by Grace Palmer
“Tripping, falling, stumbling, face planting, elbowing someone in the face…The list is endless, really.”
“Ah, ah,” Camille tuts like a schoolteacher. “Happy thinking only, Toni.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Toni mutters back. She’s shooting nervous glances around the room, trying to reassure herself that she cannot possibly be the worst dancer or the most nervous person in the room.
But, rather than finding reassurance, what she finds instead is a shock sighting straight out of left field.
The door to the room sweeps open, and in walks someone she was sure she would never see again: the businessman from the airport.
She’s almost positive it is the same man, even though his hair is a touch longer and more unruly. He has paused in a patch of shadow, so she can’t see half of his face clearly. But the image of that broad, strong hand holding onto the handle of her baggage is seared permanently into her memory.
As she watches, he straightens the cuffs of the white shirt he is wearing beneath his pale gray suit. It’s the same hands; she’s sure of it.
“Are you all right?” Camille asks. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She follows Toni’s line of sight, sees who she is looking at, and frowns. “Do you know that man?”
“Not really,” Toni says, shaking her head dismissively. “Just a random…never mind. Don’t worry about it. It’s not important.”
Thankfully, a bell chimes just then, and a woman with the same stern, searingly beautiful style as the saleswoman at the tango dress boutique steps into the center of the circle. Her dark hair is pulled back in a severe bun, and her lipstick is a burgundy that looks gorgeous against her pale skin.
“Bienvenidos and welcome,” she begins in a rapid lilt. “I am your instructor for the evening.” Her words all flow together, joined like steps in a dance. Toni finds herself sitting up in her chair a little straighter, unconsciously prodded upwards by the woman’s perfect posture.
The instructor goes through a spiel about the evening’s proceedings that Toni only half listens to. Instead, she finds herself glancing again and again at the man from the airport. He is seated on the far side of the room, still in the shadows, leaning back in his chair with his ankle crossed over his knee. He looks arrogant, rigid, and composed. He does not look back towards her, not even once.
It is hard to pay attention over the next hour as the woman tutors all the newcomers, like Toni, who need instruction on the basics of the tango before the evening’s actual festivities begin. Even as Toni is paired with a mild-mannered Brit who steps on her feet more than once with a thud and a “Sorry,” she looks out of the corner of her eye periodically to see if the businessman has budged. He hasn’t, not even once. He keeps his hands folded in his lap and watches the beginners fumble around.
She’s not sure why, but his presence here is irritating her. And the way he’s just sitting there, as if he owns the place, as if all this amateurish ineptness amuses him—it simply isn’t right. There’s a part of her that yearns to give him a piece of her mind.
The intensity of the emotion surprises her. Throughout her entire life, she has never been one for melodramatic outbursts. “You Bensons are an even-keeled clan,” Mae has mentioned with a chuckle more than once while eyeing Toni and Henry. “It takes a great deal to get a rise out of you.”
Toni feels like that is a fair characterization. Even all those years ago, when her marriage went supernova in a single instant, Toni didn’t blow her stack. So why should this stranger be coaxing such a rise out of her? She’s not sure. All she knows is that she doesn’t like him. But also, she doesn’t like that she doesn’t like him.
The beginners trade partners, and Toni finds herself with a stocky, bearded Swede who has a little more grace to his steps than the Brit did. For her own part, Toni is getting more comfortable with the rhythm of it, the closeness of it, the pursuit and follow between dancing partners. It’s nothing she would’ve ever dreamed of on her own, but to her great surprise, she’s finding that it speaks to a part of her. She might even say that she’s enjoying it, truth be told.
Camille has gone back and forth between checking her cell phone and giving Toni encouraging smiles from the sidelines. As she and the Swede stride past, Camille grins once again.
At the end of the song, the instructor calls everyone together into the middle of the dance floor and explains the rules rapid-fire in multiple languages so that all of the attendees can understand. Toni’s head is spinning by the time she’s finished, but she’s fairly certain that she has the gist of it.
Basically, a male partner catches the eyes of a female dancer from a distance and inclines his head as an invitation to join him. If she accepts, she nods back, and they dance together for the length of a tanda, a three- or four-song section of music. Dancers follow the ronda, the pattern of movement on the floor like the flow of a river. There is no talking during the tandas.
Those are all of the rules, or at least Toni hopes so because those are the only ones she understood. With a firm nod, the instructor says the evening will begin shortly and dismisses them all to the chairs until then.
Toni sinks gratefully into a wooden chair next to Camille. “I am exhausted already,” she complains good-naturedly.
“Pah! Nonsense. You have a lovely stride,” Camille says with a friendly pat on the thigh.
“Thanks,” murmurs Toni. She glances around. The room has filled up slowly over the last hour, with more and more folks eager to tango. Frowning, she searches the faces, but it looks as though the businessman is gone. Well, good riddance, she thinks to herself. His presence had been casting an ugly pallor over the evening anyway. It’s better that he is gone.
A bell chimes out softly just then. It feels like the air in the room immediately tightens. Everyone stands up at once, Toni a half beat behind the rest of the folks in the room. “Come,” Camille says, offering her hand. Toni grabs it and looks around as a sort of frenzied shuffle begins. It’s the kind of moment where everyone is panicking but trying not to look like it. Or perhaps that’s just Toni projecting.
She goes through the rules again in her head. Eye contact, tandas, follow the ronda. Three forward steps, a side step, a drag step… It’s all blurring together in her head.
She pictures Henry laughing at her.
She pictures Jared dancing with Heather.
She pictures everyone she’s ever known, kicked back in seats just like that businessman from the airport was, looking on and laughing.
Then she takes a deep breath and whisks that all aside. It’s just dancing, right? No need to get all crazy about it.
As her eyes rake across the crowd, a man catches Toni’s eyes. He has dark brown hair, neatly parted, and a short-cropped brown beard to match. He’s wearing dark denim jeans with nice leather shoes, and the sleeves of his white button-down are rolled up to the elbow. He nods pleasantly and offers up a half smile. Toni hesitates, bites her lip, and then returns his look with a short nod.
As he strides through the throng of people percolating on the dance floor, the music begins, pouring through the speakers set high in each of the room’s corners. Toni’s heartbeat is throbbing in her chest. Camille squeezes her hand once, gives her a reassuring smile, and then slides away into the arms of a dark-haired man with a hairy barrel chest. She looks so effortless, like a drop of water slipping into the ocean, exactly where she belongs. Toni is jealous, but she reminds herself that no one is good at these things on their first go-around.
The man who nodded to her is waiting at the edge of the dance floor now, a few steps away. With one last anxious swallow, Toni steps towards him.
“My name is Mateo,” he says.
“Toni,” she mumbles, just barely audible.
He arches an eyebrow, but he must see how nervous she is because rather than asking her to repeat herself, he gives a short bow and extends his hands towards her.
She takes them, trying all the while to quell her shaking. Then they are chest to ches
t, and the music is at full volume, and the tanda has begun.
Toni spends the entirety of the first song watching her feet and mumbling the steps of the basic pattern in her head. Step-step-step, side step, drag step. Again, again, as they cruise around the edge of the circular dance floor like a record on a turntable.
By the time the first song ends and the second begins, she’s feeling a bit less nervous, enough to look up at the man and grin sheepishly. “You are doing well,” he murmurs.
He’s a good enough dancer, though she can tell that he is doing some of the same conscious self-instruction that she is. Together, they are managing to hash it out, though. They meld into the rest of the dancers—some better than them, some much worse—without making fools of themselves, for which Toni is extraordinarily grateful.
When the tanda ends, Mateo returns Toni to the seat where she was before. He smiles and does that stiff, quirky half-bow again before dropping back into the melee of people.
Camille arrives and collapses into the chair at Toni’s left. “So?” she exclaims. “How was it?” She is glowing with life. Her side-bangs wick away droplets of sweat from her forehead. Toni is perspiring, too, though she feels far less elegant than Camille looks. The woman just has a knack for appearing classy at all times.
“It was good,” Toni replies with a grin. “I mean, I think so. I was shaking like a leaf the whole time.”
“No matter, dear. You’ll get more comfortable as the evening goes on.”
Camille is right about that. Three more tandas later and Toni’s shaking has almost entirely receded. Her partners—another Argentine man named Juan who isn’t quite strong enough to steer her around the floor properly, the Swede she danced with during the instructional period, and an Aussie with a roguish grin whose hand gets a little too close to her backside—have given her confidence that she’s not the worst one in the room and that she’s getting better with every step.
During the fourth break, Camille gives her a wink. “Choose your partner wisely,” she advises. “This is the last one for us tonight.”
“You won’t hear me complaining,” Toni laughs. “My feet are crying for an ice bath.”
Camille grins and pats her on the thigh once more. Then, the bell rings out, and it is time for the final nerve-racking portion of the evening. As they’ve done four times already, the women stand and do the coquettish glancing to-and-fro that the milonga requires.
Toni feels Mateo searching her out. She considers it. He was nice, courteous, and handsome enough, plus a pleasant partner to dance with. But her eyes slide off him as if repelled by something invisible. She’s not sure why. Maybe she just wants to explore as much as possible, rather than retreating to safe territory.
Or maybe, she realizes suddenly, it is because they are being drawn somewhere else.
She looks two feet to Mateo’s left and locks eyes with the businessman from the airport. He is staring back at her with eyes like burning coals. She has a brief flashback to those eyes looking at her in the airport baggage claim area. Disdainful, haughty, condescending. The same level of intensity is there in his gaze now, too, but it has transformed into something altogether different.
Toni shivers. As before, it is as if she is being truly seen, skewered in place by this man’s look. She feels a half dozen or more wild, unnamable emotions lurch upwards in her chest and decides to ignore them all because she doesn’t know how to handle them.
She hasn’t seen him since he entered the room earlier. She’s been so focused on making sure she doesn’t trip that she’s hardly had time to look up. But the man’s face makes her think that—maybe, just maybe—he’s had his eyes on her the whole evening.
The businessman nods. It’s a slow, careful nod.
And before she can think twice about it, Toni nods back.
The crossing of the dance floor towards him feels like it takes a lifetime. She slides past bodies on her right and on her left as folks make their introductions and prepare for the music to start.
The businessman hasn’t taken his eyes off Toni. She takes him in once more while they approach each other. He is wearing gray suit pants with a subtle checkered pattern and a black belt to match his shoes. The crisp whiteness of his shirt stands out against his smooth, tanned skin. The cuffs on his sleeves are turned back just once, so she catches a glimpse of a sliver of muscular forearm.
And then he is in front of her, and she is in front of him, and it feels like all the sound in the room comes crashing in upon them like a wave in the ocean.
“I know you,” she blurts.
He nods.
“From the airport,” she explains clumsily. “With the bag, and, uh…”
He nods again. Toni falls silent.
“I am Nicolas,” he says. She has to crane her neck a bit to look up at him—he’s really tall. Up close and personal, she sees that he’s quite broad, too. He must lift weights or something, going by how taut the fabric of his shirt is stretched across his chest and shoulders. His scent slices through the musk of the sweaty dancers thronged around them—sandalwood, sun-warmed leather, and a zest of citrus lingering on the edge of it all.
She realizes he is waiting for her to introduce himself. “Toni,” she says simply.
She realizes also that he hasn’t yet smiled or even threatened to do so. Why is she here? There were dozens of other men she could have danced with for this final section of music. So why did she choose this jerk? She feels a lash of irritation—at him, at herself.
“Would you like to dance with me, Toni?” he rumbles. He has a deep voice, one that she feels as much as she hears.
They’ve already done the nod-back-and-forth, so this verbal exchange feels superfluous. But there is a kind of subtext to it, Toni is noticing. She sees it in the way that Nicolas is looking at her, the way the corner of his lip is maybe leaning ever so slightly towards a wry grin, the way his hands are folded and clasped in front of his waist. She’s not entirely sure yet what he’s asking, and she’s not entirely sure what to answer.
So she just nods. They step forward the last little bit. He’s moving slowly, so Toni matches his speed. The world has shrunk down to just the two of them. His hand settles—one tiny point of connection at a time—between her shoulder blades. Even with just the weight of his fingertips on her back, Toni feels a sense of control radiating from him through her.
She reaches her own hand up and finds its resting place on the back of his shoulder. Under her palm, she feels his warmth, his strength. Their other hands clasp together in the empty space to their right, just as Toni’s temple comes to nestle against the sharp line of Nicolas’s jaw.
She closes her eyes and breathes. The music surges into rhythm.
And then they move.
It is immediately an entirely different experience than any of the dances she has done so far. Nicolas isn’t yanking her around the floor as the Swede did, nor is he just trying to rub on her like the Aussie man had in mind.
But there is no doubt about who is leading the two of them. Nicolas’s hand on Toni’s back remains powerful, almost electric, and Toni finds herself drawing a kind of strength and guidance from it. It’s easy to follow along with him, to match his steps with hers, his breath with hers, his warmth and pressure and heartbeat and vibration with hers.
His heartbeat thuds like a steel drum as the music ebbs and flows. Toni is terrified to open her eyes because she thinks that if she does, this will all turn out to be a strange dream. So she keeps them closed and finds that it doesn’t matter if she does that, because Nicolas knows implicitly what she will do next. They step, step, step, side-step, drag together. Toni’s hips move as they’re meant to do without her even trying. Her whole body is coursing with a kind of tingling energy she has never known before. The dress, the music, his smell, his touch—it all weaves around her like a spell, and she lets herself be taken by it.
One song flows into the next, one step into the next. Before she knows it, the final note
has rung out, and the dark, sensual drama of the music fades away, to be replaced by the rising murmur and laughter of the dancers as they peel themselves apart from one another.
But Nicolas doesn’t let Toni go. For one tiny second longer than anyone else does with their partner, he holds onto her. Not crudely or rudely, but as if he is about to let go of something that he can never get back, and so he wants to savor it for a single moment more.
Then he releases her, and she wonders if she made that up.
“Gracias,” he rasps in a near-whisper.
Before she can say anything in response, he turns and leaves. Toni is left standing on the dance floor, still reeling from the beauty and power of whatever the heck just happened.
She’s not sure how long she is standing stock-still before Camille comes up and taps her on the shoulder. She smiles brightly. “Did you have fun?”
Toni opens her mouth, then lets it fall closed again. Could what just happened be described as fun? Toni isn’t sure. She’s had fun before, and this wasn’t quite that. She doesn’t really have a word for it at all.
So she simply nods and smiles back at Camille.
“Excellent,” the Frenchwoman says. “I am famished. Shall we find something to eat?” She doesn’t wait for Toni’s response. Instead, clutching Toni’s elbow, she pilots the two of them out of the milonga and into the cool, crisp air of the Buenos Aires night.
5
Atlanta, Georgia—July 1, 2000
After a while, Toni decided that she couldn’t sit there any longer, in her car in the driveway of a house that wasn’t hers anymore. She turned the key in the ignition, backed out, and headed down the road.
Just like the home she was leaving behind, her neighborhood now felt violated. Heather had driven down these roads with Toni’s house and her husband in her sights. Had maybe waved hello to the elderly Keller couple, Mina and Lawrence, who lived at the corner. Or perhaps Heather had stopped to let Mrs. Nunez and her little schnauzer walk across the road.
