CHAPTER THREE
Jack filed
a report with his supervisor at the CIA hoping to get some more information on
Drago. HQ ordered him to maintain a low profile for 48 hours, preferably
somewhere safe. ‘Safe’ was not in Jack’s vocabulary; he was a man of action and
would not be killed in his sleep. By 9:30 p.m., he had eaten dinner and was off
to dance the tango in midtown Manhattan.
The milonga was located at a ballroom owned
by a wealthy Manhattan socialite of yesteryear who no longer ventured out into
public. No one had seen her for over ten years except through a small window
near the ceiling of the ballroom where she would spy on the dancers the way a
little girl looks in on dolls in her dollhouse.
The music
began at nine but the billionaire playboy arrived late to avoid rejecting a
multitude of women new to the scene.
Dealing
with rejection, he thought, was a big part of tango and the reason for cabaceo,
the rule for inviting partners to dance.
Little Carl
once told him social tango evolved as a mechanism for the Argentine population
to cope with severe gender disparities when it prepared to enter the 20th
century. In 1880s, there were large
migrations of European men who came to the country alone to support their families
back home. Argentina at the end of the 19th century, as were most
South American countries, was a harsh place to live, wars were common. In such
a cruel climate there needed to be a system for men and women to interact and
thus Argentine Tango was born.
It may not
have been called ‘tango’ in the beginning, when it was just a dance performed
by the co-mingling of the general population of slaves, immigrants and Native
Americans. They gathered in “pirigundines,” or dance halls, where hired women contracted
to dance with lonely workers. Tango
also competed with other dances here, such as the waltz and polka.
In the
Argentina of the 1800s, if a married man could indiscreetly invite a woman to
dance, he would participate more willingly and eventually give up some of his
hard-earned cash to the sponsoring establishment and the consort.
“Without
cabeceo,” Little Carl said, “there would be chaos and the Argentines would have
no reprieve from their already desperate situation.”
Rejection
can drive a man or woman to do dangerous things. Rejection was something Jack
rarely received yet he took great pains to be careful in how he dealt it. He
often declined requests from women seeking to engage him in a dance and it was
impossible for some of them not to get hurt.
The room
was large, the floor was made of black and white marble tiles and there were
two rows of marble columns, three columns in a row. One side of the room held
small tables with two stools at each; banquet chairs lined the wall on the opposite
side of the room where mostly women and a few men sat.
One of
Jack’s old girlfriends, Linda, greeted him as soon as he paid his fee and
entered. She was a mountaineering companion and fuck-buddy of his for many
years before she wearied of the freewheeling playboy and his inability to
commit. She became a lesbian, a lifestyle change that Jack took as an insult to
his machismo. She seemed happy and this confused him.
Her
companion, like herself, was an elegant woman with brown hair and long legs.
She and Jack
kissed each other on the cheek, exchanged pleasantries then parted.
Tamara, a scantily
clad woman who never wore a bra, maneuvered towards him. He spied her out of
the corner of his eye. He knew that she knew he had seen her. As she angled in
his direction, something about the jiggling of her breasts beneath her
scarf-like dress made him change his mind and he reversed course to intercept
her.
They made eye
contact while she was still yards away. He motioned to the floor with his left
hand and walked in her direction. He could tell that she was ecstatic and he
found that pleasing. Tamara was unskilled but her body felt nice in his arms
and catching sight of her breasts at close range was always enjoyable.
They
embraced and began to dance.
Jack noticed
that she made an effort to fall onto him. This made it difficult to maintain
his balance and move her to the rhythms of the music. She reeked of sweat.
She was
highly prized by many of the unskilled leaders because she was easy on the eyes
and almost never refused an invitation.
Tamara
quivered with delight like a little kid in a candy shop. Jack felt a spasm
emanate from her lithe frame as he led a leg-wrap. She slid up onto him, chest
first, her pelvis rolling up his thigh like a tongue licking an ice cream cone.
She was so completely off her balance that Jack soon lost interest in her
despite the baubles bouncing inside her shirt.
In tango, it
is customary to complete an entire tanda
with the same partner before breaking the engagement. A tanda is a group of three to five songs in the same style of music.
He politely
danced with her for two more tunes before thanking her and walking away.
As he
looked for an open chair to sit upon, he wondered if she felt his
disappointment with her tango skills. She did seem visibly let down when he
ended the engagement and he genuinely was concerned about her emotional welfare.
Briefly, he
tried to imagine having sex with Tamara when another woman had locked her
sights onto him. His annoying-woman-radar flashed red in the back of his mind.
He knew not to look up as he kept his eyes trained on the marble floor. He rose
from his seat and turned to his right where mirrors covered the wall.
In the
reflection, he could see Gwendolyn Cooper, a tall African-American woman with
wavy blond hair making a beeline for him from all the way across the dance
floor. She was the wife of a wealthy politician and she craved acknowledgement
of her prowess by dancing with the most highly sought-after leaders like
Jack.
To his right,
next to where he had just been sitting, a good-looking woman in a bright blue
dress felt his gaze upon her and looked up at him. He gestured with his eyes
towards the floor and she accepted. She rose just as Jack came face-to-face
with the pol’s spouse.
With the
acting skills of an Oscar nominee he frowned and motioned towards his new
partner. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “maybe later?”
Gwendolyn
grit her teeth, forced a smile and replied, “You can count on it.”
She sped
off in search of a new victim.
Jack
embraced the woman and hastily began the dance. He feigned to the left to test
her ability to respond to his command. There was a slight hesitation, almost imperceptible,
yet he noticed. She was distracted and focused on something other than his lead.
He felt her
ample bosom resting firmly on his chest, unencumbered by a bra. A glance
downward and he could see her flush cheeks. She smelled like grapes, he
thought, maybe apples. When she took a deep breath, she drew him into her lungs,
melting around him and into his strong muscular arms.
Now he knew
what was distracting her: it was him. He was being hunted once again but this time he liked it.
He walked
her around the room to the slow, pulsating tango rhythms, trying to think of
the name of the melody’s artist to keep his mind off his growing erection. Was
it Arrienzo? Canaro? Di Sarli?
Effortlessly
transcribing the music into melodic movements on the dance floor, he led his
amorous partner into calesita,
turning her on one foot in a complete circle, before asking her to perform a
leg-wrap. Her slender torso came forward and snuggled his abdominal cavity,
conforming her mass to his like soft clay.
In tango,
as in all dances, one person leads the movement and the other follows. Unlike
other dances, the leader in tango must wait for the follower to complete her
movement before he can begin another step. He is actually following the
follower, waiting for her to finish so he can start anew. Each step is complete
and there can be a virtual eternity in between the commencement of a step and
its conclusion.
This woman
was full of passion, Jack thought. He needed to be careful or she would have
him fully aroused. He might not be able to control himself after so many months
in southwest Asia, where he saw few women except those clad in their thick
burkhas.
He pondered
the differences of women from the two disparate cultures. The American woman
was a stalker of men and a sexual gladiator when compared to the Asian ladies.
He suffered from culture shock and now felt a powerful hunger growing deep inside
his groin.
He fought the
urge to merge. To cool his jets he recalled an incident where he plunged into
an icy river to escape Taliban foot soldiers in hot pursuit. He remembered the
ice cream headache, the pain of the frigid water encasing his entire body as he
swam in the darkness to complete his getaway.
Flight
would not be so easy this time for the steely blue-eyed warrior. He had no
desire to flee. Her body writhed against
his ever so slightly as she began the leg-wrap he had asked for. Her erect
nipples brushed against his lower ribs. Her abdomen met his upper right thigh
just below the hip and her pelvis arched forward just enough for him to feel
the outline of her vagina on his leg. Her left leg wrapped around his knee and
swirled upwards. A slit in her dress exposed the length of her limb and the top
of her luscious thigh.
He caught
sight of her bare leg in his peripheral vision.
To Jack’s
relief the song ended but he still had two more to go before he could break
away without insulting her. He was losing control and his instincts told him to
get out of there.
Like the
goddess Athena, the seductress perceived that her prey had been spooked and
withdrew back into her camouflage: the guise of a woman clad in high-heels, a skin-tight
blue dress cut low to reveal plenty of cleavage, long lashes blinking
innocently.
Forcing his
thoughts to the attack on the rooftop at noon, the secret agent managed to
regain his composure and quelled his sexual hunger for one more song.
She seemed
to have eased off. He told himself that his imagination was playing tricks on
him. Maybe she couldn’t help being extremely affectionate. An inability to hide
one’s passion while engaged in the deep tango embrace, a connection so
spiritually invasive that it allows each participant to see things in the other
that they might not even be aware of themselves, was easily understandable.
The third
song began. Jack hoped desperately there would only be three selections in this
tanda.
Halfway
through the melody he began to relax and to allow the repertoire of his
movements to flow uncensored, without fear of making himself vulnerable to this
woman’s sensual vibrations.
He led pasada, an invitation to pass in front
of him to his other side. She pivoted gracefully, seizing the moment to execute
a lapiz, a long sweeping motion of
the woman’s leg drawing a large curve on the floor with the toe of her
heel-clad foot. The slit of her dress allowed her thigh to be completely revealed
during this maneuver.
Jack
watched as her toe trace an arc on the marbled floor, delighting in the
delicate vibrations traveling through her extended limb, into her frame, up
through her diaphragm and into his embrace like the rustling of tall grass in a
gentle breeze. Her toe found its way to his left foot and she proceeded to step
across it, performing a boleo with
her right leg before stepping forward and ending the movement.
Her demeanor
was one of submission. She feigned obedience while waiting for his next
instruction. She looked up at him innocently, her expression vacant, her full
lips barely open, covered with bright red gloss.
He led her
to pass once more in front of him and she was again in control of the moment.
Casting her gaze downward but not bending her neck, she pressed her forehead to
his right cheekbone.
Soft curls
of brown hair obscured his view as he was forced to scan the crowd with only
his left eye. Barely aware of the other dancers moving around him, his right
side entered into the universe of a woman in lust. She seemed to go on forever
with virtual mountain ranges of pleasure. Entire worlds revealed themselves to
him as she brought herself once more into his muscular frame.
She seemed
somehow taller, he thought, as she raised herself on the balls of her feet, the
tip of her left breast dangling against his bicep. Her left hip pressed itself
against him as she slowly began to step over his shoe, her left thigh draping
itself on his own thigh with the flimsiness of a soft fabric. Like a snake
slithering around a tree trunk in seemingly endless coils, her leg began an
upwards trajectory.
He peered
into the soft brown locks invading his eye socket. The sound of her drawing a
breath, a soft guttural noise emanating from a chasm deep within her oral
cavity, held him spellbound.
Her torso covered him like a blanket,
a forest full of trees draped in bouncing bosoms. The bottom of her ribcage
pushed into his chest, the side of her waist licked his side like a foot-long
tongue unleashed from a dream in another dimension.
He was
trapped in the eternity of the moment; the passion of the pause stopped the
passage of time. Here music had no sound, the crowd disappeared from his view;
she was all he could see and yet he did not see her. All his senses were gone
except the sense of touch. He was lost in her world. There was no past here, no
present, no future, only her and nothing else.....
You can read the conclusion of chapter three and much more in my book, River Tango, for sale on Amazon:
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