The Merchant of Venice Beach (4 page)

“Hey, guys,” she said, peering casually at the screen. “Did you say something about pizza?”

“Let’s see what you’re up to,” Fernando said, and put his chin on top of Suzanna’s head, a gesture that Suzanna used to find endearing but that now aggravated her.

Why can’t I have any privacy?

Since Suzanna had no idea what she had pulled up, she looked at the screen, too. She blinked in fascination as she found herself looking at a lip plumper that worked in seven seconds.

“I’m looking at a lip plumper that works in seven seconds,” she said casually.

“Hell, Suzanna,” Eric said. “I wish you would just accept the fact that you’re fine. You’re fine. You don’t need plumper lips. Or stronger nails. Or shinier hair.”

“Don’t listen to him,” said Fernando. “Let’s have a look . . .”

Fernando let out a snort.

“Oh. My. God. Suzanna! This is too fantastic! How did you hear about this?”

“I just . . . stumbled on it.”

Suzanna had randomly landed on a creation that would give a person lips that looked as if she had been stung by a thousand bees. Not only that, but its “secret ingredient” was also used in products that promised penile enlargement. Apparently the inventor of the lip plumper decided that the skin on her lips was very similar to the skin on a penis, so she wondered if her lips would grow if she created a serum using the same ingredients, and voilà! Pouty Enhancer was born.

“Her lips are similar to the skin of a penis?” Eric said. “That’s a pretty gross comparison.”

“Speak for yourself,” Fernando said.

Although the inventor’s story went on and on, with words like pulsating and swelling, she swore her lips actually grew. Suzanna sat smoldering in embarrassment at the computer. Eric continued to look perplexed while Fernando had tears in his eyes, he was so amused by the copy.

“I’m not sure I want my penis to feel as if it’s been stung by a thousand bees,” Fernando said.

“This isn’t about your penis, Fernando,” Suzanna said.

“Darling, it so very rarely is, these days,” he said.

“OK, I’m done here,” Eric said. He tended to be the most reticent of the three to start comparing sex and love-life details. “I’ll order the pizza.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Fernando said as he took off after Eric. “Last time you ordered whole-wheat crust. That’s a sacrilege!”

Suzanna took a deep breath and went back to looking at dance shoes as soon as the boys were gone—but not until she had purchased two Pouty Enhancers.

CHAPTER 3

Suzanna was in a panic. After several futile attempts at finding shoes online, it became clear she was never going to have enough alone time to really investigate the subject properly. All the research she did manage just brought about more questions, not fewer, and Suzanna had to admit that she really needed some expert help in finding the right shoes. Now her first salsa lesson was looming, and she had somehow not managed to find the time to go to Dante’s Dancewear. She didn’t know exactly what she wanted, but she knew she couldn’t show up at the studio in the “wrong” shoes . . . whatever that meant!

Slipping away from the Bun as soon as the afternoon tea crowd had settled down, Suzanna pointed her Smart Car toward Westwood Boulevard, where Dante’s Dancewear beckoned. Suzanna walked quietly into the store, ready to appear confident and assured. After all, she didn’t know everything, but she knew she wanted character shoes.

“You don’t want character shoes,” said the stone-faced skeleton behind the counter.

It was at times like these that Suzanna remembered why she never left her comfort zone. When she was managing the Bun or hanging out with Fernando and Eric, curveballs like this were never hurled at her. Now, little self-doubts pricked at her like tiny toothpicks, but she pulled herself together, arched an eyebrow, and breathed, “. . . Oh?”

“A character shoe has a leather sole. You want a suede sole for classes.”

“Oh.” She paused emphatically. And then, because she couldn’t stand not knowing, she added, “Why?”

“The suede glides on the wood floor,” the skeleton replied, “and a suede-soled shoe is lighter and easier to dance in for long periods of time.”

It took Suzanna a moment to let go of her character-shoes dream, but since her character-shoes dream was only about a week old, she found she could easily replace it with the new, more-dance-centric suede-sole dance-shoes dream. Because, make no mistake, she planned on dancing for long periods of time!

She asked the skeleton to show her some suede-soled dance shoes that would lend themselves to sensuous salsa.

“What color?”she asked.

Red? Too showy. White? Too virginal.

“Black!” Suzanna said.

“You don’t want black.”

Suzanna left Dante’s Dancewear a little more unsteady and a lot less sure of herself than when she had arrived, but she had to congratulate herself. She had bought her dance shoes.

They were beige.

Apparently, in the dance world one referred to shoes in the singular. You bought a “shoe” and somehow your other foot magically got shod. According to the skeleton, one did not want a shoe that stood out. One wanted a shoe that blended in. Suzanna argued that the whole point of dance lessons was that she was damn sick of fitting in. The skeleton replied that she wanted her form and her self to stand out, not her feet.

“Beige hides footwork mistakes,” she said.

So Suzanna bought beige.

Suzanna clicked off the alarm in her Smart Car and hid her clandestine purchase in what passed for a trunk in the vehicle that passed for a car. Suzanna wondered briefly if the hot dance instructor would be impressed with her wise choice of a beige shoe. She looked down at her iPhone calendar—she’d find out in less than four hours.

The rest of the afternoon passed by in a blur. The sink stopped up in the tea shop, and this filled Fernando with anxiety. Suzanna and Eric knew from experience that the best thing to do in situations like this was to distract Fernando and get him away from the problem before he decided to take matters into his own hands. He was inclined to do things like poke wooden spoons down the drain, trying, as he put it, to “shove the problem out.” After exchanging a knowing look with Eric, Suzanna sent Fernando to the computer to look up an exotic white tea she thought might be interesting for the shop. She then manned the book nook while Eric fixed the plumbing.

The sink took longer to fix than Suzanna had thought it would, and by the time Eric was washing up (and the water was happily splashing down the drain), Suzanna was desperately eyeing the wall clock in the bookstore. After all her careful planning, was she actually going to be late for her first lesson?

Fernando popped back into the tea shop kitchen to admire Eric’s handiwork, and Suzanna stuck her head in to say that she had closed up the bookstore and was heading out for the evening. She withdrew as quickly as she could. She didn’t want to have to lie to them.

“Where are you going?” Eric asked, before she could escape.

“Just out to . . .. buy some new bras.”

That shut Eric up, but Fernando’s ears perked up.

“Oh? I’ll go with you. That last bra you bought gave you uniboob. I’ll come as your consultant.”

“Thanks, Fernando,” Suzanna said. “But I’m meeting some of the girls.”

Suzanna saw them exchange a confused look. There were no “girls” . . . and the boys knew it.

Suzanna grabbed her keys and ran down the gravel path to her car. She felt terrible about lying, but they had driven her to it!

By the time she drove across town, Suzanna’s nerves over lying to the boys were replaced by nerves about walking into the dance studio for an actual lesson with her dream man. Clutching her beige shoes to her chest, Suzanna took a deep breath and pushed open the door. She had made up her mind.

There was no turning back.

She sat on a bench along the back wall and put on her dance shoes, sneaking a peek at the other feet in the room. She noted that a high number of the women were wearing black shoes. Suzanna felt a touch of magnanimous pity for them—they clearly didn’t get the memo. She also noticed that many of the students were just wearing street shoes. Well, perhaps they were not as serious about this as she was.

Suzanna tended to latch onto anything that would bolster her ego when she felt her self-confidence lagging, and while she was well aware that feeling superior to other people because she had the right shoe was pretty pathetic, she did recall reading that bouncers at fancy clubs often decided if they were going to let a particular person inside the velvet-covered chain based on whether he or she had the right shoes. If nothing else, she had the right shoes to get into the club.

A man and woman who were taking a private lesson in an adjacent glass-enclosed room practiced a tango. A year ago, Suzanna wouldn’t have known what name to attribute to the dance, but Dancing with the Stars had changed all that. The couple was young and obviously learning a choreographed dance for their wedding. A few years ago, Suzanna wouldn’t have known that, either, but there had been about a million wedding showers at the Bun, so she was now in the “first dance” loop, big-time.

The groom-to-be was clumsy, stiff-limbed, and looked miserable, but appeared to be a good sport. His bride-to-be was lovely, but seemed to be seething with impatience at her man’s lack of grace. The instructor, an agile-looking fellow with an earnest smile, tried to show the couple what they were doing wrong. He took the woman in his arms and danced effortlessly around the studio. The bride-to-be was glowing as her fantasy dance was fully realized . . . except for the fact that it was being executed with the wrong man.

Suzanna made a mental note not to get caught up in any such foolishness. Once she got the attention of her instructor, she was going to keep it real.

Almost by magic, everyone in Suzanna’s section of the studio settled down and turned their attention to their instructor—her instructor—who had silently entered the room. He hadn’t even spoken, and yet the command he had over the room was evident. Chills ran up and down Suzanna’s spine as he began the class.

“Hello, everyone,” he said in his slightly accented English. “I’m Rio.”

Suzanna was about to say, “Hi, Rio,” the way they do at summer camp, but realized that there was an ultra-cool vibe going on in the room and that chirpy greetings probably didn’t work here.

He continued, “. . . To anyone who is new . . .”

He stared right at Suzanna with his liquid-mercury eyes.

“You’re new,” he said.

Suzanna was disappointed that he didn’t mention their interlude in the Wild Oats parking lot, but maybe he thought it would be rude to bring it up. Maybe he thought it would embarrass her.

Or maybe he just doesn’t remember.

Suzanna was about to say “Yes, I am new,” when she realized he had not asked if she was new. Since he had stated that she was new, his comment did not require a response, although making no response seemed unfriendly and closed off. Fernando had often accused Suzanna of overthinking, which, she had to admit, was what seemed to be going on at the moment. Suzanna shook her head and tried, as Eric would have said, to be “in the moment.” She felt tongue-tied, but was relieved to see everyone smiling at her. In the midst of her tumultuous inner chatter, Rio threaded his way toward her and put out his hand. She extended her hand to shake his, but quickly retracted it when she noticed that his hand was offered palm up.

The entire class was watching and Suzanna had no idea what to do. Instinct (what instinct? . . . is there a salsa instinct?) told her to just lay her hand, like a delicate tropical flower, in his hand.

Apparently, her guess was right because, her hand in his, Rio led her to the middle of the floor. Suzanna was so happy she almost started floating toward the ceiling again—she floated in times of euphoria as well as anxiety—but stayed grounded. Using just his hand to guide her, Rio spun her gracefully around to face him. He pulled her firmly against his hip. She let out a tiny gasp and could feel the color in her cheeks rising as she shyly looked into his eyes.

Those eyes!

“Let’s review,” Rio said to the class.

The class reviewed what they had learned in the previous weeks. No one seemed the least bit interested that Suzanna was standing in the middle of the room, attached to their dance instructor. Suzanna recalled the time when, as a kid, she had had her appendix out. A doctor came in with a bunch of young interns and they discussed her incision as if she wasn’t there.

This is like that, only I get to keep my clothes on.

Suzanna doubled her resolve to stay focused. Rio gently adjusted her posture. Suzanna told herself that she should not get her hopes up, that he was a professional dancer with no more interest in her than in any other student in the class. But as he led her through some baby salsa moves, she couldn’t help but feel that he saw her as someone special. Rio looked at her and, she could have sworn, almost smiled.