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He is about to turn into Corso Italia when the memory crystalizes with full force: a face, a voice. A scene, or a number of them. Suddenly Max's surprise gives way to astonishment, and he slams on the brakes, inviting another blast from the car behind, followed by angry gesticulations from the driver as the Jaguar turns sharply to the right, braking once more before pulling up alongside the curb.
He removes the key from the ignition and sits there motionless, staring at his hands still resting on the wheel. Finally, he gets out of the car, puts on his jacket, and crosses the square beneath the palm trees, heading toward the terrace outside the bar. He is nervous. Afraid, perhaps, of confirming his suspicions. The trio is still there, talking animatedly. Max tries to stay out of view, pausing beside the shrubs in the landscaped area. The table is ten yards away, and the woman in the tweed hat is in profile, talking to the others, unaware of Max's intense scrutiny. No doubt she was once extraordinarily attractive, he confirms, as her face still shows traces of a faded beauty. She might be the woman he thinks she is, he concludes tentatively, and yet he can't be sure. There are too many other women's faces in the way, both before and long since. Watching from behind the bushes for any details that correspond to his memory, Max reaches no satisfactory conclusion. Finally, aware that he will eventually draw attention to himself standing there, he circles the terrace and goes to sit down at a table at the far end. He asks the waiter to bring him a Negroni, and for the next twenty minutes he observes the woman in profile, studying each of her movements and gestures to compare them with those he remembers. When the trio leaves the table and crosses the square again toward the corner of Via San Cesareo, he has finally identified her. Or so he believes. He rises and follows them, at a distance. His old heart hasn't beaten this fast for centuries.
* * *
The woman danced well, Max Costa realized. Easily and with a certain boldness. She followed him confidently when he tested her ability with a more complicated, inventive sidestep that a less nimble woman would have stumbled over. He guessed that she was about twenty-five. Tall and slender, with long arms, slim wrists, and legs that seemed to go on forever beneath her dark taffeta dress with violet overtones, cut low at the back. Thanks to the high heels she was wearing, which set off her gown, her serene face with its well-defined features was on a level with his. She wore her ashblond hair crimped according to the prevailing fashion that season, and cut in a short bob that exposed her neck. As she danced, she kept her eyes fixed on a point above the shoulder of her partner's tailcoat, where her left hand adorned with a wedding ring was resting. Their eyes had not met since he'd approached with a polite bow, offering to lead her in one of the slow waltzes they called a Boston. Hers were the color of liquid honey, almost translucent, enhanced by a perfect application of mascara (no more than was necessary, the same as with her lipstick) beneath the fine arc of her plucked eyebrows. She was nothing like the other women Max had accompanied that evening in the ballroom: middle-aged ladies reeking of musky perfumes such as lily and patchouli, or awkward young girls dressed in light-colored dresses with skirts below the knee, who bit their lips as they struggled to keep in step, blushed when he placed a hand on their waist or clapped to a hupa-hupa. And so, for the first time that evening, the ballroom dancer on the Cap Polonio began to enjoy his job.
Their eyes didn't meet again until the Boston (called "What I'll Do") was over and the orchestra launched into a rendering of the tango "A media luz." They had stood there facing each other for a moment in the middle of the half-empty dance floor. At the first bars, realizing she wasn't intending to return to her table (where a man in a tuxedo, doubtless her husband, had just sat down), he opened his arms wide, and the woman instantly responded, impassive as before. She placed her left hand on his shoulder, extended her right arm slowly, and they began moving across the dance floor (gliding was the word, Max thought), her eyes once more gazing past the ballroom dancer without looking at him, even as she shadowed his movements with surprising precision, his slow, sure rhythm, while, for his part, he endeavored to maintain the proper distance, their bodies touching just enough to perform the figures.
Excerpted from What We Become by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Copyright © 2016 by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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