In La Boca, eating sweet alfajores and sipping mate, a kind of tea, I watched an elderly couple dancing a slow public tango. He was a few inches shorter than her and twice as small, and she was wearing too much makeup for daytime. But these oddities made them more attractive, more compelling. Their dance was achingly intimate, the way they performed for a crowd of strangers gathering in the square at dusk. I was moved nearly to tears by the music, and the expressions of pain and love on their faces. If she could be so vulnerable in front of so many people, in broad daylight, what the hell was I afraid of? Maybe that was true generosity. Giving of yourself, just as you are, for the sake of a dance.
That night I actually needed Ernesto’s proffered hand to help me out of the back seat of the limo and to unravel the mass of red feathers surrounding my tango dress. I was not at all surprised that the dress fit perfectly, but I was shocked at how flattering it was. The bodice encased me snugly, my breasts spilling over the top. Below the dropped waist, the dress tufted into a mass of feathers that floated down to my calves. I felt like a goddess emerging from a scarlet ocean.
“Gracias.”
“Por nada,” he said, bowing again. “You look … lindísima in that dress, Señorita Dauphine.”
I gave Ernesto a nervous smile and glanced down the narrow alley towards the tango club’s neon entrance. Very few people were on this secluded street at midnight.
“I meet you right here … after?”
He motioned me forward with his white-gloved hands. I’ll be okay, I’ll be okay. As I inched closer to the mournful, lilting music wafting out of the dark club, a kind-faced doorman, also gloved, opened a gap in the velvet curtains hanging in the entrance.
“We’ve been waiting for you, Dauphine.”
Oh dear. I ducked inside, feeling faint. A dozen couples turned to look my way, as though they had been expecting me. I was led around the tiny tables to a banquette against the far wall. As I took my seat, a sprightly waitress wearing a white tutu and black-and-white-striped stockings dropped a pink drink in front of me.
“We’re about to begin, Dauphine,” she said, in what sounded like a French accent. “Can I get you anything?”
Before I could open my mouth, a small, dimly lit band to the right of the stage struck up a ballad. The musicians were wearing blindfolds, their heads dipping and swaying as they played their instruments. Why were their eyes covered? The audience turned their attention to the band and the lone spotlight now illuminating the stage. I sank back into my velvet banquette, hoping just to watch. I could feel my heart pounding against my bodice, certain everyone could hear it too. Then I heard a low, gravelly a cappella voice.
A stunning woman in a dress exactly like mine, but black, slowly moved from the wings of the stage to center herself under the spotlight. Her hands surrounded the microphone, her lips a glistening ruby red. The song was in Spanish, but I could tell its lyrics were sad. Her eyes squeezed shut as she sang something about a girl and her heart and some broken dreams, I think. One of the couples rose from the front row, fell into each other’s arms, dipped low in those familiar turns of the tango—each holding the other up, a leg jutting out, kicking here and there, no light between them. Another woman, in the tight blue dress slit to her waist, pulled her tuxedoed date onto the floor. Their dance released a cascade of four more couples, until the singer was surrounded by a dozen bodies moving in circles to the music. Then the singer turned to look my way, directing her passion to … to me?
The song was about passing time, about a woman who had regrets for a life not lived. Or maybe for living a life half-awake. The singer was mesmerizing. I squirmed in my seat, uncertain how to react to her gaze. She seemed to be very publically seducing me. Or maybe this was just the nature of the tango. Feeling by turns charmed and embarrassed by her attention, I was relieved when a tanned hand beckoned me to stand.
“Va a aceptar este paso?”
The hand belonged to a tall man with short, black curly hair and beautiful black eyes. He smiled, displaying a row of white perfect teeth set against the olive of his perfectly smooth skin. I felt my knees would dissolve to pudding if I stood.
“I’m afraid I don’t know how to dance,” I said, as loudly and politely as I could without being louder than the singer.
“No importa,” he said, still smiling, adding, “just give yourself to me and the rest will follow. We will take care of you.”
We? He pulled me to my feet, overwhelming me with the expanse of his chest, a black shirt tight across his perfect torso, tucked into black pants that fit his dancer’s legs perfectly. Give yourself to him, Dauphine. This is about Generosity.
“I accept,” I said, my gut lurching.
Grasping my hand, he led me onto the dance floor.
He threw his arm around my back and drew me in until I was fully pressed against him, my heels between his shoes. He grabbed my other hand and held it aloft. Suddenly, I felt someone against my back. I turned, shocked to see the beautiful singer, her eyes closed, her hand joining ours aloft, her fingers entwining with mine. Her other hand crept up and around to my middle, just below my breasts, pulling me back into her, and her rose perfume mixed with my dance partner’s soft musk.
“Let her help you. Feel how her body moves behind you,” my partner whispered. “Move as she does.”
She bent her left knee, bending mine too, her left hand caressing down my leg. Facing my partner, I felt the woman behind me pull up my skirt to reveal the top of my black garters. Before I knew what was happening, she was sliding a warm hand along my thigh, dipping me backwards against her body. The band picked up the tempo. I could feel her breasts against my back and the male dancer’s chest brushing lightly against the front of me. We moved in heady unison around the floor. I felt carried along, a part of their dance. I was doing it! Soon, the other couples began to recede from the stage into the dark, and it was just the three of us.
Then, lesson over and timed to a flourish of the guitar, the singer twirled away from me and fell into the arms of a beautiful blond woman who appeared out of the shadows. Her hair was pulled tightly back, and she wore a mask and black tuxedo pants. She was taller than the singer, her white halter highlighting her lean, tanned arms. My male partner pulled me fully to his body, his hand tracing down my back, over my buttocks, as he pressed his pelvis into me. That had made him hard, and I could feel him pulsing against my side. As he lifted me off the floor, my legs scissored in the air, and after a quarter turn, he deposited me in front of the two female dancers. The blonde moved like a panther, her hand on the singer’s lower back, their arms a limber vine.
“Watch them,” my partner whispered. “What the singer is doing, you will do, and what she is feeling I will make you feel.”
I mimicked the singer’s hips, pivoting, one, two, three, knee up, as my partner caught me, pulling me against him and down, my hands on his chest. Then I watched as the women pressed together, step, step, stop and pivot, the blonde’s hand moving down the front of the singer’s body as she bent backwards, her eyes shut. It was so hot. They were hot, both of these women, clutching each other. This was turning me on as much as my own partner’s hands. Then the blonde slowly unzipped the singer’s dress, letting it die at her feet. She was in stay-up stockings and garters, no underwear, her pale pink nipples peaking over the top of her black demi-cup bra, dark hair cascading around her shoulders. I took in her beautiful body and the soft line of pubic hair highlighted against the tawny flesh of the blonde’s hand as it traveled over her, fingers quivering. I felt my partner behind me, inching me closer to the singer. Then I heard it, the sound of my zipper as my dress slipped off and pooled around my ankles. The singer and I stood facing each other, both nearly naked, a foot apart, in garters and bras. I’d never been with a woman before, but her desire for me was obvious … and intoxicating. I wanted her, and him, all of it.
While our partners moved behind us, the singer pulled me in for an urgent kiss, and I let her! I was kissing a
beautiful woman, her soft mouth humming, her tongue darting into mine. Her lips traveled eagerly down my neck, while her blond partner’s fingers teased her, her long red nails now a blur of circles over her clitoris. Watching the blonde pleasure the singer, feeling the singer’s ragged breath on my skin as her orgasm coursed through her, my own body heated and pulsed, arousing my partner behind me. Even after she came, she didn’t stop swirling my nipples in her cool mouth, while my partner’s warm, firm hands slid over my stomach, my pelvis, encircling me, his fingers finding my own wetness, using the same driving rhythm as the singer’s tongue on me. I was gorgeously pressed between them, thrashing with pleasure; in a matter of seconds I felt it too, and my whole body quaked. I took what they were so generously giving me. With one hand in the singer’s thick hair, I watched the tip of her pink tongue flicking my nipples as my partner’s fingers fiercely massaged the knot of my clit in perfect circles, driving me crazy, releasing me, making me come, my orgasm crashing over my body in wave after wave.
“Oh … yes.”
“Hermosa,” the singer murmured.
My partner clutched me tight, his hand cupping me as I shook, then subsided. I felt faint as he kissed my shoulder and gently released me to the floor in a spent pile next to my beautiful dress.
As the band struck up a new tempo, the blonde tugged the singer into a stiff tango silhouette and they danced away from me, into the dark wings of the stage. My partner exited behind them, blowing me a singular kiss, stopping to touch the stage once with his hand, as if in gratitude.
Then he too was gone.
Good lord, what just happened?
I blinked, breathless, hearing the blindfolded band still playing as though to a full house. I felt coated in bliss, warm beneath the spotlight, my red swan dress sleeping next to the singer’s ebony feather mass. Then I saw it, small and round and glinting on the floor of the stage where my partner had placed his hand: my Step Four charm.
Hermosa.
13
CASSIE
MARK DRURY LOOKED like I’d just rolled up a newspaper and hit him on the nose.
“You don’t want to see me anymore?”
After he called twice in three days, I agreed to meet up with him at Washington Square Park after my shift. Despite a sign banning dogs and bikes, the park was a perfect place to bring both on a hot summer’s day.
“It’s not that I don’t want to see you …” I said.
“I thought we had a good time.”
“We did.”
“Then what’s up with you?”
I squinted into the middle distance, keeping my eye on a cocker spaniel puppy nipping at the leg of its owner, thinking that if Mark were a dog, that’s the breed he’d be. Will would be the stalwart chocolate lab over by the sandbox, Tracina the yappy alpha beagle holding court nearby. I’d be the flat-coated retriever under the stand of palms, the one chasing its own tail.
“Mark,” I said. “I think … you’re great.”
“Is it this Will guy?”
My shoulders sank. It was Will. Every time I made strides away from him, one look, one touch, one kiss and I was infected again.
“That’s part of it.” But the other, the part I didn’t want to tell him, was that outside of bed I thought of him as my bratty brother.
Mark placed a tender arm around me.
“Love is hard, Cassie. I know. I’m a musician.”
I almost snorted, but he was so damn endearing. I just accepted the gesture and leaned into him a little.
It had been three days since my interlude with Will in the new restaurant, since he’d pulled me into that kiss. In those three days we had sheepishly avoided each other at work, both of us over-apologizing for every awkward hallway passing, over-thanking each other for every favor of a poured coffee or a hammer handed over. Alone with me briefly in his office during a shift change, Will whispered that he wanted to get two things straight—and that it would be the last time he’d bring up what happened.
“One: I have no regrets for anything I did or said. And two: I still want you to take the job upstairs.”
“Fine,” I said, “I will. I’ll take the job, but the other? That can’t happen again. It’s not fair to me, it’s not fair to Tracina, or the baby.”
In hushed tones, both of us listening for sounds of footsteps coming down the hall, he promised no more drama, no more stolen kisses, no more sneaking around. We even shook on it, the shock of his skin electric as always. And today, looking at Mark’s attractive profile as he sat on the park bench next to me, I realized that since I didn’t have the ability to keep away from someone I really wanted or to be compelled by someone I didn’t want, I needed a man in the middle. I needed a wedge between me and Will, and me and Mark.
But the only other person who tweaked both my mind and body was Jesse, and he was cued up for a final go-around with Dauphine. Unless I could recruit a substitute. And that’s when it struck me like a marvelous bolt of lightning.
“… anyway, look, I’m just gathering adventures too, Cassie, and maybe you’re one of them. But if you’re not into this, that’s cool. No skin off my nose.”
My thoughts drifted. They were both young and brash and lanky. They both had sexy smirks. They both looked good in a white tank top, a rarity for any man other than a ’50s Marlon Brando. But while Jesse had a warmth, a kindness to him, maybe because he was a single dad, Mark was bratty. Jesse had tattoos, though I was still surprised Mark didn’t. I tried to calculate exactly when Dauphine might have her Jesse fantasy. She got back from Buenos Aires in a few days, so it would take place within a month. A wave of nervous energy ran through me. S.E.C.R.E.T. recruits were put through a battery of tests that took weeks. I had to act fast—
Mark snapped his fingers in front of my face.
“Where are you, Cassie?”
“Sorry. I’m here. The dogs … they’re so cute. I got distracted.” I turned to fully face him on the bench. “You know, I liked what you said about gathering adventures. You’re young. That’s precisely what you should be doing. You shouldn’t be tied down to one woman right now, right?”
“I guess,” he said. “But I’m a musician. We like having girlfriends. They ground us while we create.”
“Right.”
The dogs were circling each other, sniffing. I turned to look him in the eye, my mouth set in a determined line.
“So if you’re serious about ‘gathering adventures,’ I think I have one for you. It’s a big one. An incredible one. The kind of adventure you’re not going find anywhere else.”
“Or with anyone else?” he asked, leaning in to kiss me.
I held him off. “This is an adventure you’ll have … with other women. More interesting women than me. Adventurous women. If you are open to it.”
And just like that, a slow smile spread across Mark’s face. Men do have it easier, I thought. He didn’t need a preamble or assurances before taking in my proposition, the same shocking one Matilda had dropped on me, the one I had offered Dauphine a few months ago. He didn’t need to be warmed up, comforted or cajoled. He didn’t need to be gingerly approached. He didn’t have deep psychic obstacles to overcome or social conditioning to fight against. My offer didn’t cause him to question everything he had been taught about his role in the world or his sexuality. When I dangled the possibility of more sex, interesting sex, lots of sex, exactly the way he liked it and the way women liked it, he simply clasped his hands behind his head and said, “You have my attention, Cassie Robichaud. My full attention.”
Matilda wasn’t as easy to convince.
“He has to go through a vigorous screening process, Cassie. That means medical, psychological, physical—”
“He’ll pass,” I said, tearing the label clean off my beer bottle.
“That’s a sign of sexual frustration,” she said matter-of-factly, pointing out my fidgeting.
“So is this request, believe me!”
Our usual meet-up spot, Tracy�
�s, was quiet for a Friday afternoon. Come to think of it, my shift at the Café had been pretty dead too. Tracina was glad for it, so pregnant now that people didn’t really feel comfortable having her wait on them because she looked like she could drop the baby right at their table. It was only a matter of weeks before she’d be off her feet entirely.
Will had posted for a replacement, but then his brother Jackson from Slidell asked if he’d take on his oldest daughter, Claire, a quirky, dreadlocked seventeen-year-old who wanted to finish high school at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, which had a campus not far from the Café. Between piercings and poetry readings, she promised she could work two nights a week and weekends, more shifts during the summer. Will was reluctant at first to have his unruly teenage niece also living with him, until Tracina pointed out the convenient babysitter possibilities once their child was born. So Claire started immediately, and immediately fit in at the restaurant by pissing off Dell and getting underfoot.
Matilda wasn’t finished listing all the caveats of recruiting Mark.
“If Mark passes all the tests, he’ll still have to be trained, Cassie. And the other women have to weigh in. It has to be unanimous.”
“He’ll appeal. And Dauphine has a thing for musicians.”
“And then there’s the matter of you and Jesse. He could turn you down, you know. I mean, he has one last go through S.E.C.R.E.T. and he may want to savor that opportunity. Are you ready for potential rejection?”
“Sure. Yeah. Of course.” I shrugged, taking a sip of my beer.
I flinched because I was lying. S.E.C.R.E.T. had given me many gifts, but the ability to withstand rejection wasn’t one of them. After all, there was no possibility of being rejected in S.E.C.R.E.T., only of turning others down. Of course Jesse could turn me down, and why wouldn’t he? What was he going to be offered, anyway? A plain old date with me, a woman he slept with once in a fantasy scenario, more than a year ago, one who balked when the possibility of more presented itself. Or the thrill of a new fantasy and new flesh pressed against his skin. Given the choice, wouldn’t most men want the novelty? Wouldn’t I? Well, no. I had had that novelty with Mark, and more than that with Will. Mark I didn’t want. Will I couldn’t have. And so, in my mind, that left Jesse.
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