The Merchant of Venice Beach

by Celia Bonaduce

  “That’s just what I want to talk to you about,” Suzanna said, grateful for the easy opening.

  As they walked into class, Suzanna gave Andy instructions on how to get to her establishment. She was flattered that he knew the place. He’d never been to afternoon tea, he said, but he’d been in the bookstore a few times.

  Suzanna looked over her shoulder to see Rio entering the class. The unearthly quiet that filled the room whenever Rio entered the room settled over the studio. Andy gave Suzanna a little thumbs-up, and they turned their concentration to class.

  Rio called for a rotation and Suzanna found herself in the arms of a very weird guy. He was medium height with an alarming belly that protruded over his belt. He was wearing a cowboy-esque plaid shirt—with snaps—and had sparse but unruly hair that stuck up like he’d been the victim of a static-electricity prank. He followed Rio’s instructions well enough, but as soon as Rio stopped talking, the guy started dancing to some tune in his head . . . and the tune was usually something that had nothing to do with salsa. When you were partnered with this man, you were suddenly doing West Coast swing or the foxtrot. If he wasn’t creepy, or if he had been a better dancer, this might be interesting, but he wasn’t and it wasn’t.

  The class was a little short on men, and Rio was in the rotation. Suzanna kept an eye on the rotation process and counted down . . . three men until Rio. Two men until Rio, one man until Rio . . . Rio! She had rotated into Rio’s arms at last. She put her palm in his and put her other hand on his right arm.

  “Class, pay attention!” he said, and all eyes were on them. “We have learned that when we dance, we start in closed position, yes?”

  Everyone in the class soberly nodded yes, adjusting their own closed positions—the man and lady standing in front of each other, slightly offset to the left, with the lady’s arm on top of the man’s. Suzanna made eye contact briefly with Andy, who was partnered with Lauren. He gave her another little thumbs-up.

  “You all look sloppy,” Rio said is a stern voice. “Closed position has four contact points . . .”

  He released Suzanna from their frame and she was left standing with her arms hanging limply at her sides. Instinctively, she stole a quick look at her watch.

  “Are you bored?” Rio asked.

  Suzanna reddened.

  “No . . . I . . . oh, did I look at my watch? That’s just a nervous habit.”

  Rio went back to addressing the class. Suzanna needed to fend off a panic swell, so she tried to concentrate on something else . . . like how awkward she felt standing in front of the class with nothing to do with her hands.

  If only these yoga pants had pockets.

  Suzanna couldn’t decide if she would look thinner if she crossed her arms, or if that would make her look closed off . . . She had just finished reading an article on body language and, apparently, standing with your arms folded was not an inviting look. Luckily, by the time she decided that perhaps she might be best served by just putting a hand jauntily on one hip, Rio looked at her and put out his hand.

  “Let’s begin again.”

  He took her right hand in his left and they clasped hands, palm to palm. Suzanna moved her left arm up onto his shoulder and he all but shook her off.

  “Wait for me,” he said.

  He offered his hand and they clasped palms again. He put his right hand on her back, while addressing the class.

  “Notice that I am connecting with the lady’s back. I am using a cupped hand . . .”

  God, oh God!

  Rio had cupped his hand around Suzanna’s back fat, that awful place she obsessed about where the skin flopped over the bra band. She could feel the untoned skin wobbling in his left palm as he demonstrated to the class that the man does not spread his fingers across the lady’s back, but keeps his thumb and fingers together. Suzanna now prayed for a panic swell, but they never happened if someone was grounding her.

  Contact point three was a blur, because her mind had seized. All she knew was that contact point three had something to do with settling her arm from the armpit to the elbow onto the part of his arm that was connected to her back fat.

  “Placement for contact point four is very important.” He turned his head to the class, making sure everyone was paying attention. “This is where the lady’s left hand and forearm are placed on the man’s upper arm.”

  Suzanna started to put her hand into place, but he intercepted her palm.

  “The lady’s hand should rest somewhere between the man’s deltoid and his bicep,” he said, taking her hand and running it smoothly over his upper arm.

  Suzanna had no idea what a deltoid was or where to find one . . . but she was certainly enjoying the quest.

  Concentrating on the whole closed-position thing was really tough on her it didn’t matter whether her hand was on his bicep, deltoid, or shoulder, she would get distracted. Rio might be telling her that she needed to straighten her leg, or balance on her big toe, or dance on the inside edge of her foot; it didn’t matter, because all she could think about was his muscle tone—which, by the way, was excellent.

  One thing Suzanna had learned in dance class was that almost all men have great shoulder muscles. They might look fat or scrawny, but when they were spinning you around and you could feel their shoulder muscles expanding and contracting under your fingertips, well . . . it was just pretty damn distracting.

  “There is another connection point,” Rio continued. “We don’t worry about this in salsa, but I am going to tell you anyway, because you may find the information useful . . .”

  Wow, Rio is on a roll. These are the most words I’ve ever heard him speak.

  Everybody in class perked up.

  “In smooth or international style dancing, there is body contact,” he said, letting go of her to address the class.

  Suzanna stood frozen. She looked down at her watch. As soon

  as she did it, she realized her mistake and hoped to heaven that Rio hadn’t seen.

  She looked in the mirror—and he was glaring at her. He put out his hand. She offered her palm, but he shook his head.

  “Give it to me,” he said.

  Suzanna could hear people gasp and giggle. She knew a panic swell was imminent and actually welcomed it, but before she lifted off, Rio grabbed her wrist. He pulled the watch off her arm and put it in his pocket.

  “You will never be a good dancer if you don’t pay attention.”

  Suzanna nodded, willing herself not to cry.

  “The lady’s center is in contact with the man’s ribcage, like so,” he continued, pulling her tight against his body. “The connection begins at the upper thigh and continues up the torsos.”

  He was holding her so tightly that she could feel his breath going in and out. While trying to forget about the humiliating watch incident, Suzanna also tried not to key into the feeling of his ribs moving against her. It was so pathetically thrilling, she was afraid she was going to keel over—a poor man’s Marie Osmond. She snuck a peek at Lauren, just to see if she was remotely jealous, but Lauren just looked exquisite in her boredom. Suzanna registered that she had her arms folded across her perfect chest.

  She does look closed off.

  She also noticed that Lauren’s breasts look awkward, sort of squashed together. Suzanna wondered if they were real. Carla would know. Fernando would know. Eric would know. Why couldn’t she tell fake breasts when she saw them? She looked at her naked wrist, which was sitting daintily on Rio’s shoulder, realized what she was doing, and jerked her eyes back toward Rio. Mercifully, he hadn’t noticed this time.

  Rio continued to explain why the woman and man had to be connected like this, but she couldn’t even hear him. She could hardly breathe as her hormones ricocheted around the studio. She admonished herself and told herself to focus. Dancing was serious business and she was acting like it was the female’s equivalent of getting a lap dance.

  They took a break and several of the dance students headed to the wate
r cooler. One of the women asked Suzanna if the watch had been expensive.

  “Kind of,” Suzanna said. “But I’m sure he’s going to give it back.”

  The woman shrugged dolefully.

  As she sipped from the ridiculously tiny cup, she overheard the funny-haired cowboy hitting on Lauren. He leaned into her like a caricature of a used-car salesman. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the body language was unmistakable. His belly rested on Lauren’s arm; her face was a mask. Suzanna gulped her water as quickly as she could so she could get a refill. That way, she might be able to catch some of their dialogue. She stepped lightly toward the cooler and could just make out Lauren’s words.

  “I’m sure that would be lovely,” she said, “but I only go out with really good dancers.”

  And with that, she headed back to class.

  Suzanna still hated her, but man, that was good!

  Class resumed, and Suzanna remained Rio’s partner for an extended period of time. Usually, this was her idea of heaven, but he seemed frustrated with her.

  “You are sliding back on your left foot,” he said.

  She tried the move again, only to have him “tut-tut” her.

  She willed her feet to dance correctly. Even though the watch thing had thrown her, everyone else seemed to have moved on. She needed to get over herself, as Fernando would have said. Since taking up salsa, she had secretly read at least a dozen books on dance, all of which started out telling you that the most important thing was to have fun and let yourself go. That was always on page one. Then, the next two hundred pages gave you a lot of rules you had to follow or you’d just suck.

  She didn’t know if Rio was taking a special interest in her or just torturing her, but he seemed to be focusing on her, and everything she did seemed to be wrong.

  “Your left foot is slipping.”

  And . . .

  “Your head is tilted too far back.”

  And . . .

  “Your hips are not rotating.”

  And . . .

  “What are you looking at?”

  Suzanna was afraid she was about to cry when he stopped them dead in their tracks.

  “You do not trust me,” he said in defeat.

  Suzanna was appalled! Of course she trusted him!

  The class was staring at her. What could she say? That she was always thinking about sex—or at least the mysterious deltoids—when she was supposed to be thinking about her footwork? Should she confess to her vision—just a flash—of biting the ponytail holder out of his hair?

  Rio gripped her a little more firmly and nodded to the group to continue dancing. Suzanna stared at the floor and Rio commanded:

  “Don’t look down.”

  Suzanna looked up at the ceiling.

  “No, Suzanna, don’t look at the ceiling. Look at your partner. Look at me.”

  The rest of the session flew by. Suzanna didn’t know who she danced with after that or what mistakes she made or if she danced on the inside edge of her foot for even a second. She wasn’t sure if she finalized a time for Andy to come over to meet Carla. She didn’t even notice that Rio hadn’t returned her watch.

  When class was over, she walked to her car in a stupor. Unlocking her car, all she could think was:

  He knows my name.

  CHAPTER 16

  Andy showed up for his interview with Carla at ten-thirty the next morning. Suzanna pulled open the front door and led him into the cordoned-off tea shop. She noticed that he’d made an effort: he was wearing new jeans and a pressed checked shirt. Suzanna thought it was sweet that he was taking the interview so seriously. She watched Andy turn his professional eye toward the room. She tried to image how he saw the place: floor draped in plastic, huge gouges in the plaster where Carla had removed the wainscoting, and the dingy mountain laurel walls with their faint framing outlines shimmering like ghosts of bad artwork past.

  What a mess!

  “This looks great!” he said.

  He wandered around the room, running his hands over the walls and woodwork.

  “So this is yours?”

  “Yeah,” Suzanna said, with more than a little pride. “This and the bookstore and the apartment upstairs.”

  “Wow,” he said. “You seem really young to be so established.”

  “Oh, I’m not that young. I’ll be thirty-three in less than a month!”

  “That’s still pretty young to have all this,” he said, gesturing around. “How did you end up here? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “I don’t mind at all. Have a seat,” Suzanna said, gesturing to a sawhorse. “It’s my place, but I didn’t actually do it all by myself.”

  She perched on a crate opposite him. She told him about moving to L. A. with Fernando and Eric and how they had started in a tiny apartment in Venice.

  “The place existed as a tea shop for years before we got here. One of my friends, who you’ll meet in the tearoom—Fernando—landed a job as a pastry chef right away,” she said. “All the ladies loved him . . . especially the woman who owned this place. When they needed a waitress, he talked Mandy—she was the owner—into hiring me. My other co-worker—Eric—used to come pick us up after work and she got to know him, too.”

  Suzanna pointed into the bookstore and makeshift tearoom. “Mandy used that alcove as an office and warehouse. It was Eric’s idea to put a bookstore in there . . . we call it the book nook.”

  Andy nodded and Suzanna flushed as she realized how cloying that sounded.

  “How did you come to buy it?” he asked.

  “Mandy died and her troll of a brother came down from Oregon to run the place. He hated it here and sold it to me for a song . . . seems like only yesterday, but it was years ago.”

  “And you guys have been running it together all this time? That’s pretty amazing.”

  “Yeah. They’re great guys.”

  “I guess so.”

  “My friend Carla is doing the renovation,” Suzanna said, standing up. “I think she’s in the kitchen. I’ll go get her. Would you like some tea?”

  “No, thanks. I think tea is just brown water.”

  Andy smacked his forehead with his palm, realizing his faux pas.

  “Man! You can’t take me anywhere,” he said. “Hope that wasn’t a deal breaker.”

  “Not at all—as long as you’re better with a screwdriver than you are with your mouth,” Carla said, coming out of the kitchen.

  From the smell of it, she had a huge mug of Egyptian licorice tea in her hands.

  Andy laughed and Carla joined him on the sawhorse after the introductions. Suzanna never ceased to be amazed at the ease Carla felt around men. She felt awkward just standing in the middle of the debris and tried to excuse herself.

  “Well, we just got a new shipment of books and they aren’t going to sort themselves.”

  “Sweetie, let Eric handle the bookstore right now. I can’t hire Andy without your OK.”

  Andy looked at Suzanna with a lopsided grin. He was not only office cute, she thought in surprise, he was dismantled-teahouse cute! Maybe Carla and he would hit it off and Suzanna could stop obsessing about Carla reconnecting with Eric. It was a distraction she didn’t need.

  Worrying about Carla and Eric gives me less time to think about Rio.

  “Well, I’m ready to hire him right now,” Suzanna said.

  “That’s why they pay you the big bucks,” Andy said.

  Carla laughed and squeezed his knee. Suzanna was shocked. Who squeezed a man’s knee during an interview? Clearly the words “sexual harassment” hadn’t made much of an impression in Napa Valley.

  “Well, then, the job is yours,” Carla said. “If you want it.”

  “I’ll take it on one condition,” he said.

  The women waited. Andy stood up and looked at Suzanna.

  “I’ll help you out if you promise to go to salsa dancing with me,” he said. “We need the practice.”

  Suzanna could feel the heat cre
eping up her décolleté.

  “Well, uh . . .” Suzanna said.

  “She would love that!” Carla said.

  The three of them turned toward the front of the shop just as Harri was letting herself in with her keys.

  “Just make sure you don’t mention the salsa classes to the other employees,” Carla whispered to Andy before Harri was in earshot. “Suzanna likes to keep things professional around here. Sexual harassment issues . . . you know.”

  Andy nodded. Suzanna was speechless at how smoothly Carla could handle any situation.

  “It’s about time you got here,” Fernando said, coming out of the kitchen and wiping his hands on a dishtowel.

  This was Fernando’s standard greeting to Harri, but by the look on his face, he hadn’t expected an audience. Suzanna introduced Andy to Fernando and Harri, both of whom gave him the once-over.

  Are all my friends sex addicts?

  “Well, I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” Andy said, and headed out the door Harri had left ajar. They all looked after him.

  “He is cute,” Carla said.

  “So cute,” Harri said.

  “Great butt,” Fernando said.

  “I have books to unpack,” Suzanna said. She didn’t have room in her brain for any more cute men.

  The bookstore was already open when Suzanna crossed the hall. Eric was at the front counter, studying. He looked up as she stepped into the store.

  “Morning, Beet.”

  Suzanna gave him a nod.

  “We got a shipment?”

  “Yeah,” Eric said, indicating a large box. “Over there. But don’t worry about it. I’ll unpack as soon as I finish this chapter.”

  “That’s okay,” Suzanna said, as she took a box cutter and sliced open a sturdy cardboard box. “I’m pretty worthless next door right now. I’m happy to help.”

  “Let me at least get it off the floor,” Eric said as he effortlessly picked up the box and put it on the counter.

  “Thanks,” Suzanna said. “Hey, you can go study in the office if you want. I’ve got this.”

  Eric gave her a thumbs-up, snapped his book shut, and headed back toward the office. Suzanna watched him go, and as she habitually did, closed her mind to the thoughts that were about to invade it.