I held her a little closer. The gardenias smelled like nights in Florida. "It's not in the book, Yvonne. But there's nothing in the book, either, that says you shouldn't go to Havana and find out what the steps mean—when you've learned how to do them."
She said, "I think I better sit down."
We went to our table and she ordered another Planter's Punch. Her face was a damp, darker color now than peach; perspiration had curled small ends of her hair so that they were like the tendrils on vines. She was panting—and trying to disguise it—but I could hear the breath in her throat and see the dilation of her nostrils. We had been dancing hard. We both needed the long, slow drink of air—though the air here was warm, full of smoke, and had garish light in it that made too plain the grimed plaster on the walls. Too plain, that is, for the music and its mood.
"You do things to me," she said.
"You do them to yourself. In sex, men respond to the subject, women to the object. I'm your object—but you're the response."
"I could be annoyed with that."
"More of what you'd call antifeminist propaganda?"
She shook her head. "Annoyed on the grounds that you apparently never let yourself go."
"On the contrary. I always let myself go. But I always let my brain go along, too."