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.

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