We took a little table at the wall. New Yorkers spend a good deal of their lives with their backs to walls, looking at things, eating things, drinking. We ordered coffee and the waiter dutifully told us there was a small minimum. It was Cuban coffee--thick and sweet--and we listened to rhythms musically naïve but emotionally more sophisticated than those of the big, smooth, uptown bands. Music is like accent in speech, and very few foreigners learn the language of another nation so well as to lose all traces of their own tongue--to talk like natives. At the Cuban Paradise, the Latins danced as they were supposed to and wanted to. Working people having fun. Immigrants remembering tropical nights--and sounds never heard in Manhattan--trees never seen on its streets--flowers never sold in its markets. There were pairs of girls dancing together--hopefully--and when I saw them, executing the slow, insidious steps of a bolero--I glanced at Yvonne. She was watching them, too--watching them so intently that my glance became a stare. She noticed and swept from her face its look of participation. Again, I felt terribly sorry for her. Sorry as one feels sorry for a bird that has failed to migrate and sits on its branch in the dreary rain of autumn, knowing the world is wrong, feebly sensing a lost, warmer climate, but unable to resolve the quandary of the dream and the pain of its present. A bird can be a sharp thing with a reptile's appetite--a bright bundle of vanity and vengeance. She smiled, though. "Those two girls--the redhead and the one with blue-black hair--are very good, aren't they?" "The dark one's beautiful--like an Indian." "Probably is part Indian--and also probably a Dodger fan who chews bubble gum and works in Macy's stockroom." "I wish I could lead--the way she does!" "That's the boy's department." I laughed. "Sorry! Maybe you're right. Maybe I am prejudiced. Though I regard it as merely the extreme and necessary product of my constant effort to keep track of prerogatives which are defiled and trampled every few seconds in this fair land!" I then added, "If you really want to learn dancing, you have to learn both parts. Yours--the girl's." She was easily mollified. And she was--not tight--but less cautious about herself. "I never thought of that! It would be interesting!" She looked at me thoughtfully. "Did you ever dance with a man?" "Of course." Her gray eyes kept looking. "Was it exciting?" "Sailors," I said, "dance together on battleships and have fun. That's why sailors are good dancers. I was never a sailor, however. The dancing I've done with guys was when my teacher despaired of being able to show me a step--and called in one of the boys to demonstrate--and to lead it." "Oh." She was disappointed. She had fled in revulsion from her husband's act; she had no similar scruples about me. On the contrary.