and his only reaction will be to stare impassively.

  The rhinestones of the showgirls’ costumes pulsed beneath rainbow-colored stage lights, there was a crash of cymbals, and the dancers joined to form the pony line, beginning the grand finale of synchronized cancan kicks. The audience broke into enthusiastic applause, but still the photographer remained inert. At last, standing breathless with the other girls and taking a bow, Ruby stole a look at him and felt a trickle of nervous sweat meander down her back.

  Ruby exited the stage and made her way to her dressing room, knowing that the insistent pull she felt for the Spaniard was chemical, uncontrollable. But it was more than lust. She was connected to this man—maybe from some distant, past life or maybe because they were one and the same. Who knew? And did it matter? She’d seen dozens of gorgeous men trail in and out of the casinos: Elvis, Warren Beatty, Harry Belafonte, even Richard Burton—a man made exponentially more compelling because Elizabeth Taylor walked on his arm. But Javier was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

  He had thick, dark brown hair that fell in waves until its curly tips brushed the collar of his white Nehru jacket. His eyes were chestnut brown beneath heavy, dark brows, and his lips were generous, the dip in his upper lip pronounced. He had a substantial, dignified nose, skin the color of coffee generously dosed with cream, and the only movement he showed was to purse his lips and knit his brows, as if in thought, each time he took a pull from his cigarette and exhaled a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. Not one ounce of Javier Borrero pleaded for Ruby’s attention, and she adored that. As she sat before her vanity mirror and her dresser carefully lifted off the heavy headdress, Ruby felt truly exposed, exquisitely vulnerable.

  * * *

  —

  THE RULE WAS that whenever a showgirl loused up a number, the whole pony line had to show up the next morning at the ungodly hour of eleven A.M. to rehearse. It was like elementary school—one student screws up, and the entire class has to stay after school. No one was happy about it, but they all knew better than to punish the girl who’d flubbed her steps. Eventually, it happened to all of them.

  Javier Borrero was there at the rehearsal the next morning, this time actually using his camera. The girls were in full costume, and it was a good opportunity for him to get action publicity shots without distracting an audience. Today, he wore casual clothes—bell-bottom jeans, a white poet’s shirt, and a wide, brown leather belt cinched with a brass belt buckle that had a Renaissance flourish. His brown-skinned feet were clad in worn leather sandals, his hair was just the right amount of unkempt, and he wore a black scarf tied loosely about his neck.

  The dance routine was punishing not for the steps, but for the props. The curtains opened to the girls hanging from the ceiling, each in her own see-through Lucite bathtub filled with clear plastic Ping-Pong balls meant to simulate a bubble bath. The number was set to a jazzed-up version of Bobby Darin’s “Splish Splash.” The costumes—tight, aqua-toned split skirts and armbands with fish fins made of ribbed gold, blue, and green satins—were great in theory. The problem came when the girls were to climb from the bathtubs out onto tiny individual platforms that hovered a good five to seven feet above the stage floor. The mermaid-tail skirts limited movement, and, inevitably, several of the Ping-Pong balls would escape the sides of the tubs as the dancers maneuvered onto the platforms.

  High heels and small balls flying like erratic popcorn—it was a decidedly bad combination, and nearly all of the girls had fallen at some point. Despite all of this, the choreographer was unwilling to reconsider the number, and there was halfhearted talk amongst the showgirls that the insurance company should be notified. The danger was apparent, and it seemed inevitable that someone was going to get hurt.

  The Spaniard moved below them, shooting upward. Ruby watched him move in closer until she could see the top of his head, his hands holding his camera as if it were holy, an offering bowl held before an altar.

  Ruby noticed that there was something off about his right foot. Where toes should have extended from his sandal, there was only a single big toe. It couldn’t be that they were folded under. No, Ruby thought, they’re gone. His limp was barely discernible. She was both curious as to what might have happened to him and surprised that he wore sandals, that he made no effort to disguise his disfigurement.

  She felt a sense of instant kinship with this Spaniard. The unshakable certainty that their flaws sang in harmony. Ruby longed to examine the details of his palms. She wanted to measure his life line, discover his childhood. She wanted to count his lovers, the horizontal lines secreted on the side of his hand beneath his pinky finger—and to see if, maybe, she could find herself there.

  That was when Ruby slipped. The toe of her shoe slid over the edge of her tiny platform, and her ankle fought futilely for balance on the half-inch surface of her stiletto heel. Ruby fell six feet—directly into the arms of Javier Borrero. There was a shriek of pain in her ankle, a chaos of Ping-Pong balls in her peripheral vision, but all she knew was the musk of him—the deep woods scent, as if he’d been sleeping in a soft, yielding bed of decaying oak leaves.

  Together, they tumbled to the ground. Javier’s body cushioned her fall, and she immediately worried that she’d crushed his camera. He was splayed out on the stage beneath her, and she was struggling to right herself, to keep her heels from gouging him. Finally, the band stopped, and a couple of dancers rushed to help her. Each grabbed an arm, and when Ruby stood, she felt her ankle’s unwillingness to hold her. The girls half dragged her to the lowest stage step, and Ruby unbuckled her shoe and gingerly began rubbing her ankle—all the while watching the Spaniard as he slowly gathered his wits and stood.

  “Your camera!” she said when he looked her direction.

  “Is all right,” he said, neither smiling nor frowning. “I cover it with my hands, like dis.” He demonstrated, clutching the camera to his abdomen, a running back tucking the football into his gut.

  Ruby couldn’t read him, couldn’t tell if he was angry.

  “We told you this would happen!” one of the girls yelled at the choreographer, who’d at last deigned to approach and check on Ruby.

  “No more!” another girl said. “We won’t do this number. Are you waiting for someone to break her neck?”

  The others were nodding in agreement. They stepped down from their various perches and gathered about Ruby on the stairway, an impromptu sit-in.

  “But your contracts require—” the choreographer said rather feebly.

  Borrero knelt and gently took Ruby’s foot into his hands. “Relax your foot. Your ankle,” he instructed and then waited until she complied. He compressed her foot at the base of her toes with one hand while cupping her heel in the other. “Is painful?” She shook her head. He moved his hand up toward her ankle, increasing the pressure only as her facial expression permitted. He circled her ankle with his thumb.

  “That’s sore,” she said, thinking the injury was well worth it, just to have his warm hands caressing her foot.

  “Flexiona—uh, you must flex de foot.”

  She felt the muscles of her arch, tight and sharp, and she flinched. “I think I pulled the muscles, mostly,” she said. “They’re tender.”

  At her use of tender he took his eyes completely away from her foot, instead looked into her face. And he smiled—his first smile, the first e
motion she’d seen cross his face. Carefully, he set down her foot and picked up her discarded shoe, holding it as if it were some rare captive bird.

  “Los zapatos de tacón. Of course you have hurted your arch,” he said, and in his accent she thought she could feel the noon heat in Barcelona, that she could smell oranges ripening in a silver, sun-struck bowl.

  This close to him, with all the others disappearing like inconsequential dandelion fluff, she could see two tiny moles punctuating the outer corner of his left eye. A third strayed onto his cheekbone and rested there, a challenge.

  Ruby was spending a quiet night at home nursing her wounds and reading a paperback when the doorbell rang. Javier Borrero stood in the glow of her porch light, a bouquet of pink roses in one hand, a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup in the other.

  “I skinned my butt.” Ruby laughed. “Isn’t chicken soup for a sore throat?”

  “If you letted me in, I explain.” He smiled.

  “All right.” She combed her hair with her fingers and thought maybe she should change out of her short black silk robe. Javier eyed her legs as he set the flowers and soup on the kitchen bar. “There’s a vase in the cabinet beneath the sink,” Ruby said, opting to pull on a denim miniskirt and T-shirt. “I’ll be right back. Oh, and there’s beer in the refrigerator.”

  Once dressed, she took an extra few seconds to look at herself in the bathroom mirror. She was makeup free, but ah, well. He’d come unannounced—surely he couldn’t expect her to look her best.

  “Thank you,” she said, returning to the living room and accepting a bottle of beer. “For the flowers, too.” He’d set them on the side table between her wingback chairs. “They’re lovely.”

  Javier tapped the neck of his bottle against hers. “I am hoping for you to get bedder soon.”

  Limping slightly, an ACE bandage wrapped around her ankle, she led him to the couch. “So,” she said. “The soup.” She knew he watched her throat move as she closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and took a sip of beer.

  “The word in Spanish for throat”—he moved his hand along his own throat—“is cuello. I had this American friend. Learning Spanish. He told me he was not dere for rugby practice the day before because he had an infection in his culo.” Javier began to laugh. “You see? Is very close, but is wrong. He wanted tell me he had an infection in his cuello—his throat. But he said culo—and dad means he had an infection in his asshole. I said to him that he should no be telling me all this. It was yust too intimate.” He winked at her.

  “Okay, that’s funny!” Ruby grinned.

  “I was only glad dad he said dad to me. Not to someone impoordant.” Javier ran his palm up and down his thigh as if he were wiping his palm clean.

  “So the chicken soup is for my sore culo?” Ruby asked, smiling.

  “Yes. Dad was my joke.”

  “Very good,” she said, again touching the neck of her bottle to his. “I like a man with a sense of humor.”

  “I like you,” he said. “And I have come here tonight because I don’t play de mouse and cat game.” He shrugged his shoulders, looked down, and smiled shyly.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. He was wearing a white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows—a look that on him was elegant. “I just wish I looked better.”

  He looked up, genuinely surprised by what she’d said. “Oh no.” He shook his head. “You are so much more beauteeful without dad…Cómo se dice?” He rubbed his forehead. “Maquillaje.”

  “Makeup?”

  “Yes, dad’s it. For the stage is one thing. For the rest of your life, I say no. I say you must be your real self. Your true self.”

  He had a muscular neck and heavily muscled shoulders—maybe from the rugby he’d mentioned. And, already, he’d zeroed in on what she’d been thinking about forever: What was real, what wasn’t. Plastic, manufactured fantasy versus genuineness, truthfulness. He didn’t want to play any “mouse and cat game”; he wasn’t some slick gambler feeding her a line. He was a man struggling in a second language to tell her what he honestly thought and felt.

  “Javier,” she said, setting her beer bottle on a coaster. “Will you take me out on a date?”

  “I had dad planned.” He smiled widely, his eyes gold in the light of her table lamp. “Do you know Dinah Shore? She is at the Sands in the Celebrity Theatre, is called.”

  Dinah Shore! Who was this man? How did he know the child she’d been? Lily, planted in front of Aunt Tate’s television set, fixated by Dinah Shore’s even, white smile, and her exquisite costumes. This man sensed her genesis. Javier Borrero instinctually knew which pulse points to touch, where Ruby’s heart beat loudest, cleanest.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS A cliché, Ruby knew, but Javier truly was a breath of fresh air. He had limited funds, and so they didn’t go out dressed to be seen, in excess finery. The Dinah Shore show was a stretch for him financially—this Ruby knew—and so she made it a point to tell him afterwards that she wanted to go to a diner for a hamburger and fries, not some expensive restaurant.

  For their second date, they went to see Hitchcock’s Topaz at the Las Vegas Cinerama, and in the dark Javier held her hand, almost innocently moving closer so that he could put his arm about her shoulders and let her rest her head against him.

  They traded their histories like coinage. He was twenty-five “yearsold,” he said, running the words together. He’d grown up in Toledo, south of Madrid, the son of a man who still made swords and knives for a living. It was a medieval city, he said, one that had inspired some of El Greco’s landscape paintings.

  “Is not like this place. Is on a mountaintop. You can see the sky, the river below. The curve of de world. It has history,” he said. “Not like this place dad was built yust yesterday.”

  She loved his accent. It forced her to listen carefully, and the degree of focus his words required made everything he said seem important, as if his sentences were dipped in gold.

  “You want to know about this,” he said as they sat on the stone border of a flower bed outside the movie theater. He extended his knee and together they stared at his deformity. She hadn’t asked about his wounded foot, thinking that her curiosity was, as yet, an unsolicited intimacy.

  “Only if you want to tell me,” she said.

  “Of course you are curious. You should not pretend that you are not.” He set his foot back down as if anchoring himself.

  Ruby sipped her soda and waited. The ice had melted, and her Coke was weak, growing flat.

  “You know about my country, about the ruler of Spain, yes?”

  God, but her knowledge of world history was paltry. “Sorry,” she said, removing her sunglasses so that he could see her sincerity. “I don’t.”

  “Generalissimo Franco. El Caudillo—he rules my country. He is dictator.”

  “Oh.” What Ruby knew of dictators was Hitler, and surely there could be no worse fate for a people.

  “My uncle—my father’s hermano—he died during El Caudillo’s White Terror, before I was born. Franco had declared my uncle and others like him—the atheists, the leftists, and all of the intelligentsia of the country—he declared them enemies. My uncle starved to death in prison.”

  Although the events Javier described didn’t yet explain his misshapen foot, she immediately saw that the story was hers: It was a tale of early, cataclysmic death, a death close to home, reality too soon imposed upon a child. The unmitigated injustice of death and loss. Sitting next to him, feeling the heat of the immutable stone beneath her, she sensed the threads between them multiply and strengthen, as if a rope of immense tensile strength were being woven that would bind them fast, one to the other.

  “I was studying art at the Universidad of Madrid. The students—like the students here in your country—we protest. La revolución!
Sí?”

  “But what were you protesting?” Spain had no Vietnam, and, as far as she knew, no civil rights movement.

  “Many things. The Policía Armada. They have forced on the people the rule of the Catholic Church, all of those social rules. We were betrayed by these grises we call them, these police in gray uniforms. They spied on us. They knew our plans.”

  Here it was again, like a huge mirror held before her, one she couldn’t ignore. He’d done what she’d only thought of doing: He’d bravely fought against injustice. This foreigner had passion and meaning in his life, the courage of his convictions, while she merely danced on stages or made faint attempts at fashion design. She was decorative.

  “And these grises police—they’re responsible for your foot?” she asked.

  “It is so much worse than what you see on your television. They have clubs, yes—but they also have guns and horses that trampled the people on the ground. They rode over us. The police, he look down at me. He smile, and he put his horse forward so that its hoof crush my foot. In the hospital, they cut them off,” he said, now removing his sandal.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ruby breathed, feeling the inadequacy of her words. She took his foot in her lap, made herself look at the seam of flesh where his toes had been, a raised, uneven white line across beautiful, brown skin.

  “This is why my father sent me here, to your country,” Javier said, reaching to take hold of her fingers and squeezing. “So I would be safe. So I could know you.”

  Javier said he’d first gone to New York, but then he’d quickly grown tired of winter. He’d arrived in Vegas purely by chance, had actually been headed to L.A. to find work in the film industry, but his VW bus broke down thirty miles east of Vegas. Initially, he merely intended to earn enough to pay the mechanic for a new engine, but instead he’d stayed on, telling himself he’d continue on to L.A. in six months. He was five months into that plan when he saw Ruby on stage and decided six could easily become twelve.