“All those people!” Meg said.
“Don’t worry. By the time we go on, it will be dark. You won’t see past the front two rows.”
Two rooms in the Social Science building had been reserved for the performers. It seemed the other acts were dressed to go on already, mostly in casual clothes. But there was a screen at one end, and Meg went behind it to get into the Spanish dress.
The girl who offered to zip her up said she looked fit to ravish, and Meg laughed and said she should be so lucky.
Out on the lawn the program got under way with a soul group. People were still arriving, only to find there was standing room only. Meg preferred not to stand by the window with the other girls, watching the scene. She busied herself putting up her hair and fixing the combs and the flower. After that, she worked on her eyes; under the lights out there she would need heavy shadow and a strong color.
Two guys and a girl from the School of Dental and Oral Surgery did a slick and popular comedy act featuring a bizarre dental operation, and then a girl sang protest songs and a law student did impressions of world-famous politicians. The first half ended with a reggae group. Meg had mastered the new fan, and decided to use it.
Then one of the committee asked if she was ready, as they were on second after the intermission. Don appeared, now in the classic black flamenco suit and hat. With it he wore a proud, imperious look, certain to inflame his numerous adorers and make them grind their teeth in envy of Meg. He said she looked sensational. Then he introduced José-Maria, who was thin and old and Andalusian. His guitar, José-Maria told her, had played for all the greatest dancers at the feria in Sevilla. Meg shivered a little; now she felt nervous.
The singer onstage was into her last number. They were waiting in the shadows.
“Okay?” said Don. “Just give yourself to the music.”
The vocalist took her bows and left the stage. The emcee said his part, recalling Don’s brilliant flamenco dancing at the party the previous year. This time, he said, Don was joined by a partner no less sensational, the lovely Meg Kellaway.
Don held her arm as they climbed up to the platform, José-Maria leading. There was applause and some muted screams and a few irreverent shouts of “Olé,” and then they had mounted the steps and it was dead quiet and everyone was waiting.
Meg stood in one corner of the platform, close to the scaffolding post that supported the canopy. She had her left hand on her hip, her face angled to present the profile. The program was to open with a solo sevillana from Don. He was statuesque in the opposite corner.
José-Maria played the first chords, and the sound worked like the sherry, for after its first arid taste, it drove deep to the belly and warmed the blood. It was the urgent, grinding note of the real Spain. The old Andalusian smiled at the fingers of his left hand as they pressed and released the strings.
And now Don came alive by stages, like a reptile, head, back, and thighs rigid, feet matching the rhythm with tiny, hard steps that took him slowly to the center, fingers snapping loud as castanets.
Meg watched the dance in gathering excitement. She felt her body respond, tensing so that she was conscious of every stretch and fold of its surface. It was answering the sexual invitation, demanding to be touched. The conventions of the dance prohibited contact, and that, perversely, quickened the instinct. Arousal and restraint — the polarity of sex and the tyranny of flamenco.
When the rhythm changed to the more languorous tempo of the seguidilla, Meg allowed her head to turn and her arms to move with the reluctance the dance demanded. Slowly she advanced on Don, and he responded with hand claps and the drumming of heels on the boards. She was exquisitely torn between the discipline of the dance and the fire of the music. She was conscious of the hundreds surrounding the stage, yet oblivious of them. It was simultaneously public and private, this celebration of passion.
Their eyes met and held the look without a glimmer of affection, for although the swaying body and the sinuous arms are the hallmark of the classic seguidilla, the face remains masklike, scornful of the body’s animality. But they swayed in unison and Meg knew it was magic.
Then it stopped, and the audience were standing to applaud. They were cheering. They were screaming. They wanted more, but it had been agreed there would be no encore.
They were mobbed as they left the stage. People were surging forward. It was frightening, because although the nearest appeared to want only to touch and congratulate them, others were pressing from the back. A student with glasses was pushed face to face with Meg. Their bodies crunched. Probably from embarrassment, he kissed her. In jerking her face away, she knocked the glasses off one ear and they dangled from the other. There was nothing he or she could do; their arms were pinned. She felt a heavy foot on the train of her dress and the tearing of stitches, and she called out angrily, “Get off my dress, you punk!”
It was Don.
Someone appealed over the public address for people to take it easy and give them room. The carnation was snatched from Meg’s hair by a girl she had never seen before. Some of her hair came loose. The dress slipped off one shoulder.
Then her arm was grabbed by someone who turned out to be a campus cop, and she was hauled sideways through the press of people. It bruised her arm, but it got her clear and to the Social Science building. She thanked him and ran inside and shut the door and burst into tears.
The girl who had been in the dentist sketch came over and put an arm around her and tried to calm her. She offered Meg some coffee from a Thermos and Meg drank a little of it.
She recovered enough to examine the dress. Two of the frills had been torn away from the skirt, but the fabric, amazingly, was undamaged — unlike Meg herself. When she took off the dress, her arms and legs were speckled with red marks that would become bruises.
She got into the skirt and top and unfastened her hair and repaired her makeup. Outside they were dancing on the lawn, and she was not going to let this ruin her evening. No one would see her bruises in the dark.
She waited three quarters of an hour for Don to appear from the other dressing room. He did not come.
She went to the room the men had used for changing. Don was not there. One of the concert committee said he had left an hour before with José-Maria. He thought they were going to Jax, the bar up the street.
She couldn’t understand his leaving like this without telling her. Had he taken offense at her remark made in a moment of panic and not meant personally? She went back to collect her things, and she could not keep back the tears. The girl who had comforted her before asked what was wrong this time. Meg explained. The girl said why didn’t they go looking for Don? She got her coat and Meg picked up her gear, and they walked off the campus and up the street.
“Jax Bar, they said?” the girl inquired. “I think I must have seen it. It’s kind of familiar. What did you say his name is — Don?”
Meg nodded. She was too upset for much conversation.
“That’s Spanish, isn’t it — like Don Juan?”
“No, just Donald.”
“Like Duck?” The girl giggled. “Sorry! My juvenile sense of humor. Don Juan wasn’t much anyway, I was told. He had this horny reputation and he was forever chasing the chicks, but my English Lit professor says he was probably impotent. What a drag!”
“Don isn’t impotent.”
“Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m just trying to help you relax.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Jax Bar was situated in the basement under a secondhand bookstore. They couldn’t see much for the cigarette and pot smoke, but they approached the bar and Meg spotted him alone at a table under a flickering TV. His back was turned to them.