“Sorry I snapped at you,” I say to Martin once they’re gone. I tell him that going to La Brea Dance didn’t help. “I don’t know what else to do. How do I get the visions to stop?”
He pours both strawberry and blueberry syrup onto his waffle before answering. “Remember that movie I told you about, Big? He doesn’t get to change back into a little kid until he’s learned his lesson,” he says. “All those movies are like that. You’re supposed to learn something.”
“Okay, but those movies are fiction. This is my real life.”
“I know,” he says. He’s quiet for a while and then says: “I think you should go back to the dance studio.”
“But why?”
“There’s a reason their address was in that book. Try again. Go with the flow. You don’t have anything to lose.”
I make a sound between a sigh and a groan. He’s right, of course. I have to go back. I don’t really have any other options.
“Maybe you’re supposed to learn to dance,” he says once we’re outside on the sidewalk.
I unlock my bike. “That makes no sense at all,” I say.
“I know, but I’m sure I’m right about this,” he says. And then, because he’s actually an old man, he bursts into “Dancing Queen” by Abba. “You are the dancing queen. Young and sweet. Only seventeen.”
He laugh-sings three more verses before I finally, finally get him to be quiet.
CHAPTER 13
Dancing with the Flow
“OH, IT’S YOU, girl without dance partner,” firecracker woman says when I get to La Brea Dance after school the next day. “Nice to see you.”
“Hi, it’s nice to see you too,” I say. “I’m Evie,” I add, even though I told her the last time I was here. I’m hoping she’ll use my actual name and not forever refer to me as “girl without dance partner.”
She nods, and there’s a tiny smile at the corner of her mouth that makes me think she knows exactly how outrageous she is.
“Did not think I would see you again,” she says.
I don’t confess that I didn’t think I’d see her again either. “I was hoping to sign up for a trial lesson.”
“Wonderful. Which one?” she asks, looking down at her computer. “I pull up schedule.”
“What’s the easiest one you have? I’ve never done this before.”
She looks up and peers through the window at me. “Oh, you are nervous, I can hear.”
“Maybe a little bit,” I admit.
She springs up from her chair. “No, no, not to worry. Not everybody can dance good, but everybody can dance.” She leans closer to the sill. “You have time now?”
I start to say no and that I only dropped by to sign up, not to actually get started, but I stop myself. Yesterday Martin told me I needed to go with the flow.
“Sure, I have time,” I say.
She enters my info in the computer and then takes the bell out of her desk drawer and puts it on the sill. “I hate you,” she says to it.
I laugh and she does too. She leaves the office and waves for me to follow her. “Lucky for you, my Intro to Bachata class starts now. Not to worry. Is easy dance, and this is beginner class.”
She takes off down the hallway. Her outfit today is a deeply purple, mid-thigh-length asymmetrical dress with gold shoes that are at least three inches high. I don’t know how she walks in them, much less dances.
When we get to the studio, I’m disappointed to see only a few people. I was hoping I’d be able to hide away in the back.
She claps to get everyone’s attention. “Hello, everyone. I am Fifi and I am instructor.”
She pauses, arms akimbo, expecting us to respond to her greeting. “Hi, Fifi,” we say, as if we’re all in some sort of dance recovery program.
“Today, I will introduce you to bachata. At beginning you will not be good. Some of you will be like clumsy newborn baby octopus, but by the end you will be better. You will see, I am fabulous instructor.”
She makes us form a single line in front of the mirrors. “Now I teach you basics. First I show steps for leader, and then I show for follower.” She places her left hand against her stomach, raises her right hand into the air and snaps her fingers to keep time. “Is simple,” she says, swaying her hips while taking two small steps to the right. “One, two, three, pop.” On the pop, she juts her left hip out dramatically and then repeats the movement going to the left. “One, two, three, pop.”
Her movements are precise but somehow still fluid and sexy. She repeats the step two more times before telling us it’s our turn. Since there’s no music, the only sounds are her voice and the shuffle and tap of our feet against hardwood. There’s something relaxing and even a little comforting about the way we’re all moving and breathing together.
After a while she moves us on from side basic to forward basic, which is the same step, only forward and backward. Like she promised, the steps aren’t hard, and she’s satisfied that we know what we’re doing pretty quickly.
“Okay, now you know basic step, but real dance is in the hips. Watch me.” This time when she does the basic side step, her hips do a figure-eight pattern that completely changes the feel of the dance. It’s sexier, more dramatic. “Some people call this Cuban motion. You see it in dances like merengue and salsa. I call it infinity hips.” She demonstrates a few more times before it’s our turn again.
Infinity hips, it turns out, is very hard to do. It’s not long before we’re all laughing and giggling at how very finite our own hips are. I see very few figure eights, more like deformed circles or wobbly lines.
She sighs a dramatic sigh and tells us to stop. “Not to worry. Always starts like this.” She tells the couples to partner up and then beckons me over. “Now I demonstrate how to hold each other.” She adjusts me into “open position” and leads us all through the basic steps again.
The lesson is so much fun, I barely notice the hour go by. I forget about the visions. Instead, I concentrate on listening to the music and moving my body to it. Fifi is funny and encouraging and firm. She knows exactly how to break the steps down in a way that makes sense to each person.
For the last dance, she chooses a song with a faster tempo, dims the lights and tells us to pretend we’re in a club. She partners with me and we all dance together. It’s hilarious and messy, but—like she said we would—we’ve come a long way since the beginning of class.