Nirmala was watching the two young women and thinking about something she had observed in the previous week — that the basic merengue step they were doing had the same count structure as a rhythm she used to use in class when teaching syllables. She had a specific memory of clapping a rhythm for a class of twelve-year-olds struggling with the concept of stress in English poetry, and the memory connected to the step in a way she couldn't entirely articulate.
Before she had consciously decided to do it, she found herself counting aloud: "One and two and three and four—"
Mrs. Apte's feet moved. Then Rekha's. Then, one by one, four more people, because Nirmala's voice had that quality — developed over thirty-one years — of making a count feel like an invitation rather than an instruction. It was the difference between being told where to stand and being shown how the standing connected to everything else.
By the time Freddy arrived at seven-seventeen, nine people were following Nirmala's count through a modified version of the merengue step and nobody had fallen over.
Freddy stood in the doorway and watched for a moment. Then he grinned — the full, genuine, thirty-four-years-of-enthusiasm grin — and said: "Nirmala madam. You want to lead the warm-up?"
