but one populated by time travelers and circus folk.
Transferred from the limo to a golf cart driven by an assistant in a Yankee hat, Pagan watched an eight-seat electric vehicle hum past, carrying a flock of flappers in feathered headbands and spit curls.
Her cart zoomed by the commissary, turned left and nearly smacked into a clutch of cowboys, guns at the hip. Nearby, three ten-year-old girls practiced a soft-shoe in an empty parking space. Their mothers sat in folding chairs nearby, knitting or watching critically. “One and two and ba-da bam!” one woman shouted, smacking her hand hard on her thigh. “Do it again.”
Hang in there, kid, Pagan thought. She’d been that girl. Mama had been that woman. No tap dance had ever been good enough. No line reading was ever exactly right. That was how excellence was earned, Mama had said. She may have been right, but it was so very exhausting.
The cart purred onward. The soundstages loomed like windowless mausoleums on either side as grips and wardrobe assistants ambled along, paper coffee cups steaming.
“What are you shooting?” Pagan’s driver asked.
“Not shooting yet,” she replied. “We’ve been rehearsing at a dance studio since Christmas, but now we need a soundstage big enough to choreograph this big number before we head to Buenos Aires to shoot.”
“All the stages at Universal taken?” He shook his head. “Didn’t know they had such a busy slate.”
“Maybe yours are just better,” Pagan said. “But don’t tell anyone over there I said so.”
He laughed as they pulled to a stop in front of Stage 16 and she alighted from the cart. “But I’ll be sure to tell everyone here you said it.”
Smiling, she sailed through the door cut into the side of the soundstage with its Authorized Personnel Only sign, and stepped into the echoing dark of the stage. She stopped to let her eyes adjust to the spot of light along the back wall. A dusty piano crouched there. A wizened woman with a face like a walnut, her hair pulled severely back in a bun, sat on the bench smoking and flipping through sheet music.
“She’s here!” More lights flickered and came to life, illuminating the empty cavern of the space and a tall, graceful man she knew, the movie’s choreographer, gliding toward her. He wore flowing black trousers and a black turtleneck over his long, sinewy limbs, and he paused to extend one leg in front of himself, bowing with hands to his chest to her as if he were a courtier paying homage to the queen.
“Jared!” Pagan leaned in as he rose and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You look marvelous. How was your New Year’s?”
“Busy, my beautiful. Busy and scandalous and everything New Year’s should be!” Jared said, taking her arm as they walked toward the piano together. “And yours?”
“Sober and boring and everything my New Year’s should be,” she said.
He laughed. “Which means you won’t have forgotten everything we practiced last week.”
“I better not,” Pagan said. She’d spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s with Jared at his dance studio, learning the steps to the dances for Two to Tango, with him standing in as whatever partner she had in the dance. Today was the first time she’d be dancing with one of her costars. That must be him in the T-shirt, trousers and scuffed dance shoes, stretching out his calf muscles by the back wall.
“Do you know Tony Perry?” Jared left her to take the man by the elbow and tug him toward her. “Tony, you’ve heard of Pagan Jones, of course! Your delightful and delicious dancing partner.”
“Miss Jones,” Tony said, taking her hand in a grip that was a shade too tight. “I’m a big fan.”
Tony Perry was a hair under six feet, with thick hair dyed so black the bright stage lights didn’t reflect off it. His dark tan, overlaid with a new painful pink burn, had been so recently acquired she could still smell the coconut oil. His lips disappeared when he smiled. It was a tight, fake, assessing kind of smile. His eyes did the elevator, riding up and down her body in a way that made her want to throw off her trench coat and yell, “How’s this?”
She’d heard of him vaguely: he’d recently starred in some semipopular Broadway musical. Two to Tango was his first movie, and his overly curious, voracious energy announced that he was on a mission. He was going to be a big star if it killed him. Or her.
She hoped he’d relax a bit so they could dance together, but she didn’t tell him to call her by her first name. “Miss Jones” was fine with this guy for now. “Hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”
“Not at all, not at all!” Jared lifted a finger at the piano player, who carefully rested her half-finished cigarette on the edge of the piano before hitting a chord. “But shall we warm up a little? I have such plans for you, my lovelies.”
“Can’t wait.” Tony lifted an eyebrow at Pagan and smirked. “Shall we?”
Pagan removed the trench coat and threw it and her purse into the corner. “Let’s.”
Jared led them through a quick series of ballet warm-ups—pliés, ports de bra, coupés and posés, while the wizened one pounded out stately chords. Tony looked limber enough. But then the tango didn’t require great kicks, leaps or lifts. It involved close, complex footwork between the two partners and perfect timing, but you didn’t have to be a complete athlete to look good doing it.
Until Tony started pointing out how Pagan’s turnout could be wider, how her extension was limited, how, when he’d danced with Gwen Verdon, she hadn’t done it that way. He did it with long, lingering touches on her knee and thigh and in a patronizing “I’m here to help” tone low enough that Jared didn’t overhear him as he paced in front of them, declaiming over the chords from the piano.
Pagan stopped herself from swatting Tony’s hand and edged away from him. It was tempting to wonder out loud whether his bony arms were strong enough to lift her when required, but at this early stage of rehearsal, creating more conflict would only backfire. She was the one with the bad reputation. She was the drunk, the killer. So she had to continually earn everyone’s trust and respect. She found a halfhearted smile somewhere and produced it.
“And now, the tango,” Jared said. “A labyrinth of emotion, as it is a labyrinth for your feet. To truly dance the tango, you must have experienced great sorrow, yet still be open to joy. You must surrender to the music, yet remain alert. The tango is relationship as movement. It is the most demanding of dances, the most intricate. Yet at bottom it is very basic—listen to the music, pay attention to your partner, and love. That’s what the tango is—love. And we will use it to show how our characters may—or may not—be falling in love.”
He finished with his hands clasped in front of him, his head bent over them, as if in prayer.
Oh, the drama. Jared never failed to milk it for all it was worth, but that was part of a choreographer’s job. She didn’t mind it in small doses, but she couldn’t help hoping the director would be a little more no-nonsense during the shoot.
The scene they were rehearsing involved Tony’s seductive gaucho character, Juan, following Pagan’s lonely character, Daisy, as she walks down a deserted street in Buenos Aires after she’s left a party where no one would dance with her.
Pagan had been followed down empty streets before, but by men who wanted to kill her, so the idea struck her as the opposite of romantic. Nonetheless it was in the street that Juan would lure the reluctant Daisy into a passionate tango after a convenient accordion player shows up.
Jared used chalk on the floor to map out the lines of the “street” Pagan and Tony would walk and tango down, with the back wall of the studio serving as the line of buildings. Pagan had done this a hundred times with Jared in his cramped studio, but here in the soundstage she could take the longer steps he wanted up and down this pretend street in Buenos Aires.
Pagan began it seemingly all alone. The accordion would start (cue