The constables entered and began roving between the tables.
Undaunted, Vivian accepted a dance offer from the nearest patron—a blond, red-faced sailor with a thick chest and a small head. He was wildly flinging his dance coupon in front of her and was so pleased at her acceptance of his offer that he pecked her rudely on the lips. Vivian, eyeing the constables over his hulking shoulders, overlooked the outrage and started jiving him up with rock steps and jitterbugs. It didn’t take long before he started making excessive bodily contact. Then he slid his hands over her bottom and groped, hard.
Vivian hit the roof. She drove a covert fist into the sailor’s sternum and knocked so much wind out of him that his eyes rolled back. He went limp in her arms and his weight almost dragged her to the floor.
The other sailors went wild. They lobbied desperately for Vivian’s attention, thinking that their mate had swooned after drinking too much, rather than from the stealthy blow of a woman. The constables approached, ostensibly drawn to the excitement.
Served by her quick wits she left the floor, pilfered a jacket off the backrest of an empty chair and seized someone from behind the cocktail bar who happened to be carting out a case of liquor. She doused his flat cap off his head and threw the jacket over him.
“Wear this and don’t get fresh with me,” she adjusted the collar of his white shirt and dragged the bewildered man away from the bar.
“I can’t dance,” he muttered.
Vivian did not answer. With tremendous aplomb she swung him out onto the floor just as a tango piece took form. The boorish sailors, unfamiliar with the nascent Argentine genre, retreated grunting and whinging, their places quickly taken by elegantly-dressed couples of superior taste and sophistication. A violin rose in a mysterious prelude to the emerging beats, the accompanying piano sprung alive. The night’s special had begun.
Vivian rested her arms seductively on her partner’s shoulders and leaned her face close to his. “Help me out on this. It will just take a minute.”
“I’ll embarrass you,” said the man.
“What is your name?”
“A… Anton.”
“Anton,” Vivian whispered. “Just move with me.”
On a beat she flew into the tango, twisting to the left and right before stumbling forward in a cue for him to hold her close. He did, albeit with such diffidence that she had to forcibly wrap his arm around her waist.
The commencement of a chorus melody sent them whirling into a reverse embrace, which Vivian then developed expertly into a promenade saunter with Anton in tow. They reached one end of the floor and Vivian spun about. She positioned Anton stiffly like a tea kettle, lifted his arms in a flaring posture and tugged at them to coordinate a parallel walk. Anton took the cue but not without such effort that made him perspire. His arms began to sag.
“You’re a teapot, Anton,” said Vivian. “Keep the spout up.”
She attempted a few stylistic boleos, a half-giro, then dragged Anton across the floor in a doble frente—a quick march with the lady slightly ahead. She swivelled, a little too violently for Anton’s standards. Her hair flew wild, and from them wafted a sensuous scent.
“Now walk forward six steps and I’ll follow,” Vivian instructed in a whisper. Anton complied and paced forth, seemingly emboldened by a desire to impress his fascinating dance partner. At the end of it Vivian unexpectedly yanked herself back, causing him to lurch forward and reach for her.
“I said six steps,” she chided through a frozen smile.
Before Anton could apologise, Vivian recovered from the deliberate move and inserted a foot between his legs and orchestrated a rather convincing side step by rapping them to the left and right. She then lifted Anton’s arm high and had him spin her around—or rather, she spun herself and dropped back into his arms. There she began rocking to a slow cadence. Anton tried to follow but fell so hopelessly out of sync that she rolled her eyes and flung herself into another double-timed promenade walk down the floor.
At the far end of the floor she pulled him into a close embrace, lifted a knee and wrapped her leg around Anton’s in execution of a caress. Anton, suddenly self-conscious, brought his legs together.
“I’m shining my shoes,” Vivian snapped. “Open them!”
Anton put out his leg and froze in place like a mannequin. Vivian drew up to him, and pressed her cheek against his. Over his shoulders Vivian observed the constables. The bartender pointed them to a door and they took the bait, believing that their suspect had fled through the kitchen and back to the streets.
Her ruse had worked flawlessly.
“Lap!” She barked, now charged with a burst of ecstasy.
Anton bent a knee and she leapt onto it and ran her hand affectionately down the side of his face before shoving it away. The move startled Anton, and his bewildered expression amused her so much that she flew into a string of laughter and executed another double-timed march down the floor.
They danced on with their foreheads touching as the tango piece progressed to its final bars. Vivian, now supremely thrilled, wanted to end it all with a dramatic fall-and-catch. But for fear that she might fracture the back of her head she opted instead for a more conservative corte. She executed a lápiz; leisurely inscribing a wide circle with her free leg before bringing herself and her unseemly partner to a bow with a leg extended far behind her. Anton, still locked in the kettle-posture, mistakenly bent both knees in the bow and shot out his free leg only when he saw what Vivian had done, just in time for the ending note.
Applause rippled across the dancehall. Vivian and Anton wove their way past the envious gazes of couples, particularly the ogling gentlemen, and went over to the cocktail bar. Vivian pulled the jacket off Anton and dropped it back on the seat from which it was taken. Anton, flushed and sweaty, blew out his cheeks and stood awkwardly beside her.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Vivian unfurled a sandalwood fan and began fanning herself.
“Like what?” said Anton.
Before Vivian could speak, a Kling left his cases of liquor at the kitchen and came bounding over to them. “You never tell me you can dance?” He delivered a jarring slap on Anton’s back and hung the last syllable of his speech on a grin.
“I can’t, Amal,” said Anton. He turned to Vivian with the intention to introduce her but faltered when he realised she hadn’t told him her name.
Instead, she reached her hand past Anton and made the introduction herself. “I’m Vivian,” she said. “You got any engagements with your friend tonight?”
Amal, puzzled by the question, retracted his grin. “Only deliver liquor lah.”
“I’d like to take him out for a drink, to thank him.”
“Thank him for what?” asked Amal, shifting his gaze dubiously between them.
“Why can’t we have a drink here?” said Anton to Vivian.
She nodded at the cases of liquor Amal brought in. “But they aren’t real, are they?”
Amal’s expression darkened, clearly put out that she had realised they were bootlegging counterfeit liquor to the club. He looked at Anton, who declared his innocence by shaking his head.
“Just a drink.” Vivian threw him a wink. “And you’ll have him back.”
Vivian was certain that Anton would come along. And when he did it made her happier than she thought she’d be. Maybe it was a nice respite from the murder she had committed less than an hour earlier. Or maybe it was something else—something she’d always craved but never confessed to. She brought him to a spot along an alley where the mellow illumination of gas lamps accentuated the rusty shades of its mouldy, peeling walls.