My Tanguera, My Dog, and Me

Sootie is a mute observer of my black dog as I leave home and cross the lawn. I duck under an orb spider’s golden web, and step out onto the dock. The sky at dusk is overcast, and bulrushes sway in a stiff breeze out of the north. An incoming tide bears grassy flotsam and iridescent organic swirls. Off to the east, far away across the marsh, a thoughtless suburbanite stabs the night with a thousand watt security light. My black dog edges closer. I turn my back on the intrusion, sink onto the bench at the pier-head, and see drifting clouds give way to stratospheric flashes of jets heading west. I think of the leisurely stroll of milongueros and the electric recognition of souls sensing communion half-way through the first tanda.

I reach for my phone and fire up Di Sarli’s “El Once”. My black dog backs off. I imagine that even Sootie, still as night at the edge of the marsh, stirs and yearns to be free. As I do. Two years and counting have atrophied neural circuits whose sole function is to transform physical contact into rhythmic synchrony, induce graceful transcendence of the everyday, and carry me off on a musical wave in a protective embrace. No wonder Sootie stirs. Instead, two years and counting have conjured up an unwanted but faithful black dog that trots at my heel, rejects all frivolity, and insists on dire interpretation of life as we know it. But the black dog retreats before the seductive weft and weave of Tango emerging from my phone that casts its spell over the wide horizon before me.

And so, I get to my feet and await Sootie’s arrival. She comes to me and we face each other for a moment or two, close and still, save for the near imperceptible sway of our bodies as we anticipate the next musical phrase. And then, with a quiet introductory flourish, I take a long slow step into her space, and another, and another, while Sootie enticingly retreats and accommodates me, gathering me into her embrace. We dance as if the pandemic, and not our nestling, is just a dream. At last the song concludes, and I reprise my initial flourish as a coda to Di Sarli’s final note. Sootie and I prolong our embrace for a few seconds more, before an admonitory growl from my black dog intrudes. Sootie disappears, a wisp dissolving into the night. I make my way back along the dock, hangdog at my heel. The wind picks up and the first drops of rain follow me home.

Footloose Tango

I’m immunized now. Both doses of a fancy vaccine, tested first in scurrying rodents, then given experimentally to humans, and finally subjected to robust statistical analysis, are now infiltrating my cells, busily erecting barriers to viral onslaught. I hope. We’ll see. Along the way, invariably masked and gloved, I’ve languished in Tango limbo, interacting only with equally remote grocery check-out clerks. I no longer encounter intriguing women at milongas, who back in the day used to offer intoxicating alternatives to everyday life. I’ve suffered, it goes without saying, as we all have. But I never realized how essential those encounters were to my imaginative life, the life that fuels my Tango stories. Fully immunized, yes, but notwithstanding daily bird-watching, online chess and cryptic crosswords, I’m still deprived of the magical sensual stimulus that is Tango. Understandably, when writing, my mind is often as blank as my laptop screen with its mocking cursor.

And so, I responded eagerly when Maria texted me late one night about an editorial she’d come across in a medical journal addressing the public health issue of gun violence. Guns and Tango have very little in common, but Maria, a surgeon who daily deals with gunshot injuries, intentional and otherwise, and an accomplished tanguera to boot, is my lodestar for local Tango engagement. I replied by asking if she’d been immunized, and when she would host another of her much-anticipated milongas. Long moments passed, during which I buffed my Tango shoes, if only for old time’s sake, listened to Argentine Tango Radio Budapest, and wondered what next. At length, Maria replied: “Wishful thinking, Max. It’ll be another year at least for those of us who’re careful. But here’s something to cheer you up.”

I clicked on her YouTube video.  A hooded lout, crouched in full camo gear and armed with an AR-15, was spraying high velocity bullets from twenty yards into a fat scarecrow wearing a suit and sporting a dangling red neck-tie and a flamboyant blonde hair-piece. Bits of straw flew and the manikin jerked as if demented. The soundtrack inevitably played the dulcinate strains of “Assassination Tango”. No vaccine, however fancy or clever, could withstand that particular onslaught. Good to know. The video faded, and segued into Oswaldo Zotti’s seductive first class in the immortal “This is the Way to Dance Tango” series. I recalled in that moment my first faltering steps on the yellow brick road that leads to Tango. I realized that all may be right with the world after all. Just a matter of time, vaccines, masks, and patience. And perhaps, hard to imagine I know, one day we’ll dance again, footloose and fancy-free.

Cabeceo Cowboy

I get it. Norms must be followed. Structure underlies function. Or is it the other way round? No matter. Here’s the thing. Catch her eye, or let hers catch yours, and you’re good to go. Catching is key. Cast your line across the darkened expanse of polished parquet, baited with all you’ve got. Which boils down to a commanding presence, equal parts upright posture, a clean shave, a confident demeanor, and totally at one with the intricate tango song flowing from the DJ’s shaded nook. Oh, you don’t measure up? No nibbles from the far side? Averted eyes? Preoccupation with a half-empty glass of Prosecco, or a chafing strap on that new dance shoe? I get it. Been there, done that. And now the cabeceo cowboy takes over. 

You stand, hitch up your pants, and stroll around the perimeter of the busy dance floor, casual as you please, approving with a smile faultlessly-executed enrosques, barridas and molinetes. You come to the first far-side bistro table, where three women, two of a certain age, and one half that, are deep in conversation. You pause, bow mock formally, and extend a hand over the flickering electric candle that adorns their table. They glance up, inspect you briefly, and then carry on as before. Oh, well… At the next table, on which lie a lady’s purse and a cast-off silk scarf, someone is slouched over a smartphone, his thumbs dancing obsessively over its obsidian surface. You suppress an involuntary sigh of disgust, and move on. But, be still my heart, what’s this? Here’s a beautiful woman, hitherto obscured by a potted palm. She’s all alone, one hand idly fingering an errant curl behind her ear, the other smoothing the silken surface of her dress  where it clings to her thigh

You pause, take stock, and catch her eye. She bestows upon you a long cool look that starts at your hairline, receding it’s true but testifying to maturity if not hard-earned wisdom, surveys the barely-noticeable bags under your eyes, the paper-thin wattles of your throat, your paunch held at bay by your belt buckle, and your thin shanks, draped in loose pants but nevertheless itching to dance. You short-circuit her possibly unfavorable review by offering her your hand, a smile, and a sidelong glance at the dance-floor. She closes her eyes momentarily, and when they re-open she’s no longer looking at you, but instead studying the shaded nook where the DJ is fussing with his laptop. Your heart stills. You’re about to move on when she turns to you, bats her eyelashes, indicates the empty seat beside her, and murmurs, “I’m not crazy about this song. Let’s see what’s up next.”

You sit down, shoot your cuffs, and venture an ad hoc critique of “Regreso al Amor”. She puts an index finger to the perfect crimson arc of her lips. Cabeceo is treading unfamiliar ground, but this cowboy is able and willing to go with the flow…     

Conjunction Tango

Jupiter and Saturn’s great conjunction having come and gone, Brexit sounder than ever, Washington shaking off smothering Laocoonian coils, vaccines saying “Hello”, and Christmas front and center, I found myself thinking yet again about Tango. I shot off a text to Maria, she of the roof-top milongas of summers past. She replied she’d sold her house, along with the fabled candle-lit dance floor that offered long distance views across Low Country sea-marshes and Tango tandas that steered us into soulful connection. Searches of local Tango websites turned up moribund viral surrender. I decided to check out the Hotel Fakir’s Tango salon, down by the waterfront, where Covid precautions were always studiously observed, and where, even if people didn’t show up, I could count on Ignatio keeping me on the straight and narrow where Tango was concerned.

Avoiding the cerebral demons populating the cobbled patio of the Hotel Fakir, and having carefully closed the black-laquered door behind me, I was astonished to see Dolores sitting at the bar, nursing a double Scotch and chatting desultorily with Ignatio. The last time I’d seen her, she was leaving town, destined for an adjunct teaching slot at the University of California and getting married, an event vividly memorialized on Facebook. I slid onto a barstool next to her, asked Ignatio for my favorite Malbec, and murmured, “Good to see you, Dolores.” The face she turned to me was as beautiful as ever. A certain sadness in her eyes roused long dormant pain in mine. Ignatio retreated to the far end of the bar and fussed with his DJ laptop.  I took her hand and long moments passed as we sat quietly, glancing at each other now and again. Behind us, the deserted Tango salon came to life with “El Vals Sonador”.

“I can’t,” said Dolores, as I placed my palm on the small cool of her back, where the silk of her dress slid easily beneath my fingers. “Max,” she said, “Too much has happened. We can’t go back.” But she, like me, both of us orphaned by lost love and a viral pandemic, could not resist Tango’s insidious invitation to fold ourselves into each others’ arms. And so Dolores and I, uniquely estranged and damaged by commonplace missteps in the dance of life, found for a few moments at least a measure of peace.  We danced in close embrace, reflected in the mirrored wall of the salon, past the desolate bistro tables and the framed Cunard Line posters, and we listened carefully for faint echoes of the Tango orchestra on RMS Aquitania’s ballroom deck as she set out for New York on a bygone Christmas Day. Not too much to ask for, and just enough for a tiny flame of love to flicker fitfully between us.

The Hotel Fakir

I was listening the other night to Francisco Canaro and his Tango orchestra when I noticed I was running on empty. I pulled into a gas station on Meeting Street, not far from the Charleston waterfront. The sun had set hours before, the sky was deep lavender, and bullfrogs were calling from the marsh. I leaned against the car, holding the gas nozzle, and closed my eyes. I moved imperceptibly in time with the music. And then I heard, faintly, a different tango song wafting softly on the humid evening air. I walked across the street, following the song, and turned into an alley just beyond Prioleau Street. I passed through a wrought-iron gate and a cobblestone patio, and came to a black lacquered door with polished brasses. An etched glass transom showed a poised cobra and the words “Hotel Fakir”. The music was louder now, and silhouetted shadows of dancers moved across the glass.

I knocked once, tentatively; the door was unlatched and swung silently open. I crossed the threshold into a candle-lit room. Foxed mirrors and century-old Cunard Line posters adorned the walls. A handful of men and women conversed quietly at bistro tables set to one side. The ladies’ heels and slit silk skirts accentuated their elegantly crossed legs. A lone couple was dancing to Pugliese’s seductively sublime vals “Desde el Alma”. At the back of the room, a Tiffany lampshade cast a soft glow over the bar. I eased onto a barstool. Beside me, a bouquet of gladioli, clematis and orchids breathed intoxicating scents into the air. The elderly bartender, grave and formal in starched shirt and tie, set aside a polished glass and inclined his head.

“Welcome to the Hotel Fakir,” he said, and raised an eyebrow.
“Tiza Malbec, please. Nice place you have here. What is this?”
“We’ve always been here. Those who love the tango, the true aficionados, they need to dance every day. We try to feed that need, from late afternoon until early morning. Now that you’ve found us, you’ll always be back.”

I turned to watch the dancing couple as they swept by. Their upper bodies moved as one, and their feet flew in a syncopated rhythm of fast intertwining steps. His hand on her back traced subtle patterns of touch and go. Her eyes were closed, and the expression on her face was dreamy and peaceful. A lady in gilded stilettos sitting nearby caught my eye. She held my gaze, smiled, and took my offered hand. We embraced and swayed hypnotically for a moment, seeking the next musical phrase. The tango poised within us came to life, and we moved fluently from a walk into an ocho cortado, a molinete, and a flamboyant sentada… Suddenly, from nowhere, cold gasoline splashed over my hands and feet as my car overflowed, and the Hotel Fakir, the hypnotized cobra and my ardent partner all evaporated into the night… On the radio, Canaro and his orchestra were signing off with “La Cumparsita”, singing the melancholy words: “Tell me, Senora, what have you done to my poor heart?”

Aquitania

One of the Cunard Line posters that used to adorn the Hotel Fakir tango salon showed the RMS Aquitania, a luxurious ocean liner launched on the eve of the First World War. Aquitania’s towering black hull and four red funnels loomed over gliding tango aficionados, evoking an age of civility and culture that has no place in today’s insular informality. The Aquitania was built by Scots in a Clydebank shipyard and was christened by Alice, Countess of Derby, who served at the time as Queen Alexandra’s Lady of the Bedchamber. Ignatio Quiroga, bartender at the Hotel Fakir, a highly-decorated but somehow disgraced Argentine general exiled in Charleston, and himself a skilled tanguero, once mentioned that both Alice and Alexandra had been avid tangueras. Max, a college professor whose bacterial physiology lectures were popular with the few medical students who still came to class, and a frequent visitor to the Hotel Fakir where he sipped Malbec next to tropical flowers that Ignatio refreshed every day, was intrigued but skeptical.

Months after the disastrous fire, by improbable chance, Max came across the framed Aquitania poster in a run-down rural thrift-store on Johns Island in South Carolina. The glass bore sooty mementos of the gas-fueled inferno that had consumed the Hotel Fakir. On the back was a pasted book-plate depicting a poised cobra and the words “Ex Libris Ferreyra, Buenos Aires.” More improbably, while buying the poster, Max noticed behind the counter a well-worn bandoneon in a faux-leather purple-felted case. Fingering the ivory buttons inexpertly, he coaxed out a few bars of an Astor Piazzolla song. The storeowner’s pubescent daughter, bored and eager for diversion, flipped switch after switch on an ancient electric piano keyboard, and finally elicited a synthesized tango rhythm. Max thought back to the days before DJs when a bandoneon, violin, and piano trio played the crowded Fakir. The air would be permeated with the heady fragrance of ladies’ perfumes, fine wines, cigarillos and tropical flowers. Added to this potent mix were emanations of intense personal dramas driven by desire, jealousy, unrequited love and Tango.

All this was a far cry from the Gullah everyday on Johns Island. Max bought the bandoneon but passed on the synthesizer, earning a glance of reproach from the incipiently beautiful daughter. Installed in his study, visible through the open door from the hall, the Aquitania forever set out for the high seas, a tango orchestra in the great ballroom on the first-class deck faintly audible as he passed by. On a baby grand below the poster, the well-worn bandoneon languished next to a guitar and a clarinet. All four instruments once defined his musical ambitions, and now testified mutely to their abandonment. But all was not lost. Ignatio Quiroga, a man of unchallenged wisdom who was ever ready with Max’s favorite Malbec, had confided in him the key to Tango.

“Embrace your partner with care, confidence and love, and let the music pick the lock.”

Transfection

Tango had barely crossed Max’s mind until he met Dolores, an Argentine post-doctoral scholar who had sent an email to graduate faculty looking for an instrument to transfect her cultured cells with foreign genes. Max had just the thing in his lab, and replied at once. Dolores was olive-skinned, with abundant black hair that framed a perfectly symmetrical face, and with a mature, lithe dancer’s body. Her eyes caught his in a hypnotic grip. After discussing some technicalities of transfection, they agreed to meet the next day for a drink. Somehow wires got crossed, and while Dolores sipped a lonely beer at the Absinthe Cafe, Max was still at the BioScience Center, tapping anxious queries into his phone. They got together at last, and sitting at a table below framed prints of Left Bank demi-monde, Dolores and Max regarded each other with interest.

Dolores mentioned that her father loved chess, and had taught her how to play. Years before, Max had experienced momentary triumph by gaining distinction as “Best Unrated Player” in a chess tournament in Phoenix, Arizona. His opponent in the finals sat in a wheelchair, usually a powerful strategy when the chips are down. Max’s trophy, a plastic simulacrum of victory gained in defiance of common wisdom, languished in a dusty attic. Well into his third or fourth beer and transfixed by her calm gaze, Max perceived an opening into deeper connection with Dolores. He said a University chess club would be marvelous, and as his mind darted over the logistics, Dolores said Tuesdays were out; Tuesday was Tango night.

The vision of Dolores dancing tango nudged Max into hectic overdrive. He had glancing experience with tango. Some years before, a Romanian student in his lab, tilted in a tight mini-skirt over a light-box, had thrilled him with glimpses of silk panty as she observed proteins migrating through agar gels. She too was enraptured by tango, and had urged him to come to tango class. Tantalizing prospects had nibbled provocatively but unproductively on the farther fringes of his mind. Now, fueled by Dolores’s earnest advocacy, the distant prospects came into sharper focus.
“So tango offers euphoric fusion of body and soul that ends conclusively with each tanda?” Max said. “Surely that’s a betrayal of feelings that may go further.”
“Feelings are dime-a-dozen,” she said, “love is elusive and redemptive. Tango guides calm reflection on the forces shaping our lives.”
She drew Max to his feet, tapped her iPod once or twice, and offered him an earbud. As a Pugliese waltz swelled silently between them, she led Max into his first tango.

Head Over Heels

Max was smitten, got some tango CDs and joined the local Argentine Tango Society. He ventured online, and next thing he knew, he was surfing the digital weft and weave of Tango. Thoughts of tango infiltrated the everyday. He watched dozens of Osvaldo Zotto videos on YouTube, and waited impatiently for class. He encountered, sometimes head over heels, women and men with lives at intriguing and agreeable tangents to his own. More and more, tango was poised within him, awaiting awakening and thrilling release. He learned some simple steps that were responsive to the lilting rhythms of classical tango. Every now and again the steps fell into fortuitous synchrony with his partner’s, offering glimpses of physical and psychic harmonies that promised to be addictive. More often than not, the addictive steps emerged when he danced with Dolores.

Tango music, derived from innocuous Romany folk songs, revealed itself as charged and elemental. The repetitive interplay of violin, piano and bandoneon snaked effortlessly into neural circuits entrusted with oversight of human emotion. One night Dolores filled Max’s flash drive with her entire Tango collection. Transferred to an iPod and fed wirelessly to a compact JamBox, the melodious gigabytes became his constant companions. Late at night, strolling out to the creek at the far end of his garden, Max noticed that the music elicited intuitive steps and turns that gained in nuance as second-by-second the music dipped and swerved in time with the bats flitting over the marsh.

The Argentine Tango Society met in a studio where hyperactive women had just concluded an aerobics session led by a barrel-chested trainer in black tights backed by a percussive sound-track. The tango dancers were sedate by comparison, fewer men than women, and all of a certain age. Tango merely whispers to the young, but speaks loud and clear to the worldly-wise. The typical class began with a warm-up. The pupils slipped on their dance-shoes and formed ranks behind the instructor. Like an orchestra conductor, she waved her remote decisively, drawing Tango from a docked and amplified iPod. Watchful and alert, the dancers advanced across the dance floor imitating her every move. The mirrored walls captured the effortless grace of her steps, and mercilessly reflected the relative imperfection of theirs, fraught with complexity and thought. After some minutes of demonstration and analysis, the dancers paired up to practice arcane details of merging music with movement. Their skills ranged from the fluidly intuitive to the strictly mechanical, and the transfer of knowledge from one to the other was slow. Their Tango lexicon grew as they listened and danced, rehearsing steps that unlock and shape interpretation of the music. But they had to tread carefully. The aftermath of a shared dance is unpredictable, for Tango shamelessly inflames the sparks that fly from spontaneous connection with another. As the class ended and the practica began, lights were turned down, bandoneons and violins came into their own, and everyone surrendered to the allure of those igneous connections.

Taking the Plunge

Watching Dolores in class, in the low-lit practicas, and especially in the Hotel Fakir tango salon, as she waltzed spellbound across the mirrored parquet in the arms of one tanguero after another, Max sensed that deeper communion with Dolores would entail technical expertise and natural ease in fulfilling Tango’s imperative: to please Dolores. Narcissus was never a tanguero. Group classes were merely an introduction, a revealing glimpse of complexities that required focused study. Formal lessons were inevitable, and he would eventually need to find a committed partner, the dicey variable in the two-to-Tango equation. One evening, breathing the intoxicating scents of tropical flowers on the bar, Max reached for his glass with one hand and for his phone with the other, and called Florida Takashi to arrange a private lesson.

Florida’s thumbnail image was prominently posted on a local Tango Facebook page. She was businesslike on the phone, fielded Max’s questions fully, including a tactless query about her familiarity with the male lead, and fixed an appointment for three days later. Contrite, he bought on an impulse a basket of plump Florida strawberries as he navigated the richly-landscaped suburban maw north of the city. When he got to her second floor apartment, the door opened before he could knock. He stood aside deferentially as two little girls came out, serious in pink tutus. Florida greeted him politely, touching her auburn hair and smoothing an embroidered serpentine kimono. She was surprised when he brought out the strawberries. Prompted by the bold PADI logo on the otherwise effeminate bag that held his tango shoes, Florida asked about his scuba diving, then disappeared into the kitchen, saying the strawberries needed refrigeration, and asking Max to remind her afterwards.

Max slipped on his soft-soled dance shoes, and took in the polished hardwood floor flooded with light from a picture window overlooking a pond. A Muscovy duck, a pair of Canada geese, and three downy goslings waddled serenely by the water’s edge. The room was redolent with wisps of Satya Super Hit incense drifting from a stick balanced over a carved wooden tray by the window. Florida reappeared, a svelte hourglass in a black leotard, and waved her iPod towards a JamBox on the window ledge. A lilting Francisco Canaro milonga filled the room. Florida drew Max into an embrace, her eyes engaged, her arm draped lightly over his shoulder, her thigh grazing his, and asked how he’d like to start. The formal intimacy of her embrace took Max by surprise, accustomed as he was to lone viewing of tango videos. Osvaldo Zotto had taught him a simple eight-step sequence, and the rudiments of front and back ochos. Tentatively, Max led Florida through his budding repertoire. As Florida settled into connection with Max, and the arc of his arm lightly touched her breast, his first faltering steps gained energy and intent, and her murmured directions charged his movements with a transcendent thrill.

In no time at all, his time was up. Max retrieved from his little bag a plain white envelope addressed to Ms. Takashi, which he placed on the window ledge where Francisco Canaro was winding up with “El Portenito”. Florida smiled at this formality.
“They say you’re ready for a milonga after a year of class,” she said, “but the best way to learn is to dive right in. Can you come Saturday night?”
Max frowned, said he’d have to check, and gathered his things. The doorbell chimed as they shook hands. Max stepped aside to admit a man in loosely bunched dreadlocks, black jeans and a soft grey blouse, carrying an effeminate tote not unlike his own, and exuding a faint aroma of fine Sensimilla. Florida smiled gamely, but offered no introduction. Too late, not until Max had pulled out of the parking lot, braking momentarily to avoid the Muscovy duck, did he remember the strawberries.

Rejection

As his entanglement grew, Max began to experience nuances of life in the enticing shadows of Tango. At a loose end one evening, attending a microbiology conference in San Diego, Max found himself waiting for Haile, the Ethiopian cab driver who’d driven him to a milonga the night before. Behind him, across a mini-mall parking lot and next to the Bull and Eagle Pub and Grill, discreet landscape lights illuminated the TuTu Tango studio. Tango songs diffused agreeably into the sultry night air, and silhouetted couples traversed the lightly curtained plate-glass windows. A lone tanguero sat smoking by the front door, enveloped in the aromatic embrace of Gauloises and Sensimilla. Max paced back and forth, scanning the highway for his errant cab; there were few cars out this late, and certainly no cabs. To return to the milonga, so recently abandoned, was out of the question. His confidence had been sapped by one-too-many failed cabeceos, and the realization that couples were not switching partners after each tanda, but returning to their own little tables and glasses of wine. One or two women, who had previously flown across the dance floor with fine-tuned elegant abandon, underwent mysterious lead-footed transformations when dancing with Max. A crowning indignity was conferred by a kindly fellow who told Max his wife would dance with him, if he liked. Max fled.

A car pulled up beside him and the window slid down. The driver flashed a salesman’s grin and raised a hand in greeting.
“Hi, I’m Willy. Are you a dancer?”
Max nodded tentatively, and thus emboldened, Willy rummaged around in the passenger seat and produced a flat faux-leather case the size of a large pizza delivery box. With a flourish, he snapped open the brass catches, revealing rows of variously-shaped little brushes with black-lacquered handles, each resting in its own purple felt niche.
“These take care of your dancing shoes. I import them from Buenos Aires; they’re made of the finest sable, will last a lifetime, and cost $300 online. But for you, let’s just say $75”. He looked at Max hopefully.
“Nice brushes,” said Max, looking around desperately for Haile, and adding unhelpfully, “I’m flying back to Charleston tomorrow. They wouldn’t fit in my carry-on.”
Defeat clouded Willy’s face, and Max felt for him. He gestured towards TuTu Tango.
“There are fifty people in there worrying about wear and tear on their dance shoes. Ask for Linda, and take it from there”.
Willy confessed he wasn’t accustomed to selling. Max told him faint heart never won fair maiden, and off Willy went.

Time passed, the night grew cooler, some heart-wrenching tango songs drifted out to the highway along with the Sensimilla, and still no Haile. After a while, Willy pulled up next to Max.
“Need a ride?”
“Well,” Max said, “I’m waiting for a cab…”
“Come on!” Willy said, “Pay me what you’d pay a cab. I have a wife and child and need the work.”
Max settled in, fixed the seat belt, and asked, “How did the brushes work out?”
“The lady told me to get lost,” Willy said. “An older guy, a kindly fellow you wouldn’t look at twice, asked was there a problem? Next thing I knew, I was out the door, my brushes scattered all around. Some stoner by the door helped pick them up and gave me $50 for the lot. Cost me ten bucks on eBay.”

Max gave Willy a high-five and was dropped off on 2nd Street by the Convention Center. Max headed for a nearby hole-in-the-wall where he nursed a beer, listened to a raunchy blues band, and thought about tango. He remembered Ignatio Quiroga once telling him: “Turn your head first, and then your chest; show her the way like the matador shows the bull, and she’ll soar like an eagle.”