Dance Lessons for a Wedding

Translated from Spanish, 2019

The very first time I talked to Eugenia - when I assured her that Rebecca wasn’t my girlfriend
and I was not the one behind the ring on her finger - the old lady only shrugged and answered:
“Well, you know what they say. ‘Engaged’ ain’t ‘married’”, she said gesturing her quotations in
mid-air.
I didn’t speak to her much longer that class, but Rebecca asked me when we were leaving if I
had said something to Eugenia.
“No. Why?”
“She asked me what a young lady could possibly be doing dancing with an engagement ring on
and no groom on sight.”
“As if Gene Kelly needs to come sweat in this pigpen” I laughed, sarcastically.
Rebecca stared at me silently, with a look I was convinced she had acquired unconsciously from
my mother. “Okay, I’m sorry", I offered. "For the price we pay it doesn’t deserve to be called a
pigpen.”
I knew Rebecca was unhappy about the Gene Kelly thing, but after all I was the one keeping her
alibi up so Michael wouldn’t learn that his girlfriend didn’t feel ready to dance by his side. I had
been going with her to dance lessons three times a week – I had earned my right to be, in
moderation, a jerk.

From that day on, Rebecca started leaving her diamond in the lockers. I didn’t ask, but she
explained anyway that it was best for the silver to not lose its shine if she didn’t wear it when
she sweated.
“I don’t know… that makes sense on Mondays and Fridays, that’s hip-hop and Latin” Eugenia
mused after I had offered her Rebecca’s explanation, following the old lady’s insistence that I be
her dance partner. “But you guys also come on Wednesdays, to waltz and classical. I didn’t pay
attention last Wednesday, did she take it off as well?”
“Yeah, she has gone for a couple of weeks now without it, for every class. But, anyway, it makes
sense. It’s an expensive ring.”
“Sure, honey. And when did you say she was getting married?” she replied, staring at Rebecca,
who was so involved with the class that she didn’t even notice our glances.
Rebecca was sweating. Whatever it was that was keeping her so absorbed had the power to
move her as if she had been dancing all her life, or at least it would have seemed so if it wasn’t
for every second beat she kept missing. Maybe she missed them precisely because of whatever
it was she was thinking about. Maybe it was the same anxiety that made her shiver almost
imperceptibly. Or maybe she didn’t know how to dance.
“In a month and a half.”

“She doesn’t want to get married.”

It had been almost a week since we last talked. Eugenia had pattered out of the changing rooms
- her chubby legs wouldn’t let her run properly and she looked like an elephant tumbling, but
she was too excited about the news she was carrying as to merely walk.
“What?”
“Your girl, she doesn’t wanna get married. I was talking to her just now, asking her about her
boyfriend. She feels like everything is perfect and that he loves her just as she is but at the same
time he’s the most adorable boy she has ever met, and smart and kind and attractive and
perfect…”
“I don’t see how she wouldn’t want to get married.”
“Because she takes her ring off! She said she knows she loves him because she feels like she has
become his entirely, like something within her was going to be his forever regardless of what
happened to them, so getting married was just…”
She ran off to the opposite corner of the classroom. I turned around, and saw Rebecca exiting
the changing rooms. I grabbed Rebecca’s elbow and dragged her towards the window, to tell
her what Eugenia had just been telling me about.
“That woman has a serious problem” she answered nervously, while we got ready to waltz to
The Merry Widow. I laid my hand on her waist and immediately felt how she shivered at the
touch, like a cat that one tried to grab by surprise and who runs away instead. I waited for a
second before I tried to hold her again.
“Of course.” I replied. “But I still don’t get her point. It seemed so clear to her, she talked as if
she has known you all her life… I’ve known you since we were kids and I don’t see a
connection. As if you loved him so unconditionally that you didn’t want to…”
I couldn’t finish my sentence. On her first spin, Rebecca turned, rather than letting herself be
turned, so intensely that she slipped and fell on the ground over her own foot. The class
stopped instantly and a ring of people gathered around her, while the professor took a look at
her ankle. Somebody brought ice and they tried to help her to stand up, but it seemed to hurt
too much.
They sat her on a chair, dampening her neck with a wet towel and taking off her shoe and sock
to reveal a purple foot. They asked if she had gotten dizzy or maybe slipped as they recalled
another guy to whom something similar had happened a few months ago. I was looking at her
trying to remember if in that moment she had made any effort to hold herself to me or I to grab
her, and in the middle of all that chaos someone had found her emergency contact and Michael
entered the room and all the whispering and all the movement ceased.
The young man walked towards her and ducked, smiling. The teacher said that it was most likely
a sprained ankle, nothing too serious, and he nodded and held her in his arms, like the man of
steel.
“I didn’t want you to see me making a fool of myself” she said, half apologising, half pleading.
He kissed her forehead and walked her towards the exit. “Wait, wait!” she stopped him,
laughing until a jolt from her ankle stopped her. In his arms she looked even more beautiful.
“My ring is in my locker.”

For some reason I stayed for whatever was left of that class. Eugenia was waiting for me after.
For a second I wished that we had been taking boxing lessons instead.
“What do you know about them?” she whispered, as if it was a secret.
“He took her to the doctor and it’s just a sprained ankle, although it is gonna take a bit to heal.
Apparently they will have to delay the wedding, although he can easily afford it”.
“How is she?”
“She sounded… happier, much calmer. She says Michael has told her that in classes like these
she wasn’t gonna learn much anyway, at least not in time for the wedding. He said that once
everything is better he will teach her himself, and they laughed at her and at me.”
Eugenia held my arm and walked towards the exit with me, in silence for the first time since I
met her. I walked her towards her bus stop, and hugged her goodbye. Just as I was about to
leave, she stopped me like that one time she had asked me about the beautiful girl I was taking
to dance lessons for a wedding.
“You know what? I don’t think that these classes are that useless. I have a niece, Sara, and it
would do her some good to get out of the house more often. I will tell her to come with me
next week and, even tho Rebecca might not be coming, I hope I will see you…”