Tango

After months of winter drizzle and dreary gray skies, the first glimpse of sunshine fills the Parisians with such joy they burst into song.   May is a glorious time to be walking with Natasha across Le Pont Saint Louis.  This old stone bridge straddles the Seine and is just two steps from the green benches, the mossy stone fountains and the rose gardens behind Notre Dame.  Those fragrant blossoms compete with the lavender scent, rising deliciously on warm currents from the flower garden between Natasha’s breasts.   At the other end of the bridge, there’s an ice-cream parlor like none other in Paris.   I feel Natasha’s arm tighten around my waist as she squeezes herself deeper into my soul.  I’m trying to finish my raspberry ice-cream cone before it melts, and Natasha’s sexy green tongue is obscenely at work on the lime ice cream cone she’s holding in her free hand.  “Look, Sebastian,” she says, pointing to the swarm of Maybugs beneath the bridge, “regardes des éphémères. Maybugs are tiny insects that hide under the bridges of Paris, dinning, drinking and making love.  As she ponders the fate of the Maybugs, her wide red mouth turns a bit sad, and her eyebrows rise a bit in as if asking a question.  “Ah! How sad,” she says.  “Maybugs have such fleeting, ephemeral lives.” Ephemeral.  I like that word and also the French word, éphémère, for this tiny insect.  It says so many things, and it has a kind of poetic sadness to it.  This poor bug is born and then goes off in search of breakfast.  It starts dating right away, gets married early, has sex and babies and all those things; and then it dies.  All of this happens in a couple of hours.  But is the éphémère unhappy?  No, I don’t think so.  Because its Maybug Rolex, strapped to one of its tiny legs, keeps Maybug time.  This bug doesn’t think of life as ephemeral.  And six seconds on a Maybug Rolex is enough time to fly across the sun.  Where can I get one of those watches, I wonder? Time! What is it, really?  The fourth dimension?   But what the hell is that?  You can’t see it.  They say it flows around us like a stream, where life is a dream, and we just row row row our boats merrily down it.  But where’s it taking us?  And where’s the source?  And do you get to row upstream?  Like the singularity that floats in the vortex of a black hole, Time rides a bridge across veiled infinity, and no one has yet glimpsed beyond that veil.  No one.  Except for me, when I hold Natasha in my arms on the tango dance floor.   Tonight is tango night at Le Balajo.  We cross the bridge and head for La Place de la Bastille and la Rue de Lappe.  La Rue de Lappe is a lover’s paradise.  Its cozy bars and lounges line the street, and Le Balajo, the most ancient dance hall on the rue de Lappe, looks like a scene from “Dancing at The Moulin de la Galette” (Auguste Renoir).  The blonde girl sitting on a stool behind the guichet at the entrance wears a lace blouse that’s so brilliantly white it makes me want to blink.  Except for this, her lips…full, perfectly symmetrical “Leslie Caron” ellipses…would be too red.  She isn’t wearing a bra, and she catches me stealing a look at her nipples.  I feel like I’ve been caught looking through a bedroom keyhole.    Inside, Isabelle, a pretty, slew-footed ballerina who traded her toe shoes for the stiletto heels of a professional tango dancer, is meticulously drying champagne flutes with a towel.  “Bonsoir,” she says, leaning over the bar and presenting her cheek for my kiss.  “The usual?” she asks, reaching for the bottle of scotch on the shelf above the mirror.  “No, not tonight, Isabelle.  We’re drinking champagne tonight.”  Isabelle withdraws a bottle of champagne from the frig and sets two champagne flutes on the bar.  POP!  The champagne fizzes to the top of the glasses, then retreats to a safe, nose-tickling distance.    Men, wearing dark, pin-stripped suits and hats pulled low over eyes lost in shadow, sit at tables with women whose shiny stiletto-heels, like dangerous weapons, show through slits in their black sheath gowns.  Their smiling red lips part, and their sweet laughter rides the crest of the tango beat.  They pick up their fans, folded into unremarkable, inanimate wands on white linen tablecloths.  An imperceptible twist of the wrist and an umbrella-opening POP transform the fans into gorgeous lace wings, stirring the moist, perfumed air rising from damp breasts and causing the nostrils of the men to twitch.  The music begins again.  Stiletto heels stealthily climb the legs of the men.  The women’s eyes close, and their blood red lips sweetly upward curve, as the men dance with slow hands on silken thighs.   At Le Balajo, one can shake hands with a complete stranger, and two minutes later one finds oneself pressing one’s sexual apparatus into the belly of one’s partner.  I love it.  But some guys cheat and stuff a sock down their jockey shorts.  They’re the ones who are always in greatest demand.