8
WEDDING SEASON
The dayafter the Central Park date with Ollie is my Sunday afternoon West Coast Swing class while Hannah takes Taekwondo. It is starting to be a favorite part of my week. Ben, Helen, Jody and I have formed a little team of singles: we look after each other, trade tips, and step up whenever a quick pairing is required, since we form an equal number of leaders and followers. We have all decided to continue dancing through June as well—though Ben acknowledges he’ll quit after his mid-June wedding.
“How is the planning going?” I ask him when we take a brief break in the middle of class.
His eyes take on the thousand-yard-stare weariness of someone in the middle of a Himalayan trek. “It’s been pretty rough.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
He breathes a long sigh. “Paige’s family has more money than mine, and they’re footing the bill for the wedding, so my parents offered to pay for the rehearsal dinner. But now the place my parents picked is not fancy enough to satisfy Paige’s mother, so her parents want to pay for the rehearsal dinner, too, but my mom got insulted.”
“You should have the rehearsal dinner at a biker bar,” Jody says from next to us. “There are a ton of those on Long Island.”
“If only,” Ben agrees. “And apparently, the song Paige wanted to dance to,Disturbia—” (As if any of us could forget that particular choice.) “—got nixed by her parents, and they gave us a list of approved songs. All by Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra. So we have to choreograph our first dance all over again.”
We offer sympathy with varying degrees of sincerity. I suspect Jody finds Ben’s plight amusing, though she is nice enough to tell him that she has a friend who manages a fancy restaurant out in the Hamptons, if he needs a connection for the rehearsal dinner.
“He’s a bit of cokehead,” Jody says, “but he’ll hook you up.”
“Thanks.” Ben looks sincerely grateful. He’s a good guy in his quiet way. I wonder if this makes him an easy target for manipulation by his wealthy fiancée’s parents.
“Well, whatever song you pick, you are going to knock Paige’s socks off with how good you’re getting at dancing,” I remind him.
He looks down. “I just don’t want to step on her feet. She’s under a lot of pressure, and I want to make her happy. This is one of the few things I can control.”
Helen looks thoughtful. “It must be hard when her parents are paying for everything, mustn’t it? Because if you put your foot down, they can threaten not to pay. But if this is the pattern for the whole marriage, they will use money to control you.”
“I know that. I think they think I’m not good enough for her or I could pay for the whole thing myself.”
“What do you do for work, Ben?” Jody asks.
“I’m an investment banker.”
“Are you kidding?” My jaw drops. “What the hell would be good enough for them?”
“An investment banker with inherited wealth,” Jody replies, then softens and pats him on the arm. “Come on. We’ve got you. We’re going to make sure you literally sweep your bride off her feet.”
Eliana Macri’s return to New York is the talk of Manhattan Swing. I hear someone chatting about it in the hallway when I’m refilling my water bottle, and then again after class when our instructors are talking about scheduling. Apparently, Connor Yung, Eliana’s partner for the last few years, has moved on to yet another new partner—some Finnish woman named Jaana who is a rising star on the European circuit—leaving Eliana with no one to dance with, only a few weeks before a big swing competition and a couple of months before the nationals.
“Connor thinks being national champion will help his dance studio,” the pink-haired young woman at the front desk is saying to Maria as I walk past after class. “And he doesn’t think he can get there with Eliana.”
“Ouch,” I hear Maria reply.
The young woman sounds thoughtful. “Do you think Ollie has forgiven her?”
I’mat my desk on Monday answering painfully dull emails when my phone rings.
“I’d like to take you swing dancing this weekend.” It is Ollie. We have seen each other at work a couple of times, once in a meeting to prep for our ‘off-site’ next week, and twice in crowded elevators, but we haven’t spoken. It’s gotten both easier and harder to see him around the building: easier because I finally know he’s attracted to me, and harder because there’s more that we need to hide.
I take a breath. “As long as you are aware that I have had a grand total of about six hours of experience and I’m not going to be very good.”
“Oh.” There is a pause. “Never mind, then.”
He hangs up on me. Funny.
I wait a long moment before the phone rings again.
