The best doctor: dancing at Plaza de Reyes in Old Town

She’s wearing her red jacket. It flaps around her as she jerkily spins around and around. Makes her look as she must have when Roger first fell in love with her. He has a play hat on with “ROGER” scrawled across the front. He holds out a dog-eared black and white picture of a young, slim-faced cowboy slipping a ring on a beatific girl’s third finger. You can’t tell if she’s smiling behind the layers of veil. 

“That’s us,” he says, “Madeleine and me, her birthday, June 25, 1955. I’d met her exactly one year before at a dance in Winnipeg. I said to my pal, ‘I’m going to dance with that girl, and then I’m going to marry her.’ And that’s what happened. This is us getting married in Manitoba, Canada, a year after that dance.”

“Senores, senoras!” A gravely voice booms over the loudspeakers. “Vicente Fernandez! Great singer! He left us, unfortunately, five months ago, but he did not take all his songs with him.” This is Jose Manuel, the violinist of Los Reyes trio. 

It’s Saturday afternoon in the Plaza de Reyes, Old Town. All is quiet, except in this corner of the Plaza of the Kings. The patio here is shoulder to shoulder with everybody — kids, young parents, older couples — all dancing to the live music of this Mexican trio. It seems to be a gathering spot where people who want to dance come and socialize on weekends. It’s a shock to see something genuine happening here, as opposed to actors evoking the usual bygone age. And yet this is as old-fashioned and in the Mexican tradition as it gets. 

“We’re taking requests,” says Jose Manuel. “Vamos a hacer Cumbia!” A trill goes out from some of the older women in the audience. Cumbia is this relaxed dance from Colombia — slower than salsa. Easier on old bones, too. “You want to dance Cumbia? Very old song, una cansion viejita, pero bonita. Como todas las viejas! Beautiful, like all you older ladies!”

He looks around at the band. They kinda sigh “Eeh!” into their mics. “Like all your beautiful music,” he adds.

“Aaah,” goes the band.

“Okay, okay, I know. Everybody wants La Bamba. La Bamba! Later! Right now we’re starting easy. Eee-zee.”

“Ehh,” goes the band. 

Whatever, pretty soon, there’s Madeleine’s red jacket flapping among the fountains and statues and the potted trees, reaching out to Roger like she could go on forever. Roger, who looks so much like his famous acting cousin Robert Duvall — the same stocky cowboy build, the same seriousness backed by self-amusement — occasionally grabs her for a whirl. She wields her walking stick like a third leg. It spins when she spins, steps out when she steps out. She’s looking…radiant.

“I was in the screen business,” says Roger. Even though he is at least as handsome as cousin Robert, he doesn’t mean the silver screen. He means fly screens. “It was a good little business,” he says. “You never run out of flies in Canada.”

Yes, Madeleine is a little stiff — okay, a lot stiff. But they’re determined to dance, to do their thing today. “The doctor told me that my cancer has returned,” she says during a break. “He said ‘Just live your life. Enjoy yourself.’ So we are! God is my best doctor.”