Hold Me Tight & Tango Me Home by Maria Finn

Author:Maria Finn [Finn, Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2010-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

La Volcada, The Fall

CLAIRE AND I met at the subway station between our apartments and headed into Manhattan for a Friday-night milonga.

“Whenever I buy clothes now,” Claire said, “I think, Can I use these for tango? and if the answer is no, I don’t buy them.”

“I think I have to start wearing totally flat shoes in my everyday life,” I said. “To save my feet for tango.”

“That’s a good idea,” she answered. “I need new dancing shoes. The suede wore right off my last pair.”

The people with whom Claire shared an office referred to it as the Tango Hole; when she started talking about tango, she couldn’t stop. This phrase is also used when friends disappear, as in “Have you seen Fred lately? No, he’s gone into the Tango Hole.” The tanguero, no longer interested in dinner parties, cocktail hours, and theater tickets, goes dancing every night.

Some friends understood. When I started salsa, I took a balanced approach. I saw my friends on certain nights, danced a few times a week. And I advanced much more slowly because of it. This time I’d be available for weekend brunch with nondancers, but not much else.

At Eighth Avenue, Claire and I got off the subway and started walking toward a brick building shaped like an isosceles triangle and wedged into a corner of a busy intersection. Traffic flowed on all sides of it. The meatpacking district didn’t smell of animal offal as it once did, and the catcalls of suspiciously large-boned ladies-of-the-night no longer filled the air. Rather, Hummer limousines dropped off bar hoppers, and beautiful people stomped down the streets in weather-defying fashions. Glancing through windows of dimly lit restaurants, we saw well-heeled customers pick at small platefuls of food. This did not concern us.

We rang the bell, and when someone answered the intercom we both yelled, “Tango!” We climbed the three flights of stairs to the dance studio, Triangulo, which had been named for the building and the dance as well — the steps, at least in essence, outline acute triangles. Glints from strings of white lights hung along an exposed-brick wall reflected in the mirrors on the opposite wall. The windows overlooked the busy streets and sidewalks, and sometimes the air of intrigue, the thrill of the night, floated up to us from the partyers below. On Fridays we were a small, insular crowd, tucked away in our private little boomerang-shaped corner.

Peter came hurrying toward me. “Where have you been?” he asked. “Nobody wants to dance with me.”

“Who did you ask?” I answered, surveying the room.

“That guy over there,” he said. He pointed to a large, burly Russian man.

“I wouldn’t take that too personally,” I told him. “Ask a woman.”

As I changed shoes, I noticed the couple we most enjoyed watching. Their dancing bordered on the violent; every step, every kick, every spark of contact smoldered with lust.

“Their ganchos are so high, some places ask them to leave,” Peter had told me.

The woman wore a plaid super-miniskirt and wielded her salmon pink, spiked dance heels like a martial artist.

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