Dark Tangos Read online

  Fortunately it had gone well for me. I’d gotten compliments on both my Spanish and my dancing, we’d made the expected small talk between one dance and the next, and when I got back to Lauren she’d said, “Well, it looks like you don’t need me anymore.” At the time I’d thought she was kidding.

  A tanda ended as I settled in at my table, and as soon as the next one started, I saw the woman I’d danced with the year before. I nodded toward the dance floor, she smiled, and I was off. She remembered me and I remembered her name and she told me I was dancing even better than the year before. Argentina is a very polite country.

  After that, it was like those years of failure had happened to someone else. I didn’t dance every tanda, but when I was ready, or the DJ played an orchestra I liked, I was able to find a partner. And the partners were amazing. One woman must have been 70, in great shape and showing it off with a low cut bustier, slit skirt over fishnet stockings, and luminous yellow hair, as light on her feet as a shadow. Another was heavyset and short, with perfect control of her body and the apparent ability to predict what I was about to lead, and another, with severe gelled hair and a gray business suit that smelled of cigarettes, flirtatiously caressed my leg with one foot.

  It was easy enough to confuse the sensuality of tango with more primal feelings. “The vertical expression of a horizontal desire,” was one of the clichés. And while none of the serious dancers I knew mistook tango for sex, I had come to realize that the dance satisfied many of the same desires that sex did—the need for physical closeness, the joy of moving together in rhythm, the ebb and flow of command and surrender. A night of dancing well could quiet my demons, and it was looking to be one of those nights.

  Then, suddenly, in the middle of a dance, she was there.

  I didn’t see her come in. She showed up in my peripheral vision, seated near the back of the women’s section, and at first I couldn’t be sure it was her. There were twenty or thirty other couples on the floor, with only a few centimeters at best separating us, and we moved with painful slowness counterclockwise around the room. As we finally came around again I saw that it was her—there was no mistaking the slightly crooked nose and the intensity of the eyes. As I watched, she saw me and recognition lit her face.

  I forced myself to look away and concentrate on the partner in my arms. When the song ended, we were on the far side of the room from her with at least one more tango to go. I had no idea what I said to my partner, except that I must have seemed rude and distracted. Another song started and everyone ignored it for the customary thirty seconds or so, then, slowly, the couples reconnected and began to move. As we came around, I saw that her chair was empty and I had a moment of alarm before I realized that she must be dancing now too.

  I was on the outer edge of the floor, as I’d been taught, with the slower and more experienced dancers. Never hurry, Don Güicho told me, leave the big, showy moves for those too young to know better. At that moment I wanted little more than to cruise into the fast lane and look for her. I was paying more attention to the couples around me than I was to my own dancing.

  It occurred to me that she could be watching me, that I needed to focus on dancing my best. The orchestra, unfortunately, was Biagi, with stuttering, staccato arrangements that I had never been able to anticipate. I tuned out everything but the music and my partner and did what I could.

  After that was still another tango. As the music crashed around us and I discussed the weather with my partner, whose name I no longer remembered, I saw a woman facing away from me, ten feet away, who might have been her. I told myself not to look and I looked anyway.

  Then it was time to dance again.

  There are people who believe that there is a reason for everything, that things happen because they’re meant to. Not me. I believe in eternal vigilance, in doing everything I can to boost my odds, in answering the phone every time it rings. As I waited for the endless dance to finish, I began to sweat.

  Finally it was over. I thanked my partner, apologized, and told her I wasn’t feeling quite right. She nodded and smiled, already thinking about the next dance. I walked her to her table and tried not to hurry back to mine.

  Between the tandas there’s a short piece of music they call la cortina, the curtain—usually instrumental, anything from jazz to rock to flamenco, as long as it’s clearly not another tango—a signal that the tanda is over and it’s time to clear the floor. This time it was the opening riff from the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” and it seemed to go on forever. It’s bad form to look for a partner before the next tanda starts and you know what the orchestra and the style are going to be. I stared at the red linen tablecloth in front of me and waited.

  The music faded. The sound system crackled and then the rather martial violins and piano of “Pavadita” by Alfredo De Ángelis echoed across the club. It was one of my favorite tangos, with swirling melodies and sudden pauses and dramatic tempo shifts.

  I looked up. She was already watching me. I gave her the cabeceo and we both headed for the floor.

  «I’m Beto,» I said as I took her hand. «I saw you at Universal on Monday.»

  «Yes, yes, I remember you.» She was laughing and it made her even more beautiful. «What a crazy coincidence. My name is Elena. I love this tango. Can we dance?»

  Part of what drew me to tango was the formality, the elaborate codes and traditions. There were even tango colors, which I had honored in my black shirt and red tie. Elena wore black knit trousers, tight around the curvature of her hips, wide and loose where her long legs met her four-inch heels. She had a matching black bolero jacket with 3/4 sleeves and long, crocheted fingerless gloves, and under the jacket was a red silk blouse cut hypnotically low.

  Elena, I thought. Elena, Elena.

  «Dale,» I said.

  I reached for her and she simply melted into me. The connection was perfect, electric. She had some kind of perfume or essential oil in her hair with a sweet citrus smell that I instantly loved. I took a deep breath of her into my lungs and she settled her right cheek against mine and the fingers of her right hand against the back of my neck. We breathed out together and in together and I settled her weight on her left leg. There was a moment of weightless anticipation and then we stepped forward into the music.

  *

  My teachers had hammered at me over and over about el eje, the axis, the center, how all the steps had to start there. They attacked my slouching posture and showed me again and again how to stand, how to step, gave me complex moves to execute and showed me the moods and rhythms and structure of the music. Yet in the end, nothing really mattered to me in tango but the connection. There is nothing like it in any other dance. When it works, a stranger comes into your arms and you are immediately as close as lovers.

  Elena was not a flawless dancer. She missed at least one fairly clear lead. She led herself into a couple of risky boleos and even ended up on the wrong foot once. As for me, I still struggled with those moments when my brain went white and I couldn’t think of anything to lead, and I still got flustered when the couples around me stopped moving for too long.

  None of that made any difference. She knew every note of the music and when we sped up with it, there was a catch in her breath like mounting passion, urging me on. When “Pavadita” spiraled up to its silences, it left us wrapped tight in our embrace, our breathing suspended. It was the feeling that made me want to learn tango in the first place—that I was no longer an isolated, solitary creature, but half of something greater and more graceful. In tango, when you’re in sync with the entire floor, moving and breathing and pausing together, there is no longer any distinction between your body and the music and the very concept of loneliness ceases to exist.

  When the song ended, she didn’t let go. I didn’t know if it was artifice or genuine emotion, I only knew that I didn’t want to let go either. A second passed, and another, and another. Dancers on both sides of us were conversing. The next song began and finally her arms began to
relax. We slowly moved apart and when I could see her face, it reflected what I was feeling: confusion, longing, amazement.

  Then she saw me looking and smiled. The smile had a rueful quality, as if she hadn’t meant me to see her like that. «So you know de Ángelis too. Clearly.»

  «Yes, I love him. He’s probably my favorite. Next to Pugliese.»

  «Yes, yes, Pugliese, of course, always. How do you know all this? Your Spanish is good, but you’re not from here.»

  I gave her the short version: studying in the States, trips to Buenos Aires, living here now. Before I could ask her about herself, we were well into the next song and the floor was starting to move. It was de Ángelis again, a vocal this time, “Para qué te quiero tanto,” why do I love you so much?

  We made fewer mistakes this time and the connection was just as electrifying. Halfway through the dance she began to sing along, softly. Her voice was high and clear and beautiful, and I was perfectly willing to pretend that she was not just lost in her love of tango but was singing to me.

  At the end she clung to me again, and like before she quickly shifted into idle conversation. «What is it that you do for Universal?»

  «It’s very boring to talk about. I write programs to help bosses create a lot of paperwork for their employees to waste their time with. I want to know about you. What do you do? Where did you learn to dance like that?»

  «No, no, it’s my life that’s really boring. I work in a shoe store. In Abasto Mall. The dancing, I don’t know. Two years ago I heard a tango in the street, I must have heard it a thousand times before, only this time it was different and I had to dance. So that night I took my first class. Mostly I come to milongas.»

  I realized how completely out of practice I was at this. How did you ask the real questions, the important ones? Are you with someone? Did you feel what I felt when we were dancing?

  I said, «I want to dance with you again,» shocking myself with my lack of discretion.

  She laughed. «That’s easy. There’s already another tango started and you will dance it with me, no? ‘La Brisa.’ It’s beautiful.» She sang along, «…so warm and soft in the rose garden…»

  I felt my face heat up. It was clear enough what I’d been asking and she had laughed it off. I put my arms around her and took her into the thick of the other dancers. What had I been thinking, anyway? I was too old for her, and with her looks and ability she could have her pick of younger men, better looking, better dancers than me.

  It was a classic tango moment. From the ecstasy of the first two dances I fell into despair in an instant, and there was no better dance than tango to express it. I knew there was a chance I would never dance with her again, so I gave it everything I had.

  When it was over the DJ played the opening of the Doors’ “Break On Through” for the cortina. She turned the end of our tango embrace into a hug and kissed me on the cheek. «Thank you,» she whispered. «It was marvelous.»

  I walked her toward her table, so full of emotion that I couldn’t speak at first. «I’ve never—» I started, then shook my head and let it go. «You’re an incredible dancer.»

  At her table I hesitated a moment longer than was proper, finally forcing myself to take a step backward and start to turn away.

  «Just a second,» she said.

  She got a business card out of her purse and wrote a phone number and an email address on it, and as she slipped it into my shirt pocket she held the back of my neck with her other hand and kissed me again on the cheek.

  *

  I sat out the next tanda and pretended I was not watching her as she danced with another man. She caught me doing it once and looked at me and laughed. The rest of the time she had her eyes closed and she seemed to give her new partner all the intensity she’d given me.

  He was one of the milongueros viejos, the old paunchy guys in suits who never seem to do anything fancy, yet hit every break in the music, never get hung up in traffic, and make all their partners look good. I envied him his skill and his carelessness, and I hoped to be able to dance like that one day if I lived long enough.

  It was a set of vals, tango in waltz time, using many of the same steps with a different feeling: more continuous, more turns, more forward momentum. It was a dance I loved, but not one I wanted to be dancing just then. Instead I sat and held onto all the contradictory feelings raging inside me—joy over the card in my pocket, jealousy of the man she was dancing with, the knowledge that I was reading too much into too little, that I was making a fool of myself.

  When the next tanda started, I didn’t look for another partner. Though it was too soon to ask Elena again, I looked in her direction anyway and saw her changing her shoes.

  I was mystified. Who goes to a milonga to dance three tandas and then leave? She didn’t look at me, or look back at all, just took her shoe bag, her purse, and her sweater and headed out the door.

  I probably would not have noticed the next thing if my emotions hadn’t been in such turmoil, with Elena at the center. Within a few seconds of her leaving, a man got up behind me and followed her out. He was at least six foot four and extremely thin, older than me, with a lined face and receding jet black hair. He wore rimless glasses and a threadbare suit over a black T-shirt. His left leg didn’t bend properly, giving him a slight limp. He was so remarkable looking that I was sure I hadn’t seen him dance all night, and certainly not with Elena. There was something alarming about him and I had an urge to go after him, to watch Elena’s back. I didn’t because the doorman downstairs made sure everyone got safely into their cabs, and because I was out of my element, if I had an element, and a long way from the country where I was born.

  *

  One of my dance teachers used to tell a story about seeing one of his students leave a milonga after less than half an hour. My teacher stopped him to ask what was wrong and the student said, “Nothing. I just had the best tanda of my life. I’m done.”

  I decided I was done too.

  *

  I had Elena’s card in my wallet at work the next day, though to be on the safe side, I had already emailed myself all the information on it. I didn’t yet know what I wanted to say to her.

  The front of the card featured the logo of the New Diqui shoe store, along with her full name, Elena Maria Lacunza, and I had to fight the impulse to go to the Abasto mall on my lunch hour and look for her. She already had one stalker and I doubted she would appreciate another.

  Then, at 11 a.m., the police arrived.

  I heard them before I saw them. The receptionist was telling them, in a frightened voice, that they had to wait for the director, and the detective was insisting that he needed to see «the computer.» Then Isabel’s voice joined in, demanding to know what was going on.

  I got up to look, as did three or four other people, our heads sticking up over the tops of the cubicle dividers. Prairie dogging, the wits back in the States called it. We were all in a single room that had once been a warren of offices. Some decades ago they’d knocked out the walls and replaced them with supporting columns. It was a mark of the esteem they had for me that there was no column through the middle of my cubicle. All the other programmers kept their heads down, having spent their lives staying as far away from the police as possible.

  There were three cops, a detective in a suit and two black-uniformed officers with automatic weapons. Each of the uniforms carried an empty cardboard box. The cops, plus Isabel, plus the receptionist, plus a uniformed Universal security guard, all stood at the edge of the cubicle farm. «You’re in charge?» the detective asked Isabel.

  «I’m Isabel Salcedo. I’m the director. What’s this about?»

  «I need to see the office of Marco Suarez.»

  «He had no office. He was retired.»

  «Did he continue to work here?»

  Grudgingly, Isabel nodded. «Sometimes.»

  «He had a desk?»

  «Yes.»

  «A computer?»

  «Yes.»

&
nbsp; He saw he’d won the high ground and visibly relaxed. He was a small man with a thick moustache and a shaved head, probably in his mid-thirties. «I am Sublieutenant Bonaventura.» He opened a passport-sized leather folder long enough for her to glimpse the contents. «I am looking into the disappearance of Sr. Suarez. I am required to bring his computer to our technicians to help with the investigation.»

  «Our computers contain confidential trade information. I can’t let you simply walk out of here with one.»

  «I assure you I have no intention of letting Microsoft get their hands on it. We’ll return it to you in a couple of days. You understand that I am not asking your permission? Good. Can you show me the computer?»

  My curiosity was not strong enough to risk a confrontation with Isabel or the police, so I sat down again and stared at my monitor without seeing anything.

  I got the story later from Bahadur, who had been in the lab running tests.

  Isabel worked the combination on the keypad outside the lab to let the cops in. It was a big room, 60 feet across to where Suarez’s desk sat, 40 feet wide, with racks of test computers and long tables end to end down the middle. Bonaventura had apparently received very clear instructions. He went to the desk that Isabel pointed out to him, sat down, and immediately opened Suarez’s laptop.

  «I’ll need the password,» he said.

  «I don’t know any of my employees’ passwords,» Isabel said.

  «Can we skip the games, Sra. Salcedo? We actually have computers, you know. I’ll tell you what, I’ll look the other way while you put in the administrator password, then I can change the logon password myself.»

  He got up and offered Isabel the chair. Bahadur told me he could see her brain working furiously and failing to get traction. She sat down and typed the password and got up again.

  Bonaventura took care of his business, shut down the machine, then pointed to the cable lock that held the laptop to the desk. «You have the key for this?»