by Mary Jackman
A well-known landmark in the city, this popular nightclub was loved by young and old alike. Having survived fifty years in the central west end of Toronto, the neighbourhood club had recently undergone a massive renovation. I had heard a rumour circulating that not everyone approved of the new exterior — you can’t please everyone all of the time — but the refurbished ballroom had maintained the same classic proportions inside, with brighter lights than ever before and a new barroom twice the size of the old one.
As part of the reopening ceremony, an international dance competition would draw a huge crowd. Offering a five-thousand-dollar cash prize for the best performance was destined to be a hit with the locals.
I assumed the rehearsal times were over by now since there was a small cover charge. I got my hand stamped by a woman who looked more like a gypsy fortune teller than an employee and walked into a central lobby, which was bustling with activity. The rain outside had left the streets empty and forlorn, but inside it was like Mardi Gras. I didn’t feel conspicuous without a date. Tonight’s ambience lent itself more to business than pleasure.
I wandered through another set of double doors that led into a narrow, glass rotunda. A circular waist-high wall, topped with spindle-shaped posts, overlooked a very crowded dance floor. This was the main ballroom. Some patrons stood behind the wall, observing and chatting about the dancers on the floor. I purchased a small tumbler of cold white wine and found a spot alongside a railing that was wide enough on which to rest my drink.
The perfect vantage point to watch the dancers, it didn’t take me long to spot Maria. She was standing by herself in the middle of the floor. Other couples twirled and dipped around her. I thought she was alone until I noticed another dancer slinking in her direction. He stopped three feet away, swaying back and forth to the music with his hands flattened on his hips. At first Maria seemed to be oblivious to his presence. Then she stamped her foot and turned her back on him. Lunging at her with a high-kick step, he grabbed her long black hair in his fist. She spun around and lifted her hand to strike his face, but he caught her hand mid-air and pulled her whip tight to his chest. Bending her over backwards, he set her hair free, letting it sweep the floor until he lifted her straight up and into the air with one hand. My breath caught. The other couples made room as the two executed spins and thrusts around the room with electrifying precision and speed. They came to a show-stopping lift with Maria balanced high in the air, back arched, and her hips held tightly in the man’s strong hands. I cried out, “Bravo, Bravo!”
I assumed the young man was Nicky, the dance partner Maria had mentioned at the hospital. He was pure heat and sizzling energy. His painted-on black nylon shirt and flared pants revealed a seductively lithe body that made me squirm in my shoes. From the looks on some of the other women watching from the sidelines it did to them, too.
Maria looked sensational. She was wearing the costume I had discovered tucked inside the gold bag along with the flyers back at the hospital cafeteria. When I had briefly handled the cloth, I felt a finely meshed nylon material. I didn’t remember the glowing emerald fabric. The teensy outfitwas stretched tightly across her small breasts and narrow hips. Feathers trimmed the hem and glass beads, surrounding the neckline, sparkled under the chandelier lights. It was a miracle of modern science that the skimpy dress, completely backless, didn’t fall off when Nicky flung her across the dance floor.
As far as I was concerned, no one held a candle to Maria and Nicky. Every step, every movement, appeared effortlessly as one. There was only one other couple who stood out from the rest and like Maria, the girl in that duo was muscular and shapely, with noticeably pronounced tendons in her legs. Her hair was short and black, a pixie-cut. It was cute and it suited her, but was oddly different from the other women on the floor. Most of them either had long hair pulled into tight ponytails or swept up into grand architectural contrivances. Maria’s was long and chestnut brown, but she wore it loose, with ribbons threaded through the heavy curls. Both girls’ costumes were similar in brevity and style and the shoes had similarly thick, sturdy-looking high heels.
The other partner was shorter than Nicky and stockier. He moved like a tornado, kicking and hopping, spinning his partner endlessly. He was energetic and athletic, but hardly graceful or seductive. The two couples were obviously friendly and faked tripping each other as a harmless game. They were laughing and the usually aloof Maria was having fun. Good for her.
I looked at my empty glass and, still thirsty, went to the bar. The ballroom floor had been replaced with new gleaming hardwood and the surrounding walls given a warm lustre of golden paint. The overhead chandeliers dazzled the eyes. A thousand teardrops of glass crystal had been refurbished or possibly just cleaned and I thought someday I’ll try cleaning the office windows, when a fond saying of my mother’s popped into my head, “Someday you’ll be dead, too.” The magnificent lights rose and fell slowly between songs.
The bar was absolutely gorgeous. I wished with aching heart I owned a bar like that. It was made out of oiled mahogany, with a glassy top and shaped like a key. Rows of liquor bottles were stacked at the far end in front of two massive, ornately carved mirrors suspended from the ceiling. There was an undulating surge of customers moving forward trying to get served. On the floor in front of the bar, five round tables had been pulled together by a group of young girls and boys chatting excitedly about tomorrow’s contest. Separate tables scattered around the bar were full and the bar itself was packed shoulder to shoulder.
With this large a crowd, the bar was understaffed, causing the bartenders to fly up and down the key. Edging myself into a slot between two couples, I leaned against the bar, waited for a bartender to see me, and held my glass up, mouthing the word water. He nodded, not nearly as annoyed as I anticipated. Maybe the break from shaking one more pina colada or making change for another twenty to pay for a three-dollar soft drink was considered a welcome task. I gave him a buck, anyway.
The mirrors were tremendous in size. I could see all around the room and into the dance area. I could even see Maria and her friends leaving the dance floor and making their way toward the bar. Quickly, I ducked behind the woman with the big head standing next to me at the bar. She turned her back to talk to her husband and I found myself staring directly into a nest of teased hair trapped in a silver net with a velvet bow holding it in place. When the lady moved her head, I moved mine in unison.
Maria was going to get the idea I was stalking her if she saw me here tonight. I didn’t want to have to explain myself to her and her friends. I thought if I could talk to her alone I could ask her what favours she did for her deceased employer. I got the impression his wife knew what they were and frankly I didn’t think they were sexual.
I was looking for another way out and saw a fire exit sign posted at the top of a flight of stairs with an arrow pointing down. Below it was another sign indicating that the ladies’ washrooms were also downstairs. Perfect, two birds with one stone.
Stepping down the rickety stairs, the basement seemed dilapidated compared to the rest of the newly polished club. The renovation appeared to have stopped with the completion of the front facade and main floor. It was postwar era down there. Overhead exposed pipes, connected to steaming radiators lining the hallway, disappeared through the wall and beyond to unknown mechanical rooms and storage spaces.
A freshly painted but severely scarred wooden door read LADIES ROOM, a twin door, on the opposite side, read CHANGE ROOM.
Naturally, when I peeked inside the ladies’ wash-room there was a lineup. I wondered if the dancers’ changeroom had facilities and I pushed the door open like I meant it. One has to act like one owns the place for this tactic to work. I was in luck, nobody was in there. I went into a stall and closed the door. Just in the nick of time. Two women walked in the room right on my heels.
I recognized Maria’s voice. I silently slid the bolt across on the stall door, opening it a crack to peek out, but a row of lockers t
hat acted as a barrier between the toilets and the rest of the dressing room spoiled my view. I was about to close the door when the other girl approached a wash basin opposite me and splashed her face with water. It was the dancer she and Nicky had been clowning around with earlier. I heard Maria call her urgently, “Hurry up, Inez. Do that later. We need to make the exchange now.”
“Exchange?” I whispered in surprise.
The girl called Inez turned around suddenly and looked my way. I gently closed the toilet door all the way and held my breath. I was sure she had seen me watching her. I could hear her move close to the door, waiting for me to come out.
“Hurry up, Inez. I hear someone coming down the stairs.”
Inez went back to Maria and mumbled something inaudible. Pressing against the stall door I managed to overhear one word: “tomorrow.” A locker door slammed, more whispering, and they left.
Two other girls came into the room. I flushed the toilet and stood in front of the sink, pretending to fix my hair in the mirror. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught something lying on the floor beside one of the lockers. I walked over and looked down. Remembering the deck of cards Maria had dropped at the hospital, I picked up the card and put it in my pocket.
I walked back into the hall and left through the rear exit door. The land was higher here on this side of the building and I stepped directly out from the basement level onto the paved parking lot. It was raining lightly. The lot wasn’t as busy as it had been an hour ago. Some of the younger dancers had probably attended school that day, and, tired from a night of rehearsal and the excitement of the big contest tomorrow, they would want to get home to bed. Speaking of which, I was tired, too.
I had covered a lot of territory since this morning. I visited Mr. Randolph at the hospital where I met Mrs. Cecilia Vieira for the first time and talked to Maria in the cafeteria. Then I ate perogies at St. Lawrence market, met Mrs. Wong for the community meeting, almost got mugged in Kensington, and ate Korean in Chinatown with Detective David Winn, my hero. I visited my failing enterprise, complained bitterly about it (which I fully regret), and drove in the pouring rain to Toscano’s to speak to Maria, which I was unable to do. Did I say I was tired? More like comatose.
To make matters worse, I had to be at the restaurant at 8:00 a.m. sharp for the staff meeting the next morning. I moved down an aisle toward my car. That’s when I saw Maria’s dancer friend, Inez, up ahead. She jumped into the passenger seat of an idling car. The car slowly backed up. Rather than passing behind it, I waited courteously for the owner to reverse out of the narrow space. It was a big car. The driver turned to gauge his room and as he neared I saw him. It was Detective David Winn.
He saw me, too. He stepped on his brake and I ran for my car. I jumped in and took off out of the driveway, bouncing off the curb with a slam dunk. After a few blocks I slowed down. Checking my rearview mirror, I realized he wasn’t following me. Fine with me, I didn’t want to talk to him, anyway. That’s not true. I wanted to tell him the girl he was squiring around was in league with Maria. Some kind of an exchange could mean drugs. I shook my head. My mind was imploding and all I wanted to do was go home to bed.
Typically, I couldn’t find a parking space at that time of night. So I left the car partially up on the curb in front of my house, a move guaranteeing I’d find a ticket stuck under the wiper in the morning. I had a room full of tickets. One more wasn’t going to make a difference. I walked up the front path, noting that the house next door was pitch-black inside. My new neighbours moved in a month ago and the only glimpse I’ve had of them so far was when I got up one morning before dawn to pee. I heard a car coming to life out front and watched from my window, hidden behind the bedroom curtains, as four clean-cut men dressed like missionaries were boarding a black minivan with tinted windows. It was always so unnaturally dark in their house, I wasn’t even sure they had their hydro hooked up yet. In contrast, my house always had a light on it somewhere. I’ve been known to wander at night, I hate knocking into things.
The neighbours on the other side of my house were ex-pat Lithuanian professors who dined every night at a filigreed cast-iron table covered with a white linen tablecloth. They drank frozen vodka from crystal glasses, talking more loudly of war as the evening wore on. I’ve been invited over many times and been fed Belgian chocolates while getting drunk on Kir. Good, bad whatever, Toronto is unquestionably a melting pot of diversity.
I walked in the front door of my house. Simultaneously, Jon called out to me from the kitchen.
“Hey, Mom, where have you been? I’ve been trying to get you on your cellphone for hours.”
“Sorry, Jon, I turned it off.” I sighed. He ambled into the hallway and leaned against the door.
“Boy, you look beat. Come into the kitchen, I have a surprise for you.”
“Not now, honey, I’m exhausted and before I go to bed, I was wondering if I could use your computer.”
“Can’t right now, I’m defragging the hard drive and it will take a couple of hours. Leave a note for me and I’ll do it tomorrow. Now come on into the kitchen, I have a surprise.”
Too tired to argue, I hung my coat up on a peg to dry and wandered wearily into the kitchen. I thought my heart would stop. Sitting in the same chair where Winn had sat two days ago was Maritime Andy, drinking a beer, and looking very pleased to see me.
I can’t say the feeling was entirely mutual. After our heated east coast encounter, I had invited Andy to visit me in Toronto whenever he liked. I never dreamed I’d see him a few days later in my kitchen.
Andy’s pompadour hairdo and sideburns had been replaced with a stylish close-cropped haircut. He was wearing a simple black crew-neck sweater that exposed the collar of a crisp, white shirt beneath. Black khakis and tan walking boots finished the look. He looked good and I told him so. After the initial shock of finding him in my kitchen, I succumbed to his easy charm and decided I was happy to see him again. I also told him he could stay as long as he liked, meaning not more than a week, and made up the spare bedroom for him.
Andy brought me up to date on events back at the schoolhouse hotel. The big news was that Evelyn had successfully smooth-talked the painter into coming back to finish the job at the hotel and now they were dating.
He explained that, after hearing me prowling around on the fire stairs earlier and thinking the rest of the hotel was deserted, the painter decided to investigate on behalf of Evelyn, who was visiting her mother. He got considerably more trouble than he bargained for and Andy felt bad for tackling him.
“So it was him feeling his way along the walls.” I said. I was relieved no one was trying to kill me, but was angered by the unnecessary scare. “Maybe you should have told him a late-night guest had checked in.”
“I know, I’m sorry, but I knew he went to bed early so he could up at dawn to paint and I figured he’d be fast asleep. I didn’t want to disturb him.”
“Hello,” I said, “not everyone falls asleep as easily as you think. Take me, for example. At least he was brave enough to check it out.”
“That’s what Evelyn thought, too. She’s been fawning over him ever since.”
“It’s difficult imagining her fawning over anything. She looks as hard as nails.”
“She’s not hard and she didn’t have to let you stay the night in the hotel, either.” Andy was clearly offended. “The hotel was closed for renovation, but she was worried about you driving at night in the fog.”
“Oh, Andy, forgive me, I’ve had a bad day. This revelation comes as quite a surprise and I should have thanked her. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Upstairs, in my bedroom, I thought about seeing David Winn earlier in Toscano’s parking lot. Nice excuse, him telling me it was police business before bolting from the deli in Chinatown. After fuming for a while, I decided it wasn’t his fault he was more interested in the attractive young dancer than me. Why not? From the looks of her, she probably didn’t have food stains on every item of clothin
g she owned.
I hadn’t fallen asleep fantasizing about anyone for a long time and figured there wasn’t much point in me doing it tonight, either. Don’t get me wrong, I was attracted to Andy, but he was seven years younger than me. Not enough to be criminal, but just enough to make that night at his house a one-time only kind of deal. I wasn’t sure how he felt about me, either. I wasn’t getting any obvious romantic signals from him. Maybe he was shy in front of Jon. I just didn’t know.
Using the remote control, I turned on the television set, perched on an old parsons table, positioned at the foot of my bed. The last remaining piece of furniture I bought for my first apartment so many lifetimes ago, the well-designed table was still good as new.
Undressing, I took off my grey slacks, creased them with my fingers, and folded them over a hanger. The card, found in Toscano’s dressing room, flipped out of the pocket and smacked the floor. Holding it up, I inspected it curiously. It looked as if it belonged to the same deck Maria had dropped and scrambled after in the hospital cafeteria. The jack of spades appeared on one side, soccer superstar Pelé’s handsome face on the other. It felt heavy and thick, as if two cards were stuck together.
I picked at the top of the card where a slight gap showed, but I couldn’t wedge my baby finger inside. I tried the nail scissors from the bathroom. It gave and split down the middle, revealing a small, hard piece of white plastic inside. It appeared to be a social security card. Red raised printing on the numbers and a blank where the name should have been. I wondered about the rest of the cards in Maria’s deck. Considering the ramifications this presented, I’d have to tell Winn. The fact that I never wanted to speak to him again was clearly beside the point.
