“This is it,” he says, sounding very excited and very certain. “This is what you’re supposed to do next.”
CHAPTER 9
So Fatal a Contagion
ACCORDING TO THEIR website, La Brea Dance is a small dance studio specializing in group and private ballroom dance lessons “For Weddings! Parties! Or Just for the Love of Dance!” It’s owned by an older Black couple—Archibald and Maggie Johnson. On the site there’s a small black-and-white photo of them smiling into each other’s eyes.
It turns out I’ve ridden by it hundreds of times without noticing it was there. It’s only ten minutes from my apartment, on the route I take to school every morning.
I hop off my bike and look around for a rack to lock it to, but (naturally) there isn’t one. I’ll have to take it inside with me. It looks like the actual studio is at the top of a long, steep and narrow staircase. I pick up my bike and begin the hike.
Almost every inch of the stairway walls is covered with dance memorabilia. It feels a little like I’m ascending to ballroom dance heaven. There’s a poster for a movie called Swing Time with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. There’s the Mad Hot Ballroom poster with two larger-than-life brown kids dancing in front of the New York City skyline. There are dance trophies and medals and framed records. Close to the top of the staircase, there’s a life-sized poster of a man and woman of indeterminate age wrapped tightly around each other. The woman is wearing a scarlet dress with matching heels. The man is wearing a blinding white tux. I think the pained look on their faces is supposed to be passion, but it looks like actual physical agony. I’d guess the pain is from the (Photoshopped) flames they’re dancing in. Across the top of the poster it says Come Feel the Heat. Across the bottom, written into the flames, it says Argentine Tango.
When I finally get to the top of the staircase, I lean my bike against the wall and stretch my aching arms. There’s a small office with a receptionist’s window just ahead, but no one’s in it. On the sill, I see pamphlets for lots of dances—salsa, bachata, waltz, etc. I take one of each and flip through them while waiting for the receptionist to come back. Occasionally a door down the hall opens and salsa music drifts out toward me. I wait ten minutes before deciding to ring the tiny bell on the sill.
A woman—white and tiny, with severely cut jet-black bangs—stomps down the hallway toward me. She’s wearing an astonishingly red asymmetrical dress with long fringe (also astonishingly red) across the bottom and perfectly matching bright-red strappy stilettos. Her fringe sways madly with each stomp. She’s an exploding firecracker in human form.
Once she’s in the office, she grabs the bell from the windowsill and tosses it into a drawer. Satisfied, she peers through the window at me and then improbably—given the situation with the stomping and the bell—smiles. “You are interested in the waltz, I see.”
Except for when she says it, it sounds like You are eeenterested in zee waltz, I zee. Her accent is vaguely Eastern European and very heavy.
“What? No,” I say, putting the pamphlets down. I open my backpack and take out the Instructions for Dancing book. “I just came to return this,” I say. “It says to return it to this address.”
She takes it from me and flips through it for exactly two seconds before tossing it to the side. “Come, Saturday morning is perfect time for you to come in. Best waltzing class in history of world is about to begin.”
She takes off down the hallway.
“Wait,” I say. “I can’t just leave my bike here.”
She opens a door with a sign that reads Studio 5 and tells me it’ll be okay in there.
Once I’m done stashing my bike, we walk down the hall to another studio. She holds the door open for me. When I hesitate, she stomps one foot. “You want to learn or no?”
In my head, I hear Martin imploring me to keep an open mind. I remind myself that the reason I’m here is to figure out what’s happening to me and that this is the only clue I have.
“Yes, I want to learn,” I say, and go inside.
The studio is a wide-open space with hardwood floors, barres for stretching and floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Twenty or so people are standing in pairs next to the windows in the back of the room.
“These are clients,” says the woman. “Most of them have wedding coming up and need waltz for first dance.”
Almost all of the couples are in their late twenties and early thirties. I spy a few engagement rings. Some of them seem eager and others seem nervous. I hope I don’t see any of them kissing.
The woman turns to me. “But where is special friend? Cannot ballroom dance alone.”
“I don’t have a special friend,” I say.
“Why not?”
Is she really asking me about my love life right now? Mercifully, the older Black couple I saw on the website last night walks into the room. Exploding firecracker woman shifts her attention to them, and I’m saved from having to explain why I don’t have a special friend.
“Welcome to La Brea Dance,” says the older woman, Maggie.
In my entire life, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so regal. She looks like she’s just assumed the throne of a small but powerful Caribbean island nation. She has thick gray dreads that are piled high on her head, with a few strands framing her bright brown face. Her ball gown is high-necked and pale blue and made from sequined lace, tulle and (I’m pretty sure) the diaphanous wings of actual fairies.
Her husband, Archibald, is tall and thin, with a bald head and a salt-and-pepper mustache. He’s wearing a white tux with white suspenders and a bow tie that matches Maggie’s dress perfectly. He’s so dapper, I’m pretty sure he’s the reason the word dapper was invented.
He claps his hands together. “Today you’ll be learning both the regular English waltz, which is slow and boring, and the faster Viennese waltz, which is much more interesting.”
“Don’t be nervous,” Maggie says. “Nobody ever died waltzing.”
“Although there was a time they were persecuted for it,” Archibald adds.
He goes on to give us a small history lesson. He tells us that the waltz is the oldest of the ballroom dances, that it began as a peasant dance in Vienna in the seventeenth century and that the name is from the old German word walzen, which means “to turn or glide.”
Then he tucks his hands into his pockets and rocks back on his heels. I can tell the next part is his favorite from the way his eyes twinkle madly. “Everyone hated the waltz when it was first introduced to high society. Religious leaders thought it was vulgar and sinful,” he says, and points at Maggie’s dress. “Because the women wore ball gowns when they danced, they had to hold one corner off the ground so they wouldn’t trip. Can anyone guess why this was a problem?” he asks.