American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [49]
It was more beautiful than he had expected. A universe with the rules suspended, made for dancing, the music blowing through the crowded lobby. He helped her with her coat and handed it over the little table to the hat-check girl and took the small piece of painted wood with the black numbers on it that she handed to him. He felt the smooth wood between his fingers and pushed it in his pocket. He fumbled in his jacket for the tickets. He was holding the two tickets in his slightly trembling hand pressing forward with the crowd to get inside when he thought he saw someone he knew from law school who would know Pearl and he turned his head suddenly very close to Vivian’s and told her she looked beautiful and handed the tickets to the ticket taker whose foot was tapping a beat against the floor.
A half hour later a horn sounded from backstage to signal that the main act would be coming soon. They had been listening to the opening band and were still waiting. Because it was Christmas Eve some revelers wore Santa hats or had brought bells to jingle and now they filled the silence between the orchestras with laughing and occasional jingling, a plaintive jubilance, a maudlin symphony. Joe and Vivian did not have bells and were not wearing hats and they stood amidst the revelers and then they snaked their way through the crowd and stood off to the side. He held her in his arms in a dark corner of the ballroom. Is this okay? he said.
She looked up at him and two streams of light seemed to rise toward him from her eyes. He reached for the wall next to her head with his hand. Above her right eye there was a lifting of the lashes and the brow that gave her a questioning, needing expression. In the left eye there was only a green spun with blue and yellow. Nothing wondering there. The calm poise of the left eye made it hard to distinguish the longing in the right eye and for a moment it made him distrust his instinct that she loved him. But it was too late to change anything. He put both his hands against the wall and began to kiss her. She kissed him back.
Suddenly, he heard the cover of the piano keys lift up across the room above the now dwindling sound of the bells and the muted brush of heels on the dance floor. He turned his head to look toward the stage and her lips grazed his cheek. There was no one there yet. Just a body gliding offstage behind the curtain, someone setting up. He turned back and kissed her again. Then the lights dimmed. His heart was beating in his head and her lips felt raw. He took her hand and pulled her back onto the dance floor.
She let him lead her back among the crowd and followed close. Outside somewhere in the streets beyond Roseland a siren wailed. A drunk cried out in the illuminated night. Joe realized that he could not have heard these things unless the ballroom had gone completely silent. He opened his hand slowly against her back and felt her shoulder blade slide beneath his touch. She leaned closer and her skin moved under his hand. Her dress was cut low in back and he felt her smoothness. He pulled her closer and gripped her dress. The lights changed again. Joe watched the spotlights turn on with his eyes ablaze. When they had turned on fully he suddenly saw the band enter from the side and take the stage. He saw the night unfold slowly before him. The gleam of the instruments shining in his eyes. The Count’s raised arm slightly tilted toward the band. The fingers slightly touching in a snap held motionless in the air and the band’s brass flung upward against the satin backdrop. The fingers snapped and from every corner the room swung.
Joe pulled her closer into an embrace and they began to dance. He thought the swinging would subside but the band would not let go of it and they whirled him with it again and again. She fell into