by Grace Palmer
That was a ridiculous thing to say. She is exclusively defined by what she has lost. Aren’t we all? How can anyone say otherwise?
She does her best not to dwell on thoughts like that, though. They aren’t leading anywhere productive, and they certainly aren’t doing anything to help dispel the sorrow that Henry’s passing still burdens her with.
So she has just stuck to her routine, stubbornly, even when it seems as if all the pleasure has been wrung out of it like a wet towel. She drinks coffee that tastes flavorless, she reads the same page of the same book again and again (because she forgets what she’s just read as soon as she finishes reading it), she takes walks that leave her more anxious than she was before she began them.
And she wonders where the world will bring her next.
She hears a knock on her door. She’s been holding a book open for close to half an hour now, and she hasn’t yet turned a page. It isn’t hard to put it down and go see who might be calling upon her.
“Cami!” she says when she opens the door and sees her friend standing there. “Looking chic as always.”
That’s not a lie—Cami is dressed to the nines, which is no surprise to anyone who’s spent any amount of time with the woman. Today’s ensemble is a long black shirt-dress, sheer in sections, with black fishnet tights, a massive aquamarine-colored scarf, and bright yellow ballet flats. Otherworldly, gorgeous, and totally Camille.
“Would you expect anything else from me, love?” she says with a lascivious wink.
“Well, go on, then, give us a show,” Toni teases.
Camille obliges, twirling in the hallway as both women laugh.
“Only you,” muses Toni. “Only you can put an outfit like that together and make it work.”
“Yes, well, I’d have preferred to be blessed with a large endowment, but we don’t get to pick our gifts, now, do we?”
“I suppose not. Come in, come in. My humble abode awaits you.”
Camille whisks in, leaving a trail of deliciously subtle perfume in her wake. “I like what you’ve done with the place,” she jokes.
Honestly, living in a hotel hasn’t been too bad at all. Certainly not as bad as Toni thought it would be. Perhaps it’s just that it’s nice to be on the receiving end of top-notch service after years of being the one doing the serving at her inn. Waiting on strangers hand and foot gets awfully tiring after a while. This is a good change of pace.
Besides, she spends most of her time outside, even on the days when the clouds crowd low and gray over the buildings, and the winds whistling down the streets are a bit icy. That doesn’t overly bother her. A good coat solves more problems than you might expect—something her mother said more times than Toni can possibly count. As with most of Angeline Benson’s expressions, it holds a great deal of truth.
“What brings you to my neck of the woods today?” Toni asks. “Can I get you anything? Coffee, tea…?”
“Nothing for me, thanks,” Camille says as she sets aside the book Toni had been reading and settles down into the unoccupied armchair. “I came to invite you to a party, of course! What good is a local friend if I don’t bring you around town?”
“Oh, erm,” Toni hedges as she walks around the room, straightening things that don’t really need straightening. “I don’t know if I’m in much of a partying mood, I’m afraid.”
“Nonsense,” scolds Camille at once in that nonchalant way of hers. “One glass of good wine will rinse that hesitation right out of you. Besides,” she adds with a mischievous gleam in her eye, “I have a suggestion.”
“Uh-oh. Now you’ve truly got me concerned.”
“A plus-one could be—how do you say, eh... just the ticket, don’t you think?”
“No. Cami, no, no, no. I don’t—”
“Toni, women our age simply don’t have the luxury of playing coy. I learned a long time ago that the world is far simpler when you just admit what you want, then reach out and take it. It’s a truth that men are taught and women are shielded from, in my experience. Quite a shame. Women are much better at it.”
Toni hides behind her laughter for a second as she weighs what Camille is saying.
She’s been hesitant to reach out to Nicolas again after their date. He texted her the following day—just a simple, I had an enjoyable evening with you. I stand by what I said: you are a very interesting woman—but Toni didn’t respond.
That was dumb, she knows. She ought to respond. She ought to do exactly what Camille is suggesting.
Nicolas intrigues her. He is handsome and interesting and courteous, and now that they have uncovered the source of his rudeness during their first encounter, all of her inexplicable irritation towards him has vanished. In fact, she feels closer to him, knowing that he has looked down at divorce papers just like she did and wondered where it all went wrong.
It isn’t a stretch to say that she actually likes him now. He certainly seems to like her, doesn’t he? The question is, what does that mean? Or rather, what should it mean? What could it mean? What might it mean if she gives it the chance to develop?
She isn’t anywhere close to answering those kinds of questions.
“I sense a little unease,” Camille comments wryly. “And yet, I am choosing to ignore it. Blame my Frenchness. Give me your phone, then, if you’re going to be so hand-wringy about it.”
Toni isn’t sure if it’s the right decision, but in the end, it’s much easier to give in to a strong personality like Camille’s than to keep going round and round in circles with her. She retrieves her phone from the nightstand and hands it over to her friend. She feels both guilty and excited at the same time as Camille pecks out a text message. Then she hears the whoosh noise of a text making its way out into the world, and she knows that there’s no point in being anxious anymore; the damage is done.
“That’s that, then, isn’t it?”
Camille nods. “Yes, it is.”
“What’d you say?”
“I asked for his hand in marriage.”
Toni promptly chucks a pillow at her friend’s head, and then sinks into the armchair next to her, both of them chuckling.
It feels like having a sister, Toni thinks to herself. She is then immediately buried in a tsunami of guilt at the thought of Henry. Is this what moving on feels like? Because it seems awfully close to forgetting, and that is as unforgivable a sin as she can dream up. But where is the line between the two? She doesn’t know. She just does not know.
“I’m only kidding, just so you know,” Camille adds to clarify. “I just said we were headed to a little gathering tonight and asked if he’d like to join. Anyway, I’ve got to do a few things around town. Would you like to join me, or should I just swing by and scoop you up this evening?”
“Go ahead without me,” Toni says. “I’ll just see you tonight.”
Camille nods and rises. “Sounds good, cariño. I’ll see you tonight.”
That night, an hour or so after the sun has descended behind the buildings and the first blush of night purple is smearing across the sky, Toni finds herself hustling along a busy sidewalk, arm in arm with Camille.
Camille spies him before Toni does. “Adventure sighted,” she whispers mischievously.
Toni looks up to see what her friend is talking about. She sees him, too: a familiar figure standing on the corner ahead. The crowd of pedestrians parts around Nicolas like a school of fish avoiding a shark, giving him a wide berth on all sides.
“Hi,” Toni says sheepishly when they step up to him.
Nicolas smiles. “Good evening, Toni,” he sees. He stoops down to their height and grazes his cheek against each of the women’s, the way Argentines say hello to each other. Camille relinquishes Toni’s elbow, leaving her feeling stranded between the two of them and uncertain which way to lean.
A gust of wind blows, this one with fangs. Toni shivers. “It’s cold tonight,” she mumbles.
“Let’s go inside then, shall we?” Camille suggests. She glances up at Nicol
as, who nods and gestures for her to lead the way.
Camille sets off striding down the block, a stretch of nice apartments recently painted with a coat of white that gleams against the worn sidewalks. Toni hesitates for just a second before she falls in step with Nicolas, and the two of them form the base of a triangle with Camille at the head.
Without saying a word, Nicolas takes Toni’s hand in hers. She looks down at it in surprise, then up at him.
Then she smiles and says nothing, just grips his fingers back in her own.
Grateful for the warmth. Grateful for the touch. Grateful for how normal and simple and beautiful it feels to hold hands with someone and not make much of a fuss about it whatsoever.
Camille leads them into an apartment building. The three of them bundle into an elevator, which soon deposits them onto a floor of apartment units. One of the doors is open. Light, warmth, and music spill out of it, along with the delicious tang of chimichurri and the sizzle of steaks on the grill.
Their arrival is greeted with a boisterous roar of laughter and hellos. Camille brings Nicolas and Toni on a whirlwind tour of the room. There are hands to shake and cheeks to kiss, wines to sample and cheeses to nibble on. Toni knows she can’t possibly remember who is who, so she does her best to just smile and nod. It doesn’t seem to matter—each person in the room is as friendly as the next.
As they whisk around, Toni is struck by the feeling of how this all just fits together: good food, kind friends, a warm eddy of people all tucked in together so that the cold seeping in through the cracked-open windows doesn’t seem so foreboding anymore. Laughter and wine belong hand in hand, the way she and Nicolas are. He hasn’t let go of her for more than a moment since they entered, even when he is shaking hands and kissing cheeks of his own.
Toni watches him as he talks, switching back and forth effortlessly between Spanish and English. He seems supremely comfortable, though he doesn’t know any more people here than she does (which is to say, zero).
She likes watching him converse. There is just something ineffably elegant about the way he modulates his pride with warmth, like he can choose to turn the faucet of his charisma on and off as he pleases. She’s content to stay nestled against his side, wineglass in hand, and listen to him chatter.
The evening swirls to and fro. People migrate from the living room to the terrace to the dinner table. Food is eaten, and bottle after bottle of wine goes down with ease. The laughter never ceases.
Toni, never having been much of a partier, is happy to watch it all from the heart of things. She answers questions when people ask them of her, and she tells stories about Nantucket, about her family, about running the inn if Nicolas coaxes her into them.
Mostly, though, she just listens and basks in the kind of good-times familiarity she didn’t realize she needed quite so badly.
The hours melt together like the creamy mushroom-and-quinoa risotto that Toni eats perhaps a bit too much of. It’s almost a shame when the time comes for folks to begin trickling out, headed for home.
One by one, as people leave—all of them stopping to joke with her and kiss her on the cheek on their way out—she feels a piece of the warmth leave the room with them, like when someone you’re cuddling with in bed begins slowly to roll away from you.
Soon, Camille comes up to them. “Ready to go, cariños?” she asks of Toni and Nicolas.
Nicolas looks down at Toni and arches an eyebrow. “Are you?”
She glances at her watch and is surprised to see that it’s close to two in the morning. She hasn’t yawned even once, which is highly unusual for her, being more of a morning person than a night owl.
She shrugs. “That’s probably for the best. I’m an old lady. I think it’s against the rules to watch the sun come up if I haven’t slept a wink.”
Camille rolls her eyes, though she’s merely teasing. She’s close to Toni’s age, but she never makes jokes about growing older. “I am as young as I choose to be” is a Camille-ism that Toni has heard more than once. “As you wish. Let me just say goodbye to everyone.”
They all take their own turns winding through the crowd and thanking the hosts and new friends. Then they, too, tug on their coats and scarves and slip back out into the night.
“Did you have fun?” Camille asks of Toni as they stride down the sidewalk. The night air around them is cool and crisp.
“Yes,” Toni replies with a smile. “Your friends are very nice. And the food was to die for.”
“And you, Nicolas?” Camille inquires, turning her face up to the man, who has a protective arm draped carelessly around Toni.
“It was an enjoyable evening, yes,” he says simply. His cheeks are slightly flushed with wine. Toni can’t help but notice how handsome he looks under the streetlights. They illuminate the sharp cut of his jaw and the pallor of his eyes. She clings to his coat, grateful for the warmth his bulk provides.
“Good. I’m glad. Well, this is me,” she says. She stops at a corner and points down a side street towards where her apartment is. “Buenas noches, cariños,” Camille says. Toni gives her friend a kiss on the cheek. Nicolas does the same.
Then, with one more farewell wave, Camille slinks away. Toni and Nicolas stand still for a moment and watch her go until she’s swallowed up by the shadows.
“Well?” Nicolas asks when she’s gone. “Which way are you?”
Toni points straight ahead. “Just a little farther that way. Five or six blocks.”
“Lead the way,” he says, gesturing. She smiles and pulls closer under his arm. He smells good—the lingering scent of the food still clinging to his clothes, along with that alluring mix of cologne and man musk that she always notices on him.
It feels right to say nothing, to let the simple fact of contact between them do all the conversing. They walk slowly, in no hurry to be anywhere in particular.
A few folks rush past—other drunken couples ambling unsteadily from the bars, families with sleeping children in their arms, club kids just now heading out to the massive, bass-pounding nightclubs dotted around the city.
They cross the street, turn around the corner of a building, and see a throng of people gathered in a big alcove set against the side of the concrete structure.
As they get closer, Toni begins to hear something: music, the familiar aching moan of a tango that has yet to hit its full stride.
“Do you want to take a peek?” Nicolas asks. She glances up and sees that he’s smiling at her with an amused look on his face.
She blushes. “Was I that obvious?”
“Open book,” he teases.
She rolls her eyes and bites back a smile as they meander over to the gathered pedestrians. When they’ve joined the circle, she finds a window of space between two folks on the inner ring and looks in.
There is a couple in the cleared space at the center of the circle. One is a man in full, formal tango gear—a black waistcoat, black button-down shirt, and the full-legged black pants that performers wear. His shiny black leather shoes have a prominent heel that clacks on the cobblestones with every stride.
His partner is in a provocative scarlet dress that shimmers each time she turns and whirls. She is fit and beautiful, and Toni gasps aloud as she pirouettes rapidly and collapses towards the ground gracefully, saved only at the last minute by her partner’s strong arm from cracking her head against the ground. Her shoes, in a scarlet that matches the color of her dress, are alight with sequins.
The source of their music is just a speaker set against the wall behind them, but the music crackling out of it does the job well enough. Toni watches, mesmerized, as the song crescendos, and the couple responds with their longest and fastest steps yet.
The woman’s body is long and lithe, and her partner has an effortless sense of balance that makes him seem like the sun at the center of the universe as this gorgeous, feminine comet careens around him. They mingle, then separate, never fully losing touch, but going just far enough and fast enough apa
rt that Toni gasps again and again, sure that this is the moment when they will lose control.
But she is wrong each time. They are dancing right on the edge of chaotic, and she thinks to herself that perhaps that is where the beauty comes from: from leaning all the way into the drama and the passion of it all, close enough to truly risk it.
Eventually, the song settles into its denouement. The dancers end pinned chest to chest, gazing into each other’s eyes with smoldering heat. And when the last note fades, the audience bursts into applause.
The couple takes a bow, hand in hand, and then he sets a hat on the sidewalk for donations. Nearly everyone in the crowd drops a few bills into the receptacle before branching off into the night.
Toni waits until there is space for her to step forward and leave a bit of her appreciation behind for the performers.
She feels a sudden coolness and glances up to see that Nicolas has strode over to the dancers. They converse quickly, a bill changes hands, and then Nicolas turns to her and smiles. As he does, Toni notices the woman behind him reach down to the speaker and start another song.
She assumes that the performers are going to go again at Nicolas’s request. But they seem content to stay leaning against the building wall and smoking cigarettes while smiling at Toni.
She doesn’t get what’s happening until Nicolas steps up and puts his hand on the middle of her back in the classic tango position. Automatically, she responds by finding her own placement in his embrace.
“Dance with me,” he murmurs in her ear.
“Here?” she yelps. She looks around to see a few passersby giving them curious glances, wondering if they are about to perform like the other buskers did.
“Anywhere you’ll have me,” is Nicolas’s immediate, husky reply. It makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
“You like being unpredictable, don’t you?”
“You coax it out of me.”
“Oh, so it’s my fault?”
“Not your fault. But perhaps your problem.” He winks. “Now, are we going to let the song pass us by, or will we dance?”
