It S a Good Program, He Said, Somewhat Truthfully. Good Department, Lots of Work in Town

Libertango

“But why, Avik?” demanded Elena as they walked past the library toward the studio on a rainy day in April. “I just don’t understand! Michigan! Why Michigan, for God’s sake? Why not somewhere civilized? Why not California? What’s wrong with California, hm?” He smiled to himself, reading the familiar names carved in the familiar white stone. Emerson. Socrates. Shakespeare. He’d always loved Portland’s library. Beside him, Elena shook her head impatiently.

“It’s a good program,” he said, somewhat truthfully. “Good department, lots of work in town after I finish the post-doc. I like the profs. The research is interesting. The fellowship was good…”

She snorted. Fat droplets flew from the tips of her umbrella to ping against his own. A few made it past to splatter on his face. He wrinkled his nose ruefully. “Like hell,” she said. “You don’t fool me. Spout all the logic you like, you’ve got some sneaky, underhanded reason to go there. Spit it out, damn you! Inquiring minds want to know. I insist on it.”

He shrugged. “I fell in love with a girl who lives there,” he said. “I’ve never really met her face to face, but I want to. So I’m moving there.”

“God, you are such a liar!” she fumed, brandishing the umbrella like a fiery sword. The moisture made her red curls stand out in an apocalyptic-looking aureole—very apt, he thought. “God! It’s a good thing you’re such a good dancer, or let me tell you, bucko, you’d have been dead meat long ago.”

“It’s true!” he protested, laughing, and she growled something under her breath and attacked, and they mock-dueled all the way to the studio while the rain fell in sheets and plastered their clothes to their bodies. He couldn’t stop grinning all night.

It was true, of course. It had begun so innocently that he didn’t even notice it, so that one day he turned around and there she was in his thoughts, lurking, as if sprung full-grown from the void. Her name was Margaret, and she’d asked a question about the cross step on the online tango forum.

I’m not surprised that you’re confused, he’d answered, since nobody else seemed inclined to. Everyone seems to lead it differently. Some people lead it by keeping a strong forward motion with their torsos. Some people use contrabody motion, a kind of twist, to place the follower so she has to cross her feet. I guess I do a little of both. There’s no real set way to lead it.

To his surprise, she’d written a reply. Are you the Avik who taught at the Valentango dance festival in Portland this year? The one who teaches with the tall redhead? You two are amazing. I learned more in your workshop than in a year of regular lessons.

He didn’t know how it had gone from that to I had a rotten day today—tell me about it—I did everything wrong, I need a hug, only somehow it had. Somehow, coming home to switch on the music and drain gallons of coffee no longer fortified him enough to face his thesis; a final, vital step had been added to his routine. He had to talk to Margaret.

“Hey, Margaret,” he said that particular night—he always thought of it as saying, as if they were speaking face to face, body to body, like partners in a dance—with his clothes still dripping on the floor and Elena’s outraged laughter still skittering through his mind. “How are you today?” He cued up the music: Piazzolla tonight, Maria de Buenos Aires. He loved the voice of the woman who sang Maria, low and melodious and warm.

“Hi, Avik,” she answered. “I’m doing just fine, thanks. And you?” She would sound like Maria, if he could hear her, and her low voice would heat with amusement whenever they spoke. “Don’t tell me you’ve been dancing in the rain again. Decided yet where you’re going to school?”

He grinned at the screen. “How’d you know? I think I’ve settled on the University of Michigan. What do you think?”

In the background, a man sang soulfully while Maria hummed her poignant theme. He imagined Margaret leaning over the keyboard, typing and humming, humming. “That’s marvelous!” she exclaimed. “Good tango here, you know. You’ll like it.”

“Of course I will,” he retorted. “You’re there, aren’t you? Of course the tango’s good.” He imagined her leaning back in the swivel chair, her bright eyes—they would be green, he thought, or maybe blue, sky blue—crinkling with laughter, protests rising to her lips: stop it, Avik, don’t tease, you awful flatterer.

Instead silence slammed down between them like a portcullis. When she spoke again she sounded wary. He rubbed his chilled hands, devouring the words as they appeared. “I’m not so good, Avik,” she said, finally. “I don’t think we ought to dance together. Don’t come here because of me.”

Why not? Why not why not why not? Tell me! Do you not like me? Are you bad at it? Are you just shy? Why? He took a firm grip on himself. “Oh, I’m not coming for you,” he said breezily. “I’m going for the school. Though it would be nice to dance with you, too.”

“Well,” she said, apparently mollified, “that’s all right then. I have to go to bed, I’ve got an early start tomorrow. Tomorrow, same time?”

“Yes,” he said fervently. “Yes.”

He arrived early at the studio’s milonga that Friday, lugging a duffle bag full of red tablecloths. He flapped them out and spread them while Elena dimmed the lights, and together they went through the weekly ritual of cursing the candles, which could only be lit outside of their glass holders, and which burned your fingers when you tried to put them back in.

“Damn it!” said Elena savagely, sucking her index finger. “This dance had better be worth it. I say we give candle duty to the beginners next week.”

He grinned. “We don’t want to scare them off.”

“Hmph.” She rolled her eyes at him. “Bunch of pansies. They’re scared of the milongas anyway. How are they ever going to get good if they don’t dance? Pretty soon you’ll abandon me for that hellhole in Michigan, and then where will I be? Stuck dancing with rampaging beginners. My feet get bruised just thinking about it.”

One of the others switched on the music, and the insistent throb of an antique tango orchestra filled the room. “I’ll miss you too, Elena,” he said, and held out his hand. “Dance with me?”

She sniffed but allowed him to lead her out onto the floor, and when he gathered her up in his arms she melted even closer than usual. After five years as her dance partner he knew every last nuance of her movements, every tiny shift of weight, when she would be playful and when challenging. Tonight she felt tense and miserable. He resolved not to let any of the more boorish students get their hands on her this time, even if he had to dance the entire night with her himself. With the mood she was in, she’d come away from an unpleasant partner hissing and ready to accidentally-on-purpose stomp someone’s foot with those deadly dancing heels.

“It’ll be all right,” he said clumsily after she flubbed a lead for the fourth time. Elena never made mistakes. Well, usually never. “Look—you can teach with Peter next year, you know he’s an awesome dancer and Laurine’s going to quit to have kids; he needs a new partner. You love dancing with Peter. You gush about him after every milonga.”

“I guess so.” There was an unhappy pause. He hoped she wasn’t going to cry. If one of the boorish ones had made a girl cry—especially at a milonga, for God’s sake!—he’d have cheerfully strangled the bastard himself. If he made Elena cry… “It’s just that you’re so nice,” she said despondently, and he heaved a mental sigh of relief. “Who else is so nice to dance with? No one, that’s who.”

“Um, thank you,” he began, even more awkwardly than before, though why should he feel awkward when they’d been dancing together for years? He knew she liked dancing with him. It was obvious in the trusting way she moved, the way she molded herself to him. “I—I always try—.”

But she was rushing on already. “Avik, what if you don’t like her?” she said urgently, as the orchestra thundered out La Yumba and he spun her round and round. “This girl you met online. What if she’s not the one? What if she’s got a face like a pig and dances worse than a sack of wet clay?”

One of the beginners, just arriving, glanced curiously at him. He tried to wipe the indignant laughter off his face. “Then I’ll still like the school. It’s a good place to work, and I’ll only be there a year or two. And either way I’ll come back for the Valentango festival in May, yeah? And maybe a couple other times too. We’ll see each other pretty often.” But she is the one, he thought quietly, trying to keep the thought from showing in his movements, though he had a sneaking suspicion Elena could read his mind. She was so good a follower, sometimes he didn’t see his own intentions until they manifested in her. She’s the one. She was at Valentango in our advanced class. I remember those girls. They were amazing. They were almost as good as you. Which one was she?

“Not like this,” she muttered, resettling her cheek against his. He squeezed her gently. “If she hurts you, I’ll carve out her heart and serve it to you on a platter,” she said fiercely, and finally relaxed.

And then the dance rose up and swamped him, and for three minutes he stalked through a haze of music and glory and despair. One small fuzzed-out corner of his mind had room to note, she’s back in the music now, she’s back to normal, and then the world blew away and it was only him and Elena and the music, him and Elena and pulsing sound.

“You’ve got to be the best dancer on the planet,” he said dreamily when the song broke off and freed him from its coils. Her arm slithered back from around his neck; she pulled away long enough to grin at him. For a moment, dizzyingly, he saw the faces of the Valentango women, all wearing identical exhilaration: warm brown eyes, olive ones, great grey eyes framed by hair gone wispy white. Which one was Margaret?

“You see,” she said softly, “we’re perfect partners. If she doesn’t suit you, come back and dance with me again.” The olive-eyed one was about his age, aggressive and strutting; the one with the strawberry hair had seemed oddly shy. At the milongas he’d watched and watched the old one, the strawberry-haired one’s aunt or mother or something, who danced with such exquisite grace it made his chest ache. Margaret wouldn’t be that graceful yet, but he could teach her. Anyone who loved dance, loved the music, could learn. Given time.

“Of course,” he told Elena, “of course I will,” and saw in consternation the first tears spill down her pretty cheeks.

“How was the milonga?” asked Margaret cordially when he slunk back to his apartment, pausing only long enough to kick off his shoes. The floor of his apartment—polished hardwood, not shabby for a lowly grad student—was sacrosanct, reserved for dancing. He’d pushed all the furniture back to maximize the space.

“Awful,” he sighed. “I made Elena cry. It was horrible.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “She was upset about you leaving? I guess I would be too, in her shoes. You’ve danced together quite a long time.”

“And she’s wonderful,” he said wretchedly. “I never get bored, dancing with her. But—but I need to go, just to see things elsewhere. Just in case—.”

“It will only be for a year or two, won’t it?” she said gently. He closed his eyes, feeling the pressure of her fingers stroke through his hair. He wished he could hear her. Would she speak with Maria’s voice? “You’re such good friends, Avik. She’ll dance with you again when you come back.”

He thought of Elena, sobbing to the strains of Canaro, and felt worse than ever. “Margaret,” he said, before he lost his nerve. “How old are you? What do you look like? I don’t remember which one of the Valentango girls you are.”

“Is that any question to ask a lady?” He thought she sounded amused. “Older than you, you young squirt, not that that’s hard. I’m short and I smile a lot. More than that you don’t need to know. You won’t see me in Michigan. We just talk, that’s all.” I will see you, he thought. I have to.

Milongas in Ann Arbor were on Saturdays and didn’t run as late. He supposed it was good for him to go home at one in the morning instead of four. More sleep, yeah? It had to be good for him. Only he spent the extra hours fretting over Margaret.

True to her word, she hadn’t come. He’d gone to every practice session and milonga within a hundred-mile radius, hoping to run into her, but not one of the women he’d danced with had looked familiar. And none of them put themselves into the music the way Elena did, the way he knew Margaret would. It was pleasant dancing with them, but not intoxicating. He wanted to be drunk on music, drunk on sound.

“Avik, I miss you. I hope those crazy Midwesterners are nice.” That was Elena, faithfully emailing. He felt vaguely guilty that he hadn’t yet answered her email from Tuesday. He wanted to report good news: that he’d found Margaret, that she was the girl of his dreams, that they were both blissfully happy and would move home to Portland as soon as his post-doc job was over. Elena would like that, wouldn’t she?

“How do you like Ann Arbor so far?” That was Margaret, friendly and untouchable as always.

“I like it,” he said slowly. “It’s all right.” She’d be smiling now, happy at his pleasure. He felt like a tango score, all passion and sharp edges. “Margaret, I have to meet you. Please.”

Silence like the pause before a sforzando accent, more terrible for what he knew would come. “No,” she said. Flatly. Even over the internet, he could hear the tone of that word. “That’s a terrible idea. Give it up. We were never meant to meet, Avik, not really. We’re friends. Isn’t that enough?”

There were so many things he could say. If he said he was curious, she’d be angry. If he said he’d die if he didn’t see her, she’d laugh at him. If he said he loved her… “I want so much to dance with you,” he said.