In the club, pink lights flicker off the garish cutouts of parrots mounted on the black walls. Real banana plants grace the corners. Palm thatch hangs above the bar. In the center of the room, on a floor of obsidian tiles, a woman is dancing. She sports a tight, black leotard, holds a huge gauzy scarf high above her head. A scooped neckline reveals much. Hair crow-black and very shiny sometimes sweeping across her face and catching on her mouth. One knee forward, and then the other. Bright red lips. Hiding her face now in the crook of her arm. Cheekbones now revealed, strong, full and high. Ivory cream.
Her feet are bare. Her thighs are thick and quite strong. You can tell she has built the dance from the sensation of sliding one against the other. White calves bisected by the tight black cuff of the leotard.
Someone over by the bar is arguing about Simone de Beauvoir. Women in dark clothes, some with faces flushed with wine, are kissing each other. The dancer stops, even while the music continues, and moves over to speak to a woman in a pinstripe suit. This one is not totally butch. Her hair is soft where it touches her shoulders, a cloisonne' butterfly pulling it back over one ear. The mouth has a full lower lip. She holds a silver lorgnette against it and smiles carefully. One strong finger with the nail cut short runs down the curve of the dancer's buttock.
She watches the dancer's face, slightly askance, sipping the house specialty, a julep, wondering, "Why does she not react? Why does she go on talking, not chattering exactly, not prattling, but still, so busy...so busy?"
The dancer is new to the city and enthusiastic about everything. Her voice echoes her words expressively, fluidly, as she speaks of the light on the Seine after a bateau mouche has passed; the light in the Monet's at the Jeu de Paume.
"Couldn't you just eat that light, that color?" She exhales the words toward the large, dark eyes of the shorter woman. "His paint is so thick, like little tisanes spread out, pasted on the canvas, all side by side and overlapping. Can't you almost hear the sunlight bouncing off those lilies?"
