Willow can hardly believe it. It’s Saturday night. Instead of curling up with her cat and the latest issue of Nature, she has been swept up in Wazzer’s evening. Dressed in gothwear from Wazzer’s capacious wardrobe (“that corset hasn’t fit me in years”), and wearing a kilo of makeup from Wazzer’s even larger cosmetics stash, she barely recognizes herself.
In fact, she barely recognizes her city. They are in an upstairs cabaret club, red walls and white tables, jam-packed with revelers. People in evening clothes and masks – it’s a masquerade – are sipping from champagne flutes and laughing.
It is still Wellington, though. Even though everyone is trying to channel Venetian courtesans, and the evening’s main entertainment is a range of scantily clad dancers under the umbrella of “burlesque”, any atmosphere of sensuality is hampered by everyone knowing everyone else. Wazzer is close friends with two of the acts, which is why she’s wrangled a night away from work. Willow spends half an hour chatting with several other scientists and analysts she knows. Like her, they are all single for the night. None of their Kiwi fellas wanted to dress up, even to see women take their clothes off onstage. The few men there are flirting like bandits. Willow chats with one of them for a while, not thinking much of it until he says, “Will I see you at salsa dancing sometime? Friday night at Amigos? You know where that is, right?”
“Oh, yes,” Willow breathes. Then she freezes in shock. Has she just agreed to go dancing? What made him think she could dance? And how disappointed is he going to be when he sees her actual face?
[…] into the pockets of a cowl-necked cobalt tunic picked to Bring Out Her Eyes, looking for the guy who invited her salsa dancing. The crowd is intriguing; pairs and trios of women and men come in, split up, and dance with each […]