He unexpectedly got up and put on a CD by a French hip-hop artist I’d never heard of. He took my hand and pulled me to the floor. “For research,” he said to the thumping beat, the singsongy pulse of urban French poetry. “No, seriously,” he said. He slipped off his shirt, tossed it to the sofa, and began strutting and hip-thrusting, two fingers jabbing the air. Then he was grabbing his crotch, going, Yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh. I fell sideways on the sofa laughing. He pulled me up and out into the middle of the room and then I was shaking my own tail feathers, and both of us were laughing madly. “We’re too old for this,” I said. “What if Benny wakes up?” Benicio didn’t care, he danced on, playing the role like he owned it. In truth, we hadn’t laughed like this in ages. I began to remember why the young found dirty dancing so appealing. When I got my breath, I asked him what on earth he was researching this for. “A romantic comedy set in Paris,” he said. “About star-crossed gangsta love?”
