——— Deconstructionists will say it doesn’t matter. The word, per se, no matter where we put it, is lacking…. Deconstructionists’ll sell they mama for a proper signifier or a sign.
———
——— Oh shit. Before I can get to what I really wanta talk about I’ve gotta deal with this “qualifiers” idea. The, what you call, the quality of the sign—the signal…
———
——— The signifier may be related to a gesture I cannot misinterpret, which is why I like this guy….
———
——— I, this man, I mean, Jesus, nobody’d understand.
——— Why not?
——— This guy I been associatin’ with…huh…
——— Yes.
——— Well, we just dance. We dance all the time.
———
——— Yes. We go out sometimes. I get all dressed up and we go dancin’.
———
——— Something frilly with big loopin’ earrings I wear, but you don’t know. Sometimes I put on really sexy clothes, chiffon skirts and things so tight nobody believes I could take them off, not even in the shower. He dances with me.
———
——— Then, after he dances with me, he makes such a great omelet with cheddar cheese and some small enticing avocados. He wants to bomba.
——— But you say this guy likes to dance.
——— It’s 10:30 A.M. in the mornin’. We’ve no clothes on. Why would we? It’s the mornin’.
———
——— Actually, I’m not tellin’ you everythin’.
———
——— It’s not that I’m lyin’, I just forgot to tell you about these…contests we usedta win.
——— Contests?
——— Yeah. We were so poor. Well, not white people’s poor. We usedta win these salsa dance contests at this place on Valencia in the Mission that had just discovered that everybody wasn’t from Jalisco. No. I shouldn’t say that. It’s not fair.
———
——— But there was no way they were gonna take that twenty-five dollars from the two of us.
——— Isn’t this a new person?
——— Yes.
———
——— Why?
——— You’re saying “us” and “we” so easily, that’s all.
——— Well, if you did get a chance to dance with him, you wouldn’t want to be one of them either. Definitely one of us, that’s how my daddy would say it. “One of us.”
——— He’s a good dancer?
——— Who? Daddy? Oh my God, yes! Oh, you are being so smart. My daddy dances with my mother. The contests they won were on these boats that the city of Akron could fit in where they never forgot they were colored, but it didn’t hurt so much.
——— Where was that?
——— At sea, Jesus, sometimes you are very slow.
———
——— Suave. Suave. Slow. That means slow and smooth, soft. His hands are very soft, almost like damp silk, you know, and we’ve no clothes on. So we just ate breakfast in bed. I could have stayed asleep. I sleep so well there, with him. Like I’m so relaxed, so much at home I could have stayed home, I sleep through too much of my visits with him. I don’t want to, but I lose track of my bones, the skeleton, ha, and melt into this mound of flesh, warm. I feel so warm there. Do you think when I’m sleeping like that I feel like damp silk, too?
——— Undoubtedly.
——— Don’t make fun of me.
——— Why do you think I would make fun of you? This all sounds rather delightful to me.
——— Really?
——— Yes.
———
———
——— I really could just stay asleep there…til he comes sayin’, “Darling, it’s time to eat now.” What could I do?
——— Sounds like you could do anything you want with this fellow.
——— I mean, I’m so sleeping away and sighing, but I’ve gotta eat, right now, cause cold breakfasts are truly terrible, don’t you think? I wanta tell him how good it all is. The eggs aren’t runny or too brown. I can’t tolerate brown, burned eggs. I can’t stand the smell of them. So these eggs that he’d made were bright yellow and fluffy, like cotton candy they were. They weren’t lukewarm either. Oh, he put such seasonings.
———
——— Do you believe there are men who aren’t bein’ paid who go to such trouble?
———
——— Well. Hey, I usedta didn’t, but now I do.
———
——— Oh God, he’s funny. He stands up, just so fulla himself. Got a real cute butt, now that I think of it. A backside that sorta flirts with me in spite of myself…. So there is my mambo man with his flirtatious behind straightening his shirt in front of the windows. This boy don’t have no shirt on. He’s quite amiably wonderfully naked. Jesus…
———
——— Whatta fool, hum. Well, once his shirt is all tucked in and his creases in his pants straightened. He might as well have put on a tie and a top hat roamin’ round butt-naked like that, naked as a jay bird, but with élan, you know. So he starts to push these chairs out of his mambo path with a ferocity, ah, a man obsessed, and says in one of those voices I imagined when I was little, he says and it’s like a stream of wet gold floats by my face his words are like that, “Would you like to mambo with me?”
———
——— These things don’t happen to people. Things as lovely as this don’t happen to people like me at least.
———
——— I must sound ridiculous.
——— What does it matter?
——— I don’t know. It’s just I’m grinning about something you don’t know and I don’t believe it happens, that’s all. Cause I said “Yes.” “Yes, I wanna mambo with you.” I said “Yes.” How could I say no?
———
——— How could anybody say no?
——— Why would you say no to a guy standin’ in a window, naked, as you say, who just wants to dance?
——— On the other side of that window, sir, is the one and only Paradise Cafe.
———
——— It’s this bristling lime and yellow bar with a sometimey neon sign over the door. Pa adis Caf. That’s so funny, something missing from paradise.
———
——— I almost feel like I’m in Laredo or Tijuana, but we’re not. He’s never spent no time near the border or places like El Paso and Matamoras. Oh, the bars are just as tiny and carnal, carnal….
———
——— But he’s not part of that landscape…. We’re somewhere in flashing lights, green, red, gold, blue, like Christmas all the time. And we are the ones who can hear “Amame y besame, amor. Besame, amor, besame.” The light is so precious that the notion of high noon in South Texas is an affront to our senses. And off we go to bomba on a new floor. To mambo like a baptism or an oblation. Two swayin’ bronze bodies teasin’ the mornin’ sun that licks at us…our smiles curve cross our lips, maybe our smiles even curve across our hips.
———
——— Are you listenin’ to me?
——— Yes, of course.
——— You know what I like best?
——— No.
——— I like the way the white lace handkerchief is in his hand. He’s holdin’ his hand up in the air like this. See? This dash of white is just above his shoulder and draws my eyes to his. So I’m not even in my own body.
———
———
——— Where are you?
——— Our tongues fly like tropical flowers in a ciclón. I’ma treasure I can’t afford. I cannot even keep. That’s why I’m in his eyes, his eyes, or the air, very hot humid air. Somehow he manages to have me turn under myself. Like this, watch my arm. Yes, like that, but more delicately. And when I’m in perfect rhythm, I am his body and mine, moving through each other. Our nipples are the accents of some rhythm Mongo Santamaria or Pablo “Potato” Valdez would find irresistible. He says to me only, “Shimmy.”
———
——— I do….
———
——— I…do. I do and I blush. And I do dance with him.
———
——— But we just finished breakfast. It’s broad daylight. People are eating Sabrett’s frankfurters and bagels. Katz’s is open.
———
——— Well, can’t you see?
——— What am I missing?
——— They can’t really talk to me without signifiers or signs.
———
——— They can’t talk to me without preconditions, assured levels of literacy.
——— Yes.
——— Well, what I’m saying, what I mean to say is that he feeds me. Then, we dance.
———
——— He gives me fluffed rice, mangoes, and fried chicken. And we dance.
———
——— He ties my shoelaces and unties my bustier with his teeth. Did you know I hadda bustier?
——— No.
——— It’s black and rose lace with stays.
———
——— All I know is he feeds me and we dance. Why he even gives me tokens and we go somewhere else and dance. Sometimes we get transfers and find more places to mambo.
———
——— Now he’s helpin’ me perfect spins. Perfect spins. See, watch me.
———
———
——— That’s like mastering the “turn” of a phrase, don’t you think? So, I repeat, what’s missing in Paradise?
——— Well, I had this dream. Do we have time?
——— We’ve about seven minutes.
——— Okay. My friend Michelle and I are on our way from my house, the one in the Fifth Ward. We go down a tiny alley that doesn’t really exist to see someone I don’t know. Another black woman who has two children and a shop. She lives upstairs. The shop is draped with textiles, sculpture with the usual Navajo and West African motifs as well as straw, dirt, and stone pieces. There are some glowing arclike things in the shapes of headdresses from the Moulin Rouge which I really want. There’s no price tag. There are other things, wall hangings of red, brown, and black mud-cloth that I think would do well as ponchos, but the woman says the cloth cannot be cut. Later we go toward a river where there’s a restaurant I’ve never seen before. It’s all decked out for St. Patrick’s Day in green streamers and shamrocks. It is very elegant, very grand. On a spiral staircase there are green-clad chorus girls doin’ battements and carrying trays of champagne-filled glasses. At the bottom of the stairs there is a small group of girls, two black and one white, doing a sand-dance. They are wearin’ kilts and tams. I notice the black ones’ faces are painted and each one has different braids patterned on her head. I wonder how their mother managed to get them to rehearsal on time. Michelle says she knows who they must have studied with, but don’t know how to get to that studio. I am hungry. We’ve no reservations and the place is packed with white people in formal garb and blackface. I search for an exit. I’m so disappointed, but I panic because the blackfaced crowd is becoming unruly and I cannot find the door. I can’t find my way home.
———
——— Do you understand me?
——— What do you think, I don’t dance with you?