Ballroom: A Novel (15 page)

There she was in the front row of the photo of the June 1957 Simon Shoe Factory picnic at Brighton Beach, her bleached blond Marilyn Monroe hair in her eyes, dressed in robin’s-egg blue and politely holding her plastic handbag by the handle in front of her. Belle Fine. Though he couldn’t see the piece of beach glass at the bottom of her bag, he knew it was there. She was still twenty-nine.

H
arsh skies were looming in the distance that day as Harry swam along the shore. Even though there was a volleyball game, he preferred to swim. A strong swimmer, he loved catching the waves at their peak, feeling the power of his upper body in the pull of each arm against the current. When his arms and legs were counterbalanced, it reminded him of dancing a fox-trot. He could hear music as he propelled himself through the water, measuring the distance from shore and keeping the jetty as his goal. At Jack LaLanne he had mastered all the strokes and built up endurance.

In the ocean calm he floated, noticing a dark mass of charcoal clouds moving toward shore. The air was becoming oppressive, and without sun he felt a chill on his chest. Almost to the farther jetty, he decided he’d best keep closer to shore. A lifeguard’s shrill whistle was calling the swimmers in. Not wishing to be caught by lightning, Harry permitted a huge whitecap to carry him toward the beach. Its unexpected force sent him tumbling, caught in the wave’s tumult, unable to correct his balance. Under water for too long, caught in a whirl of submerged darkness, not knowing where air was, he tried to inhale. His nostrils and mouth filled with brackish water and sand. Feeling a moment of panic, he searched for light, but there was only the turbulence of the water, the swirl of seaweed, and the bottom of the ocean. The gritty, shell-filled underlayer of the wave rasped his palms, shins, and knees, and when he was finally washed ashore, he hated having to crawl out of the surf. He spit out seawater and tried to regain his equilibrium. Running fingers through his sticky hair, he felt the unfamiliar texture of salt, sand, and pomade.

The storm was rolling in fast, the light on the beach theatrical. One puzzle piece of sky was a brilliant azure, another slate gray. Occasional shafts of sun broke through like searchlights. Taking in the panorama, he was amazed at its enormity. From somewhere on the horizon he heard a roll of thunder. Turning toward the boardwalk, he had difficulty getting his bearings. He was about a half mile from the Simon picnic. Familiar markers were gone. The wind tumbled beach chairs. Umbrellas cartwheeled across the sand. Parents shouted commands as children shrieked. There was a chaotic commotion, towels flapping, as people grabbed belongings, ran for cover. The lifeguards blew their whistles again, waving everyone out of the water and off the beach. Harry ran toward the boardwalk, sliding under a section. He had to crawl, keeping his shoulders and head close to his chest to fit. He liked the stale, briny smell.

A woman he recognized from the office crawled in beside him. “This is something,” she breathlessly exclaimed. “You don’t recognize me, do you? I’m Belle. Belle Fine. You interviewed me for accounting a year and a half ago.”

“Right.” Diagonal stripes, from the intermittent light forcing its way through the boardwalk, fell across her flushed cheeks, her shoulders, her blue bathing suit and pale thighs.

“You’re Harry Korn?” she asked. “I see you around work. Mr. Simon told Patty Kelley, you know, she’s in shipping. He thinks you’ve got a good future.”

He sat up straighter. “Yeah, I don’t want to stay at Simon’s much longer. Going to enroll at City College in the fall—to be a lawyer. That’s between the two of us.” He didn’t like that she’d been observing him at work, talking about him with Patty Kelley, while he’d hardly known she existed. He noticed a small mole above her right breast.

“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.

L
eave 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.

H
e 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.

I
n 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.