Excerpt from Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I didn't direct any of this at Jack, of course. I didn't need to. I could feel his gaze on me, hot like fire. He hated a spectacle. Unless it was his. From the corner of my eye, I saw him swat la sueca gigante's hand away, sensed him heading toward me. To "save me" from embarrassing myself. My hero. I kept up my performance. That night, I should have won an Oscar.

"Did I ever tell you who taught me to dance?" I asked as Jomar guided me smoothly around him in a lasso. "Our servants. Jack hates that I was rich in Cuba. Detests it. It doesn't fit into his nice vision of us as a cute little Marxist couple. But I assure you, we had servants and they danced with me all the time."

Around us, those who could hear me were eating it up—these sycophants loved gossip as much as idolatry—but others began to clap to the beat of the music. They cheered us on through lunges and copas and dips. And then Jomar began—slow, and then faster, faster—to spin me. Around once: I saw Tilly stop Jack. Around again: glimpsed the giant Swede storming out. I laughed loudly. I had just ruined his night as he had ruined so many of mine. I felt radiant with delight, felt the flutter of my secrets, knowing soon they would be free! Jomar spun me around and around, again and again and again.

Later, when word got out that I had fallen (jumped? or, could it be, pushed?) out the window, this was what everyone would talk about. How they had just seen her! Anita de Monte. That very night! How she had been laughing. And how she had been dancing. And how, when she spun around and around, the silver sequins of her dress went flying. Up and into the air. Like the feathers of a molting bird.

Excerpted from Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez. Copyright © 2024 by Xochitl Gonzalez. Excerpted by permission of Flatiron Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.