Oscar Hijuelos - The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

That night he left her on the beach among the gnats and the fleas and the crabs that moved in clusters across the sand, feeding slowly, and she had to wander the streets searching for someone to help her. By morning she was sitting on a curb some seven blocks inland where there were houses. A milk truck pulled up and the man, dressed in white, leaned out and said, “Rough night, huh, lady?”

Then he drove her to a subway fifteen minutes away.

The night of the dance, Delores was thinking about what her sister Ana María had told her: “Love is the sunlight of the soul, water for the flowers of the heart, and the sweet-scented wind of the morning of life”—sentiments taken from corny boleros on the radio, but maybe they were true, no matter how cruel and stupid men can be. Perhaps there’ll be a man who’ll be different and good to me.

And so Delores put on a red dress with a pleated midsection and slit skirt, dark nylons and black high heels, a fake pearl necklace, got her hair done up like Claudette Colbert’s, dabbed some Chanel No. 5 behind her ear and between her breasts, and poured a few drops over the talcum-powdered crotch of her panties, so that the woman who would walk into the ballroom only remotely resembled the cleaning woman Nestor had met at the bus stop.

What Delores and Ana María saw posted outside the brass doors of the ballroom was:

!!! CONTEST!!!!!CONTEST!!!

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

AT THE IMPERIAL BALLROOM

for the

BEST

and

MOST OUTRAGEOUS

BALDHEADED COUPLES!

★

$50 first prize! & CASE OF CHAMPAGNE &

A SET of YOUR VERY FAVORITE RECORDINGS

!!!!!!!MUCH MUCH MORE!!!!!!!

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

featuring

THE FABULOUS MAMBO KINGS!!

★

Adm. $1.06. Doors open 9 pm

Checking their hats and coats, Delores and Ana María, their asses pinched by naughty hands, made their way through the bald and full-haired crowd gathered at the Imperial Ballroom. She was now in the world of courtship for which Delorita thought she had no use. But, just the night before, she’d dreamed about the musician she’d met at the bus stop. She was lying naked in a bed, pressed against him, and they were kissing, kissing; so tightly were they pressed together that her hair had wrapped around him like a coiling rope and their skin burned and, at the same time, she had the sensation that all the pores in her body had opened and that from each pore dripped a warm sweet liquid like honey. That dream soon blossomed into a funnel of sensations through which her body floated like a cloud: she awakened in the middle of the night, imagining the musician’s long, sensitive finger touching the juiciest valve in her body. As she moved toward the stage to point Nestor out to her sister, she blushed, thinking about that dream.

The Mambo Kings were up on the stage, looking much as they did in photographs of them from that time, in white silk suits and set up in two rows across, the elegant Miguel Montoya seated behind a grand piano, a percussionist standing before a battery of congas, bongos, and timbales, a drummer before an American kit, then Manny with his stand-up bass, and then the trombonist and two of the horn players. And in front of them the saxophonist and flutist, their two violinists, and then the brothers, standing side by side before the microphone. The spotlight was on the handsome Cesar Castillo, and at first Ana María, liking his looks, asked, “Is that him?”

“No, the shy one standing off to the side.”

And there he was, waiting for the turnaround of a habanera, and then, given the nod by Cesar, he stepped before the microphone, tilted his head back, and began to play his solo. Like his older brother, who had slipped back, he was decked out in a white silk suit, flamingo-pink shirt, and sky-blue tie. He was playing the solo to his brother’s composition “Solitude.”

“Isn’t he beautiful?” Delores asked.

And then, when the song had turned around again and Cesar sang the last verse, she stood under the stage where the trumpet player was standing, and smiled at him. He had been lost in a stony-faced concentration, but he was happy to see her. Then they went into a fast number, a mambo. Sly smile on his face, Cesar Castillo gave a nod to the percussionist, whose hands were taped up like a boxer’s, and he started to bop, bop, bop on a quinto drum, and in came the piano with its Latin vamp, then the alternating bass. Another nod from Cesar and the others came in, and Cesar started dancing before the big ball microphone, his white leather, golden-buckled shoes darting in and out like agitated compass needles. And Nestor, standing in with the brass, blew his trumpet so hard in his exhilaration over seeing Delores, whose presence seemed to soothe his inner pain, his face turned red and his pensive head seemed ready to burst. And the crowds on the dance floor wriggled and bounced, and the musicians enjoyed Nestor’s solo and were shaking their heads, and he played happily, just hoping to impress Delores.

Then another slow song, a bolero.

Nestor whispered to Cesar, who said, “This little number is an original composition entitled ‘Twilight in Havana,’ and my brother here wants to dedicate it to a pretty girl named Delores.”

Head back, he stood beside the microphone, a backlight throwing his shadow down over the floor and rising up along the insides of her shapely legs, lingering on the dampness between them and giving her a lick.

That evening, Delorita and her sister Ana María were a couple of killer-dillers and would spend the night dancing with one man after the other. Ana María with pure joy, and Delorita with a sweet wistfulness, her chin on the shoulder of her dance partner, her eyes on the stage and that spotlight on the microphone and the pained, soulful countenance of Nestor Castillo. Though she could have ended up with one of the handsome men there that night, Delores waited for Nestor. When he came down off the stage during the band’s break, when the other orchestra played, he seemed happy and enchanted, his somberness broken, after two years of suffering over Beautiful María, by the prospect of a new love. He attended to Delores as if there was nothing in the world that he wouldn’t do for her. He bought Delores and her sister drinks from the bar, wiped a bead of sweat from her brow with his lilac-scented handkerchief, and when she said, “I like to dance, but my feet get so sore,” he offered to rub her warm, nyloned soles.

When she asked, “Why are you so nice to me?” he told her: “Because, Delores, it feels like my destiny.”

He remained at her side as if he had always known her, and when, for no apparent reason, he dropped his head melancholically, she touched the back of his neck with her hands gently, thinking, “My poor Papi was that way,” and because she seemed to understand his pain and because he did not have to make jokes around her and hatch romantic schemes to trap her, the way his brother did with women, he felt that there was a chance for a strong connection between them. Like a forlorn bird in a bolero, he felt his wings being singed by the flame of tender love.

When the musicians returned to the stage, they were joined by the squat, mustachioed MC for the evening, who wore a black tuxedo and a thick red silk cummerbund around his immense belly, like a foreign diplomat. He stood before the microphone, announcing the event for that evening:

“And now, ladies and gents, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: our best baldheads dance contest! Our judges for tonight are none other than the famed rumba dancer Palito Pérez, and his wife, Conchita.” And they bowed from the stage. “The ever-fabulous Mr. Dance himself, ‘Killer’ Joe Piro, and last, that crooning marvel with the Mambo Kings orchestra, the ever-fabulous Cesar Castillo! Before beginning, I would like to remind you that this event has been jointly sponsored by the Sons of Italy Organization and the Nostrand Avenue Rheingold brewery. Maestro, you may begin.”