Salsa Dancing

By Michael Loyd Gray

It was early on a Saturday, and I sipped coffee in the RV when Miss Courtney knocked on the door. That was unusual, somebody knocking, and so I eased a curtain open just a tad to see it was her and not some Jehovah’s Witnesses, or even Todd come over to jerk my chain about parking overnight in his lot. I’d been loyal to his bar. To my way of thinking, there was no issue.

“I hear you give dance lessons here,” she said when I opened the door.

I nodded and looked her over like I’d never seen her before.

“Maybe. But it’ll cost you, lady.”

“How much?”

“How much you got?”

“More than enough,” she said. “Everything you want, I reckon.”

That was a good line. I couldn’t argue against that one.

“Then you better come on in – I’ll see if the instructor is about.”

“Well, you just tell him I need to learn some new dance moves. Like maybe some of that salsa.”

“I’ll check the fridge to see if we have any.”

“Funny boy. Maybe I knocked on the wrong door.”

“No, you came to the right place alright. We’ve got salsa out the ying-yang.”

“I’ll ying-yang you if you don’t find that instructor pronto.”

“Your salsa is my command,” I said, feeling only mildly ridiculous for saying it.

I slipped my arm around her waist and the other on her shoulder and pulled her close. Her perfume always dazzled me. We did a lewd grope and feel two-step back to the bedroom.

After we’d “danced” a good while, Miss Courtney said she was hungry.

“I’ll send out a search party for that salsa in the fridge.”

She smacked my stomach.

“Salsa my ass. Take me to a real place to eat.”

I suggested we could just walk over to Todd’s.

“Todd’s is real enough. And only fifty yards, if a foot.”

“No bar food, Davis. No Todd’s”

“What’s wrong with Todd’s? They do okay in that department.”

“No meatball sandwiches or stale fries or onion rings. A real dinner. At a table.”

“Todd’s has tables.”

“And peanut hulls all over the floor.”

“Well, you don’t have to look at them.”

“I hear them under my feet, Davis. Crunch, crunch, crunch -- it’s kind of cruddy, really.”

“Well, I’m sure Todd’s got a broom we can borrow.”

“I’m not sweating for my lunch.”

“I think you just did.”

I got another smack to the stomach – harder.

“I want a clean floor and a clean table, Davis. And a clean white linen tablecloth.”

“Will servers in tuxedoes be required?”

“Well, I won’t complain.”

“You’ve worked up quite the appetite.”

“Haven’t you?”

“Yeah, I reckon I could eat.”

“I’m going to just go freshen up in your itty-bitty bathroom,” she said, sliding off the bed. “You think about where we’re going.”

After I heard the bathroom door close, I did kind of wonder, where is all this going?

We went to a new place in downtown Kalamazoo that specialized in fish and sushi. The tablecloths were white and clean, but the servers wore sharp blue uniforms with their names over a breast pocket instead of tuxedoes. No peanut hulls all over the floor. The place passed muster for Miss Courtney.

“I’ve never had sushi, Davis.”

“You mean undercooked fish.”

“I don’t think they cook it at all. That’s how they do it in Japan.”

I looked around.

“It doesn’t look like Japan. I don’t see any Japanese folks anywhere.”

“How would you know how Japan looks?”

“Well, it looks different than here.”

“Have you been there?”

“No. But I’ve seen movies about it.”

“Makes you an expert, right?”

“I’m just saying.”

“Well, I’m going to have some of that sushi. I like to try new things.”

“Like salsa dancing?”

“Any complaints?”

“None at all.”

I ordered salmon but tried some of Miss Courtney’s sushi and it wasn’t half bad. I figured I could develop the taste for it after all. It was kind of tangy and sweet. Like her personality – her perfume. I suggested some salsa on sushi wouldn’t hurt, though.

“That’s just wrong, Davis – salsa on sushi. And you’re kind of mixing together cultures.”

“I’m just spit-balling ideas.”

For dessert, we had New York cheesecake and more wine.

“I’m pretty full,” she said, scooting back a little from the table. “That was the best cheesecake I ever had.”

“And it didn’t even need any salsa.”

“You and that salsa,” she said. “I suppose now you just want to go over to Todd’s for a nightcap.”

I shook my head.

“I don’t go to Todd’s at night.”

“Never?”

“Not so far.”

“Why?”

“Karaoke.”

A server cleared away our plates and poured more wine.

After a sip, Miss Courtney said, “So, Todd’s is your bar, but you won’t step foot during karaoke?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“What’s your beef with karaoke?”

“I don’t have a beef -- per se. I just don’t like it.”

“But people like karaoke, Davis. They have fun.”

I raised my wine glass.

“Actually, they kind of make fools of themselves.”

“To have fun.”

“Well, then, here’s to them.”

“A karaoke snob – is that what you are?”

“If you must know, I think karaoke disses real music.”

“And you would know, as a famous guitar player.”

“I can play okay. I was even in a band at Michigan State.”

“You went to MSU?”

“Just a year and then I got a CC degree.”

“In what?”

“Accounting.”

“Seriously? You’re an accountant?”

“Was. Now I’m – retired from accounting. It’s boring to just endlessly maintain columns of figures. No more numbers for me.”

“So, what happened at MSU?”

“I flunked out.”

“You were a bad boy?”

“I was -- too much partying.”

“I like bad boys,” she said.

“I know you do.”

“You really are the mystery,” she said but her tone suggested that was a good thing.

I shrugged and finished my wine.

“I told the truth when we met. I’m on vacation from working for a living.”

“No job at all?”

I arched my eyebrows.

“None that I’m aware of.”

“Did you win the lottery?”

I chuckled.

“I guess you could say I won a lottery most folks don’t play – and shouldn’t play.”

“Now that is truly mysterious, Davis.”

“Enigmatic?”

“That, too, I suppose.”

I wasn’t sure if I was really going to tell her the story. I’d had enough wine to do it. I wasn’t sure if I owed any explanation. What difference did it make? We were just salsa partners. Bar “romances” rage and then often just flicker and go out as quick as somebody snuffing a candle. Then one day you see that person again, maybe in another bar, or even the same one, and you must wonder if any of it really happened at all. And if it did – why?

And why didn’t it last?

“Why’d you come up to me that night in Todd’s? Why me?”

“A feeling,” she said after a sip of wine.

“What kind of feeling?”

“You were alone – but you didn’t look lonely.”

“That’s it?”

“It only ever takes a tiny spark, Davis. That’s life.”

“I reckon it is. Fair enough.”

She looked me in the eyes.

“What’s your secret, Davis?”

“There’s no secret. Not really.”

“Then, a story. I bet it’s a good one.’

“Maybe.”

“An ex-wife – or two?”

“No wives. No kids.”

“But do you think about those things?”

“Maybe a little. Not often. But you never know.”

She looked skeptical.

“What’s the missing part? What are you leaving out?”

I had no idea yet whether Miss Courtney and I were going to last one more day, or a week, or even longer. I didn’t think there was much point to worrying about it. It would be like water and find its own level. Or not. Water rose but also fell.

“I did time,” I said quietly, a little surprised I’d said it. “That’s the missing part.”

It took a moment to sink in to her, I guess. She had a funny look. Maybe she thought I was pulling her leg.

“You mean like – prison?”

“Yes -- prison. A year in the big house.”

I suppose I tacked on the year to minimize it right away, to distance myself from the Jeffrey Dahmers and John Wayne Gacys. Just a year. No big deal, a year.

“Wow,” she said after another moment. “What did you do?”

I thought for a few seconds.

“I guess you could say I trusted somebody. That’s what I did.”

“Holy, Shit, Davis. A year?”

“But then I was exonerated and released. Like nothing had happened. Except it did.”

I walked her through the whole Cheryl-Anne escapade and the money from the state. I even told her how Marty Ballantine killed himself.

“But it really sounds like you deserved it, that money. You were innocent. My God, Davis -- what an experience.”

“Maybe I was technically innocent. But guilty of being naïve – stupid. Too trusting Too willfully blind. All those things. Prebaby should have known better. I should have seen it coming.”

“We can’t always see what’s creeping up on us.”

“That’s always clear enough after something happened.”

I avoided eye contact and listened to clanking silverware around the room. It reverberated in my head out of scale to the actual sound.

“Well, Davis. I guess there’s really only one thing to be done about all this.”

Here it comes, I thought. The other shoe dropping.

“What’s that, Miss Courtney?”

“We need to go back to the RV for some more salsa dancing.”

I smiled slowly, stood, and offered her a hand up. We strolled out the door arm in arm.

🩷🩷🩷

Michael Loyd Gray is a a member of the Society of Midland Authors and author of eight published books of fiction and fifty published stories. His novella Busted Flat, winner of a Literary Titan Gold Award, was released in October 2024. His novella Donovan’s Revolution, winner of a 2025 International Impact Award for Contemporary Fiction, was released in June 2024. In February 2025, he released Night Hawks, a novella.