Ballroom: A Novel Read online

  “It’ll be our secret, Mr. Korn. Jeez, it’s cold.” She worked at burying her toes in the sand. There was a delicate gold chain with a small heart around her pale slender ankle. “I have plans, too. I’m going to be a travel agent. That way I get to go places. I’ve always wanted to travel.

  “Accounting doesn’t interest me. Just numbers sitting there—lines and columns. I want to help people experience the world. To get to know my customers, then know the perfect place for them to travel. Where they’ll have the best time. Like you, for example, I bet you’d like Puerto Rico.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have you ever been?”

  “No, not yet.”

  She shook her shoulders in a mock cha-cha. “I bet you’re a good dancer. Right?”

  “How could you tell?” It amazed him that she could guess things about him.

  “I just can tell things about people. I was just there for my vacation, and I’m going again next year, or maybe Christmas. I danced all night. You’d love it.” She put her plastic handbag on her lap and took out a lipstick as though he wasn’t there. Using the mirror inside the lid to apply a shimmer of frosted pink, she smacked her lips together. She checked her hair, pushing the strands out of her eyes. The gesture seemed so personal to Harry—sexy.

  “I guess you’re not married, or you’d be here with the missus.”

  “No, I’m not married.” He wondered if she’d followed him.

  “Is it all right if I call you Harry, since we’re at the picnic?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  Where the curve of the top of her swimsuit met her chest, close to the mole, he observed the whiteness of her breast that hadn’t been in the sun. He picked up a handful of sand, let it sift through his fingers. When Belle reached for his hand, he closed his fist.

  “Don’t be nervous. I just want to see the beach glass,” she said, peeling his fist open. “Blue’s hard to find.”

  “What’s beach glass?”

  “Beach glass. I collect it. I love thinking about how it washed out to sea one place. Just a piece of broken glass. Then, out of nowhere it arrives here in your hand, and it’s been completely changed. Everything it was before is gone. All its broken edges are smoothed out. Its past rubbed off and look, Harry, now it’s almost mysterious.” She held the frosty piece of glass close to him so he could look through it. “Go on, touch it. It feels so smooth and fine. Doesn’t it? Like skin. Where do you think it came from?” she asked. “France, maybe? A Greek island,” she answered before he could respond. “Even China. Maybe a perfume bottle that belonged to a French woman or a wine bottle thrown overboard from an Italian yacht.”

  She had some imagination, he thought.

  “Did you ever go on a cruise, Harry?” Again, she didn’t wait for him to say anything. “I went on one to Bermuda with Patty Kelley last year. We danced all night. Got all dressed up. If there were no guys to dance with, the crew danced with us, and they were in dress whites. We pretended we were royalty. Traveling incognito.” Her eyes sparkled when she spoke. “So, you like to dance?”

  “Yeah, I go dancing now and then,” he said, and wondered what it would be like to slow-dance with her to a Frank Sinatra song; travel on a cruise ship to Bermuda; dance in a nightclub in Puerto Rico. He would never tell her that he didn’t take vacations; that he went to the Broadway Dance Palace, where he paid girls like Tina Ostrov to dance; that he fondled their breasts and they made him come.

  Her cheeks flushed as she spoke, her blue eyes were soft, and she made him feel very comfortable. As he handed her the beach glass, grains of sand fell into her lap. He noticed the blond hairs on her thighs as she dropped the glass into her handbag.

  “Don’t you love the smell of the beach? Like right now. Close your eyes. Go on. What do you smell?” He closed them, smelled the sea, the scent of underwater life left over from the morning’s tide. When he ran his tongue over his parched lips, he could still taste the ocean, the seawater that had seeped into his nose and throat, almost choking him with its salt.

  “I don’t know. Bain de Soleil?” he said.

  “Don’t open your eyes,” she said. He imagined that she might touch him. When he did open his eyes, she had moved nearer, giving off a musky scent, blond and delicious. He wanted to move away, yet he was excited about the confinement of the space under the boardwalk, its privacy, while people moved swiftly along above them. He tried to control his thoughts, but her closeness put him on edge.

  “Do you like me, Harry?” she whispered. “I’ve wanted to get to know you—since that first day you interviewed me.” She placed a finger on his chest, then her palm, and ran it up to his shoulder. He wondered if she could hear the giveaway pounding of his heart. “Ooh, I can feel your heart.” When she smiled at him, he noticed that her eyes were like azure circles. He could vaguely hear the crashing of the waves. He tried to focus on the slivers of gray sky that he could see through the boardwalk above, the quickening footsteps and voices overhead as rain fell through the slats onto his face.

  “Maybe we should head back to the picnic.”

  “You’re handsome, you know. You’ve got a great body too, Harry. I watched you swimming along the shore. I hope we can see each other again. I’ve got my own apartment. Near Gramercy Park.” She had this eager expression he suddenly couldn’t bear, as though she wanted something that he couldn’t give. He felt compelled to get away from, her sugared voice and fervid eyes. “You could come over after work on Friday.” He shuddered at her fingers tracing the veins on his forearm. He needed to get out from under the boardwalk, into the ocean, wash off her female odors and touch from his skin.

  Leave me alone at work, Belle,” he warned her in September.

  “You mean we have to pretend we don’t know each other?”

  “That’s what I mean.” And yet he looked for her at work, kept his office door open to catch glimpses of the motion of her buttocks as she turned corners, admiring the muscular curve of her calves as she swayed over high heels at the water cooler. Beckoning him, always beckoning him. Hearing her laughter with the salesmen, he could barely work, eager to get home and call her.

  “You going to be home tonight?”

  “Gee, I was going to the movies. Wanna come?”

  “Why don’t I just come over?” he said.

  “I really want to go to the movies.”

  “Never mind, I’ll see you some other time.”

  “Well, okay.”

  “How about I come by about ten?” Her apartment near Gramercy Park was decorated in shades of pale blue—the carpet, the sofa, and the walls. He couldn’t wait to get her into her frilly blue bedroom.

  “You’re kind of quiet, aren’t you?” she had said one night, curling up close to him.

  He half listened to her stories, laughing in appropriate places. She talked about where she wanted to travel. All he wanted was to feel the heat of her breasts against his bare chest. Yet each time the sex was over, he experienced the same feeling of disgust, hated that she was the instrument of his vulnerability, leaving him weak and exposed.

  “Don’t go right home, Harry. Sleep with me all night.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Can I come to your place sometime?”

  “I got to go.” It was a relief to get away from her chattering, the soft places of her body.

  He had been seeing her twice a week when one December night just before Christmas he telephoned and got no answer. He called every half hour until almost two in the morning, pacing his apartment like a caged animal, and finally ran the sixteen blocks to her apartment, certain he would find her with someone else.

  “It’s me,” he said, breathlessly on the intercom when she answered. He pushed past her when she opened her door, making his way down the hallway to her bedroom, afraid to find someone there.

  “It’s after two.” She attempted to reach out to him. Like a boxer, he avoided her touch.

  He sat down on the bed, smelled her sleepy odor
on the sheets, hating his unquenchable hunger for her. “Where were you?” He despised her and her saccharine ruffled apartment, hated her passivity. He put his hand over her mouth to stop the words, pushed her down on the bed, grasped her wrists above her head. “Don’t ever do that to me again.” There was a moment of stillness between them. “Don’t say anything and don’t touch me.” There was something fierce in him, such rage that he was afraid he might lose control, hurt her in some way. Her breaths were short, her skin damp. Her armpits and the creases beneath her breasts gave off an unfamiliar odor like vinegar. “Where were you?”

  “With my girlfriends. We went to a movie and then for drinks.” She looked frightened.

  “Don’t you ever do that again.” Once inside her, he felt the expansive pounding of his heartbeat. She struggled in a need to move, to touch him and please him, but each time he held her down harder. He didn’t want pleasure, only to dominate her. His knees burned against the sheets, his fingers were numb from forcing her to be still. His temples throbbed as he drummed her to his own tempo, feeling her heat. He fought against the power in her that sucked him deeper and deeper, trying to force him into submission. As red and white lights went off behind his closed lids, losing consciousness, he surrendered against his will to orgasm.

  Weightless, a falcon with wings spread, he is soaring, above and across mountain passes toward the ocean. Cool air against his feathers. Sighting the brilliant shimmer of indigo water below, he dives for the catch. Descending. A dry hungry mouth, longing for nourishment. From somewhere far away, he hears cries of pleasure.

  In the morning, the smells he’d been aroused by the night before disgusted him. He was furious that he’d fallen asleep. He slipped out of the apartment while she slept and took a taxi home. His violent behavior terrified him; how much he’d wanted to hurt her, the rage so intense he could have imagined himself killing her. He swore he would never see her again.

  He showered, dressed, and went to the office. It was the first time he had ever been late to work.

  Just before lunch Belle called. “I got to talk to you.”

  “Not here. I keep telling you, not in the office.” Moments later she was standing at his desk. He didn’t want to see her anger, so he stared at the burst of her curved hips from under the wide belt at her narrow waist. Once again, he felt that familiar churning in his belly.

  “We talked about this. You can’t bother me at work.” As she stepped toward him, he could see the indentation of her panties across her thighs, the vee of her crotch where the fit of her skirt pulled across her groin.

  “Look, you can’t just show up like that in the middle of the night. We have a real good time together, but I just need to know when I’m going to see you. And you never take me any place. Like you’re ashamed of me. I’ve been seeing you for almost a year.”

  “It’s only been six months,” he argued.

  “I want to go out: to a movie, or dinner, to a show or dancing, like we’re a couple. Plan a vacation or something, like a cruise. I’ve been thinking about my future, and if things don’t change between us, I’m not going to see you anymore.”

  “I got to think about it.” He didn’t want this at work. Not now, not when he was filling out forms for City College. “I’ll call you; we’ll get together, talk about it. Just not here.” All he could think was that she was going to make trouble for him; that he’d lose his job. He didn’t want any problems from Simon. She was spoiling things, begging and whining, and besides, he didn’t want to go to dinners and movies.

  At the end of February she burst into his office, her face flushed and angry. “What did you do to my books?”

  “You made mistakes, Miss Fine.” She had become more and more demanding, and yet he could find no way to stop seeing her, or stop himself desiring her. He decided to arrange it so that Simon would fire her without a confrontation on his part, and he’d changed enough of her numbers to create major errors in her paperwork.

  “Don’t call me Miss Fine. I didn’t make any mistakes. My work is perfect. You finagled my numbers, you piece of shit!”

  “You’ve been late every morning for the past two weeks. Your time card was punched in at ten thirty almost every morning.” He tried to hold himself together, act managerial.

  “I wasn’t feeling good. I’ve had some stomach trouble. I went to the doctor.”

  “We’re busy right now. See your doctor after work.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Her shoulders began to shake, and her chin quivered. He knew she was going to cry.

  “I don’t want to discuss this in the office. I’m not doing anything. It’s over, that’s all. Over.”

  “You keep saying that, and then you show up at my place.” Then she said it so quickly and so quietly he almost didn’t hear her. “I’m pregnant.”

  “Pregnant? No. You can’t be.” He slammed his fist into the desk, stood up in disbelief, strode to his office door, looking up and down the hallway to be certain that no one had overheard. His breath was caught somewhere in his chest.

  “How did you get pregnant? Not from me. I’m not marrying you, Belle. I’ve got plans.” He tried to keep his voice to a whisper. “There’s no room for marriage and babies in my plans. It must be some other guy.”

  He handed her his handkerchief as she sobbed, tempted to take hold of her and push the hair out of her eyes, comfort her. He wouldn’t give in.

  “You’ll have to help me. You know it’s you. I’ll need money to see someone.”

  “What do you mean? Who are you going to see?”

  “I’ll have to get rid of it.”

  “Get rid of it?” He thought of how his own mother had never come back for him.

  “I can’t have a baby. I’ve got to work. I haven’t got any family to help me. You are all I have. You’ve got to help me. It will cost five hundred dollars.”

  He had never asked her about her family. He hardly knew anything about her. Was she threatening him? Would she tell Simon? He’d be ruined. He needed $500 to go to night school. It was half his savings. He didn’t want to marry her. That was certain.

  The following week, as he passed her desk, he quietly handed her an envelope with five hundred-dollar bills wrapped in several pieces of paper. A few minutes later, she knocked on the door of his office.

  “Thanks, Harry.” When she looked at him with the familiar docile expression of gratitude, he knew she was still waiting for him, and he wanted her. Then his anger stirred again, and he reminded himself how he would feel after.

  “I don’t want to talk about this matter anymore, Miss Fine.”

  “Would you go with me?” she pleaded. “I have no one to go with me. I’ve got to go to a place on the Upper West Side at nine thirty next Friday. I’m not sure if it’s even a doctor’s office. The instructions say to take the freight elevator. They told me I will need somebody to take me home. That I won’t be feeling so good. The only other person I could ask is Patty, but I don’t want it to get around the office. Please, Harry, I’m begging you.”

  It was all too much for him. He had work to do, things to take care of. And if she asked Patty, everyone in the office would know Belle was pregnant and possibly find out that he was responsible.

  At nine thirty on Friday night, he met Belle on West Eighty-Sixth. She sheepishly took his hand as they went up a freight elevator toward the sixth floor. Her fingers were ice cold, while his were hot and damp.

  “I’m really scared.”

  “It’ll be all right. Don’t worry. I’ll be here. I’m sorry this had to happen, that you have to go through this. It’ll be all right. I brought you something.” He could see she’d been crying a lot; her eyes were red and swollen.

  “You brought me something?” She began to cry.

  The little blue teddy bear had been in the window of a store on Avenue A. The girl had wrapped it in blue paper with a blue ribbon. Belle buried her nose in the blue fur of its belly, and looked up at Harry in her sweet
way. He was frightened, too. Just that morning he’d read the Daily News headlines that the cut-up body of a young woman had been found in a sewer after a botched abortion. It had almost made him sick, and he hoped Belle hadn’t seen the paper.

  An Indian doctor met them when the elevator stopped and guided them through a dark kitchen, down a hallway into an examining room. Everything smelled of exotic curry spices that made Harry’s head reel. He was grateful that the rooms seemed orderly and clean. The doctor was courteous and gentle with Belle. With his arm around Harry’s shoulder, the doctor escorted him through more unlit passages to a waiting room, assuring him it would not take long while Harry waited. He leafed through New Yorker magazines, and listened for any sounds he might hear from the office. The only noise came from the steam coming through pipes. What if it didn’t work? What if he killed her? Could he be the doctor in the newspaper that cut up that woman? If Belle lived and was still pregnant, should he marry her?

  At almost eleven, the doctor came for Harry and helped him take Belle back through the same route to the freight elevator. He handed Harry instructions and antibiotics.

  “Next time, you two, be more careful. And, young lady, see your doctor for a diaphragm. I don’t want to ever see either one of you again.”

  The elevator door clanked shut, and it was just the two of them. Belle almost fell. She seemed foggy, as though she were drunk. She leaned all her weight on him as the elevator descended to the street. It was snowing heavily, and he was relieved he was able to find a taxi. Without a word, he took her to her apartment, eager to get back to his own home.

  Your work’s been careless, Miss Fine. Mr. Simon’s concerned about whether you really fit in here.”

  “I’ll be leaving in two weeks, Mister Korn.” She was unafraid to look him in the eye. “March first.” The flush of her cheeks and the strand of hair in her eye disturbed him. He’d stopped seeing her after the abortion, once he knew she was all right. He’d upped his Jack LaLanne workouts, lifting heavier weights, swimming for an hour and a half. He made lists, lists of workout and swim time, lap counts, groceries, food and water intake, and the fluctuations of his weight. On nights when he thought of Belle, he went to the Broadway Palace, where he paid girls to dance while musicians sleepily played Latin songs. He wanted to forget her.