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.

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, my female contacts limited to disinterested supermarket check-out girls. 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.

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.

Max was far from home, comfortable in the Halcyion Suites just off the main drag about a mile north of the Convention Center. A picture window over a whispering AC unit offered excellent binocular views of sky-high rides and fairy-tale castles. The suite suited him well, but there were no plates or utensils, even though a small fridge invited self-sufficiency, if only in adult beverages. Cruising into a flamboyant sunset, Max drove to the nearest grocery in his rented Mazda, following the sketchy directions of the blonde at the desk, who, though harried by late-arriving East Asian pharma reps, smiled engagingly as she told him to go left, then straight, through two stop-lights, and left again. Sure enough, after seven or eight miles of perfectly-landscaped highway, bordered to the north by cookie-cutter condos and to the south by trackless unspoiled wetlands, he finally turned onto the black expanse of an almost empty Publix parking lot.

The sterile fluorescent aisles provided for all his immediate needs: scissors to trim his beard (a convenience denied by airline security), a corkscrew (also denied), a sourdough baguette, one or two cheeses, and a bottle of Malbec, the favorite tipple of would-be tangueros. For he had his eye on a certain milonga, posted on the Internet as happening that evening, a mere thirty miles to the east. Less than an hour later, Max had showered and shaved, checked the next day’s conference schedule, and sampled the Malbec. He got in the Mazda and, used to casual vast distance, keyed the iDanze Studio into his phone. A torrential thunderstorm hurled sheets of rain across highways teeming with hordes of cars bound on missions no less essential than his own. The phone announced his destination fifty feet ahead on the left, and Max turned into a tidy little strip mall. The storm was moving off to the north, the dying sun transfigured gray clouds on the horizon, and flecks of azure sky came to transient life.

The lights were off in the iDanze Studio, and the glass doors were locked. As he pondered what next, a car pulled in beside him. In the glow of her dash, he glimpsed the distinctive profile of an Ethiopian woman, or perhaps a Sudanese. She doused her lights, and stepped from her car as if invited to dance. Poised on stiletto heels, she peered into the studio, one hand raised to shade her eyes while the other smoothed a crease in her pink silk dress. Max considered, not for the first time, the perfection of the female form. He was reminded of Dolores, who was very desirable and who drove men who were not cold and boring to foolish extremes. Dolores and Max were made for each other, and the outcome was very much unknown. Just to be closer to her, Max had searched the Internet for gastroenterology conventions in Washington, or even better in Manhattan, where he knew there was Tango every Saturday night in Central Park next to the statue of William Shakespeare. Max had even taken note on Facebook of a forthcoming Tango cruise to the Bahamas, and had weighed in the balance reality and love-boat fantasy. Dolores clearly inspired foolish extremes.

Unlike Dolores, who was a thousand miles away, this African tanguera was front and center. Max left the car door open and came closer, shading his eyes just as she did.

“What do you think?” he said.

She cast an appraising glance over him. In his mind’s eye, Max was in his prime, a successful professional, a man who had endured many loves, and whose shoes were always highly polished. His fantasy life, fed by the daily ebb and flow of reality, was robust. But he couldn’t tell if she saw him or his alter ego.

“You’re like me,” she said, “we Googled Tango and here we are.”

He told her his name was Max and that he was in town for a gastroenterology conference. As they faced each other on the sidewalk, he felt the familiar shiver of excitement and potential that precedes a tango embrace.

“My name is Fairouz,” she said. “Is this normal?”

He wondered if she meant the shiver or the darkened locked studio. He gestured across the strip mall to the Bull and Eagle Grill.

“Let’s have a glass of wine and find out.”

Fairouz fetched a bright red pashmina stole from her car and draped it over her shoulders. They hurried across the parking lot as dense droplets of rain began dancing on the asphalt. Distant lightning strikes lit the sky amid renewed rumbles of thunder. In the grill, sitting by the window, Fairouz kept an eye on the iDanze studio while Max called a number on the web-site. He listened to a ringtone and marvelled at Fairouz’s composure in this unscripted encounter. A man with a complex Argentine accent, rich, marbled and barely understandable, told him there would be a class in an hour or so, with a milonga to follow.

“With a name like Ovidio,” Fairouz said, “he’s probably a fantastic dancer.”

She saw Max was puzzled, and added, “Ovidio Jose Banquet was the finest Buenos Aires tanguero of his time. He was nicknamed “El Cachafas” or “rascal” for his many casual affairs. Carmencita Calderon used to dance with El Cachafas; years later she said he was pocked-marked and ugly, and many women fell in love with him.”

The thunder shower moved on and the last colors drained from the sky. Max suggested a stroll to kill time. A lone wood stork flew low overhead, in profile no different from a Jurassic reptile in a child’s encyclopedia. Leisurely wing beats were followed by a long precise glide into marsh grass at the edge of an ebbing tidal creek.

“In Mogadishu, tango never crossed my mind,” Fairouz said. “I left Somalia to study in Amsterdam, and one night found myself at a dance class. Tango opened my eyes.”

Max raised a quizzical brow.

“Oh, I also work, of course,” she said, “I’m here for an Islamic women’s rights convention. But wherever I am, whenever I can, I search out Tango. Nietzsche said we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”

They watched the wood stork foraging intently for fiddler crabs and marsh frogs. When they came back to the studio, raindrops had moistened Fairouz’s silk dress, and Max’s shoes were flecked with mud. The lights were on, and their steps quickened when they heard the first inviting bars of Di Sarli’s “El Cielo en Tus Ojos”.

Fairouz and Max passed into the lobby through silent automatic glass doors and were met by Ovidio. He stood before them, arms open in welcome.

“You must be Max. Ovidio. And your charming friend?”

Ovidio sported a Clark Gable mustache and pearly teeth. His shaved head and loose linen suit spoke eloquently of Tango authority. Fairouz regarded him thoughtfully.

“My name is Fairouz.”

He placed his hand on his heart. “Delighted. Now, please come in. Tonight we will tango!”

Ovidio took Fairouz lightly by the arm, and Max followed them into a spacious salon with a lustrous dance floor. A mirrored wall on one side reflected Art Deco posters and bistro tables on the other. At the far end was a bar with some stools and a sparkling backdrop of bottles, and further back was a shaded patio where Japanese koi swam in a shallow pool. Tango flowed abundantly from hidden speakers. Ovidio leaned closer and drew Fairouz into an embrace, murmuring in her ear. They swayed imperceptibly for a second or two, capturing Di Sarli’s phrasing, and then Ovidio moved into her, guiding her towards their reflection in the mirrored wall. Fairouz’s pink silk dress went well with Ovidio’s slack linen suit. Their foreheads touched lightly, and his lips briefly grazed her throat. Fairouz seemed to recoil momentarily, and then relaxed in his arms. Max sought refuge in thoughts of Dolores. The song came to an end, and Fairouz, flushed and languid, came back to him. Ovidio trailed behind, a hand on her back, the other smoothing his mustache. His restless eyes scoured the room for another partner. Fairouz, bewitching in silk and silver, held out her palm and drew Max to his feet. The pupils of her eyes were enormous, and a crimson droplet glistened on her café au lait throat.

Max thought nothing of this, because he’d slapped at mosquitoes on their stroll to the edge of the marsh. Embracing Fairouz, he was aware of a smear of blood on his arm that might blemish her dress. At the back of his mind, he recalled the famous shot of El Cachafas dancing with Carmencita Calderon, when she falls back in his embrace, baring her bosom to his teeth. Max recoiled at the image, inhaled deeply, and snapped back into the everyday. Di Sarli’s “El Amanecer” wove a rhythmic spell around them as they danced next to the mirrored wall, at one with their reflection. Her body melted into his, easily and confidently following the few simple leads he offered her. His lips brushed her pearl earring, and a moment later his tongue caressed the crimson droplet on her throat. He thrilled to her salty taste and his imminent corruption.

The song was ending. Fairouz laid her head on his shoulder and her lips nibbled the soft flesh under his ear. On the final note, they came to rest in the middle of the dance floor, closely embraced, caught in the evanescent web of Di Sarli’s tango, the last notes still vibrant between them. His hand on her back traced a caress that spoke of lives they’d never live, whose expression was best sought in Tango. She bit him gently. He was startled, and recoiled, then sagged in her arms as his knees weakened and her lips suckled at the tiny pulsing perforation in his throat. He tried to pull away, but an infinite lassitude overcame him. She slipped an arm around his waist and led him out to the shaded patio. He sank onto a couch at the edge of the pond where the lazy Technicolor koi drifted, and slipped into euphoric dreams of heart, lung and blood.

Hours must have passed because his dreams fragmented and became more vivid, and were finally hijacked and corralled by a symphonic chorus of crickets. He opened his eyes to brilliant sunlight flooding his room at the Halcyon Suites. He groped for his phone and killed the insistent chirps. He couldn’t remember exactly how he’d made it back. The bathroom mirror and tentative fingers on his throat revealed nothing unusual. Looking out the window he saw his car three stories below, parked askew. The driver’s door was open, and a front wheel had mounted the curb and wedged itself in the glossy vinca minor.

His lecture was in an hour. He reviewed his slides over hurried chunks of buttered baguette and black coffee, and made it to the meeting room in West Hall A with minutes to spare.. Pharma reps and postdocs gazed and tapped at their phones as he mounted the podium. His ruby laser danced across the screen highlighting details of bacterial pathology. But his thoughts were overrun by images of Fairouz skipping with him through thunder showers, and their ardent nuzzling to Di Sarli tangos. Fairouz breathed intimately into his ear, her crisp boleos and sensual barridas flawlessly reflected as they swept by the mirrors. Her joy in Tango was the universal joy of women free to be enfolded in love. He fielded a question or two, then headed out to the Islamic women’s rights convention.

Max sensed a tangent into novel experience as he queried his phone and saw that women’s rights were in East Hall B. He had long grown accustomed to inhabiting parallel lives that came and went as naturally as day follows night. His days began with imperfect recollection of evanescent dreams, followed by a drive across estuarine sea-marshes into the city. One day he would listen to a sober public news station and think about scholarly tasks awaiting him in his office. The next day, he’d listen to Argentine Tango Radio Budapest. The music diverted his thoughts into a life with clear priorities: to listen more intently, to dance perfectly aligned with his partner’s close embrace and her flying high heels, and carnal daydreams.

For minutes on end he traversed glass-fronted concrete galleries and drifted down silent escalators, coming at last to East Hall B and a darkened packed auditorium. He made his way close to the stage, and found a seat between an overweight lady who appeared to be asleep and an earnest young woman with her hair in corn-rows. He listened intently for a minute or two before realizing that Fairouz was up there, poised and matter-of-fact behind the podium. She was crisp and business-like in an ash gray jacket and skirt, and a tiny microphone was clipped to the creamy open collar of her blouse.

“Tens of thousands of my people died when Ethiopia invaded my homeland. Hundreds of thousands fled Mogadishu. To defenseless Somalis, the marauding aliens were incarnations of the Ethiopian vampire regime that deflected criticism of horrific human rights violations by pursuing Al-Shabaab in South Somalia.”

Her laser pointer threw a fluorescent green stigma onto a grainy image of a desert landscape. Skeletal women and children huddled in the sparse shade of thorn trees. In the next slide a column of light tanks and SUVs bristling with machine guns and Kalashnikovs hurtled through an abandoned village of thatched huts. And then her laser picked out a young girl struggling in her mother’s arms as a turbanned elder probed between the child’s splayed legs with a curved and bloodied knife. Max felt an uncomfortable stir in the darkened auditorium, and marveled at Fairouz’s composure as she recited statistics of genital cutting. Such things were not uppermost in the educated placid minds of her audience.

When the lights came up, the moribund lady on Max’s right came to life and challenged Fairouz on US complicity in East African affairs. Fairouz cited her sources, thanked everyone for their attention, and turned towards the door. He followed her out to a terrace overlooking a distant marine theme park. Vivid blue waterslides towered over diminutive tiki bars and sun umbrellas lining the scalloped edges of a mega-pool. Shading her eyes, Fairouz leaned against the parapet and smiled. Max remembered his involuntary recoil and easy surrender at her first tentative bite.

“Fairouz,” he said, “What did you mean, the Ethiopian vampire regime?”

“I took you back to the Halcyon Suites last night,” she said. “Sorry if I overshot the parking lot a little. You were completely out of it; you seemed to think that Tango infiltrates neural circuits involved in human emotion. Tango is pretty elemental, I agree, but really…? The Ethiopian vampires? A useful metaphor for everything that ails us.”

A viral pandemic is as good an excuse as any to explore the wild outdoors. Complying with federal guidelines, Max had spent weeks in lock-down, shunning all human contact, dutifully noting depletion of staples from his larder and fridge. His stash of disinfectant wipes, bleach and toilet paper was a mockery of its former self. He replenished essential supplies once a week, armed with silicone gloves and wipes, in carefully planned excursions to a nearby Food Lion in his failing SUV which had inconveniently developed transmission issues. When gun sales took off, he realized that human contact was more essential than toilet paper. At the time, he was winning against shut-ins like himself seeking refuge in online chess. But mental acuity in silico lacks the spontaneity of real life encounters. And so, one evening, having foiled another assault on his chess rating, he texted Dolores and ventured out to the Hotel Fakir, where as far as he knew the tango salon was still catering to those for whom the viral pandemic was an excuse to indulge in end-time excess.

No-one lingered in the cobbled alley leading to the black-laquered door of the Hotel Fakir and its transom etching of an admonitory cobra. Inside, Ignatio Quiroga presided over the salon, immaculate as always in a starched white shirt and black tie. He was wiping the bar’s zinc surface and polishing glasses. A discreet military decoration was  pinned to the lapel of his dinner jacket. His gladioli and clematis arrangement at the end of the bar was only a little wilted. A Di Sarli tango wafted aimlessly across the deserted parquet dance floor and the still reflections in the mirrored far wall of the salon. He looked up in surprise as Max settled onto a bar-stool.

“Good to see you, Max,” he said, “Malbec?”  He coughed into his elbow and wiped beads of sweat from his brow. His face as he turned to Max was waxen and skeletal. Stunned, Max thought about octogenarian susceptibility to viruses, and the probability that viral death trumped the existential respite afforded by Tango.

“A Corona, Ignatio, thank you,” he said. “By the way, have you thought about getting tested? I can get you tested. The Hotel Fakir needs you now more than ever.“

Ignatio fixed his rheumy eyes on Max. “A viral pandemic tests us, Max, not the other way around.” He suppressed a cough, and then another,  “Look around you. Where is everyone? Sheltering at home? Viruses don’t discriminate between those in love, those who aren’t, and those in the grip of Tango. We’ll all be infected eventually. We must enjoy life while we can.”

Max retrieved a disinfectant wipe from his pocket and discreetly wiped his beer glass. “You may be right, Ignatio. We can die now, or we can die later. I prefer later.” He looked around the empty tango salon and thought back to the days before DJs when a bandoneon, violin, and piano trio ruled the Hotel Fakir. The salon would be heady with ladies’ perfumes, tropical flowers, fine wine, and cigarillos. This potent mix would be fueled by dramas driven by desire, jealousy, unrequited love, and Tango.

For now, end-time excess was nowhere to be seen. Ignatio had withdrawn to the far end of the bar, tending his signature flowers. Max finished his Corona and was thinking about another when he felt cool fresh air wafting across the dance floor. He turned and saw Dolores pause at the door, smooth her silk satin dress and touch her hair. She came over to the bar, her heels tapping on the parquet, and signaled to Ignatio for her usual. The Di Sarli tango segued into Miguel Calo’s “El Vals Sonador”. Ignatio coughed again and again into his elbow. Max took her hand, virus be damned, and said, “Let’s dance.” Dolores set her purse on the bar next to her Manhattan, and stepped, together with Max, into the clear space that separates life from death.

About halfway through their first tanda, Dolores’s close embrace evoked Max’s first memory, of being swaddled in warm blankets in his pram, and gazing in rapt wonderment at apple blossoms and blue skies. Over by the bar, Ignatio had set a glass of Scotch before a new arrival, one of the city’s finest, who had carefully lowered his spacious backside onto a barstool and adjusted his belt-full of law enforcement paraphernalia that included a squawking walkie-talkie, a couple of ziplock cuffs, and a holstered black handgun. Ignatio was explaining, between coughs, that all relevant COVID-19 guidelines were in effect, and that he’d be happy to replenish the officer’s glass as needed.

“What about them?” the officer asked, gesturing at Dolores and Max as he swirled and downed his Scotch. His face was flushed, and he reached for a napkin decorated with the Hotel Fakir logo and wiped his brow. “I don’t see face-masks. I don’t see gloves. The caskets for these two are on their way.”

Ignatio was diplomatic, as always. “Officer, your concerns are well-founded. And I assure you, as we speak, that I’m fixing any and all irregularities going forward.” He paused as Max and Dolores passed by, animating the otherwise still mirrors of the tango salon. “They’re essential personnel, first responders at the Medical University. They have an hour or two off, then they’re back in the ER.” He set a bottle with a complex inviting label on the bar between them. “By the way, are you familiar with Sheildaig, an outstanding Finest Old single malt Scotch whisky from Islay?” The officer sighed, nodded, nudged his empty glass towards Ignatio, and said, “You read me like a book, Ignatio. I’ve always liked your tango salon. The way that everyone behaves. Not what you’d expect when people who’ve never met get close and intimate, know what I mean?”

Ignatio poured a measure of Sheldaig into the officer’s glass. “Shakespeare once said, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’”. He passed his wipe across the zinc surface of the bar. “We deal here in dreams, Officer, dreams locked in our unconscious. Tango merely picks the lock.”

At that moment, while he was still contemplatively swirling his Sheldaig, the officer’s radio erupted in a series of unintelligible squawks that stiffened his spine and caused him to swallow his Sheldaig pronto. “Gotta go,” he said, hitching his belt, “Looks like we got us a riot on Meeting Street.” He hiccupped, belched once or twice, and paused momentarily as Max and Dolores swept unconcernedly past him, eyes closed, rapt in the Tango moment spun by Di Sarli’s violin and bandoneon. He swung open the black-laquered door of the Hotel Fakir and fumbled with his belt-full of riot-control gear as distant concussions and the percussive beats of a helicopter and its sweeping searchlight invaded the Hotel Fakir. Ignatio listened attentively to the growing ruckus beyond the cobbled alley, and then resumed his reflective polishing of wine glasses, pausing now and again to study the small collection of photographs next to his tropical flowers.

Dolores walked over and caught the faraway look in his eye. “Tell me a story, Ignatio”, she said, “I’m not dancing.” He adjusted a sepia photograph showing a young man and a woman in a silk dress and high heels in a close tango embrace.

“Long ago I led a garrison defending a remote archipelago against foreign aggression,” he said, absent-mindedly touching the gold military pin on his lapel. “My adjutant was political, the bureaucracy’s eye on the battlefield.” He glanced at the photograph. “His wife Graciela and I were in love. I see her in you, Dolores.” Ignatio took her hand in his. She smiled, but his tired lined face was impassive. “Things didn’t end well. I escaped a firing squad with the help of a brother officer named Ferreyra. He was shot instead.”

Dolores was used to Ignatio’s darker moods, and turned away to look for Max, unprepared for what came next. With an explosive crash the etched glass transom over the front door splintered into a thousand shards. Something smoking and ominous lay spinning out on the dance floor. She glimpsed a bottle, a rag, a tiny lick of flame. With an almighty silent detonation, the salon was suddenly an incandescent lake of fire, and for one suspended second, everything stopped. And then panic set in as she and Max fled out to the patio, slapping at claws of fire that raked them as they ran. They cowered by the wrought iron railings beneath the fig trees. The Hotel Fakir, triumphantly ablaze in its final moments, defiant in the delayed drenching of fire hoses, slowly collapsed in monumental showers of sparks. Just then, Dolores realized that Ignatio was no longer with them. A spectral figure was silhouetted against the fiery tableau, heading back into the flames.

The fire that consumed the Hotel Fakir made the front page of the Charleston Evening Post. For those whose days were lived in fear, the blaze confirmed that citizen vigilantes, preferably armed in accordance with the Second Amendment, should defend the city against infiltration from all points north of Calhoun Street. Tango was of course the pre-eminent raison d’etre of the Hotel Fakir, and Tango’s shameless connection between men and women who would otherwise be strangers no doubt fueled, together with the Molotov cocktail, the enthusiasm with which the Post reported the spectacular demise of the Hotel Fakir.

The die-hard Hotel Fakir regulars mourned above all the enigmatic Ignatio Quiroga, who could easily have escaped the catastrophe, but instead sought to save some prints, the Aquitania among them, and a handful of photographs of tango intimates, family, Hotel Fakir habitués, and written testimonials that adorned the bar next to his extravagant daily displays of tropical flowers. Ignatio Quiroga died aged 90, a soldier and tanguero whose checkered career included command of the 7th Infantry in the Falkland Islands campaign. As a boy in Buenos Aires, accompanying his mother to milongas where she worked as a dancer, he had learned the feminine role in Tango because young men needed compliant followers to hone their skills as tangueros. This knowledge animated the masterful tangos that he performed occasionally in the Hotel Fakir, but more often found expression in laconic and perceptive remarks as he concocted his heady drinks behind the bar.

The next morning, firemen probing the smouldering ruin of the Hotel Fakir found the remains of Ignatio Quiroga behind the blistered black-lacquered door, surrounded by fused globules of shattered etched glass from the transom. A right hand, which had somehow escaped incineration, grasped a framed sepia photograph of Graciela, her eyes closed, her hands cradling Ignatio in an intimate tango embrace. In the background, a blurred but recognizable Osvaldo Pugliese was leading his orchestra in a performance of what could only have been “Manos Adoradas”.

Guilt was never far from Max’s mind as his hand alighted on her cool naked skin, his fingers settling into the subtle notches of her backbone. He held her lightly, keenly aware of her close embrace and the easy play of her body against his, both deftly aligned with the musical lilt of “Desde el Alma” flowing from a bandoneon, violin and piano trio by the bar. She, like Max, was in the grip of ideal Tango. Thoughts of the everyday, of the life they lived before and after Tango, remained unthought. And then the tanda ended, and he brought her back to her little table with its scented candle and moist black bottle of Prosecco. He returned to the bar and asked Ignatio for a glass of his finest Malbec.

As he contemplated the women casually deployed along one side of the parquet dance floor, their reflections animating the mirrored wall opposite, he sensed the shadow of guilt flitting across his mind. He always told his wife about the occasional Tango classes on Tuesday nights, and about workshops or even weekend milongas that came up every now and again, when he would inevitably come home late and silently switch off the murmuring radio at her bedside. Once, years ago, off to a Saturday afternoon class, clutching his effete black baggie with its felt-soled dance shoes, she’d hurled a glass of red wine over him and the white-upholstered sofa next to the fireplace. Nowadays, the sofa stains, never banished, veiled beneath an inoffensive macassar, bore witness to her mercurial antipathy towards his strange Tango obsession.

She, unlike Max, was not entranced by Tango, neither by the music nor by the dance. She said he was completely bereft of musical or rhythmic sensibility, a truth confirmed every time he lost his lead and muddled his steps and smiled apologetically at the angelic, forgiving, closed eyes of the woman cradled in his arms, his ticket to ideal Tango. And so, caught in the grip of music that melds bodies and souls, Max forever sought to square the circle of marriage with the inexorable call of the wild side. Meanwhile, the DJ sent out rhythmic D’Arienzo songs, inflaming probing cabeceos and graceful consents over by the little candlelit tables. Max drained his Malbec, shrugged off for now the flitting shadow, and gave in once again to Tango’s seductive allure.

Reassured by statistics indicating that the odds of contracting Covid-19 were about the same as winning $100 in the South Carolina PowerBall lottery, which despite many tries over the years, at not inconsiderable expense, I’d never won, I decided to check out a new milonga, the first to be resurrected after many months in my city. The website emphasized that extreme hygiene would be observed, with all surfaces thoroughly spritzed every 30 minutes. Needless to say, the usual Covid-19 constraints, such as masks, social distancing, and so on, would be relaxed, given that Argentine Tango is impossible without close, intimate connection. I showered carefully, anointed myself with a bacteriocidal deodorant, donned freshly-laundered duds, and presented myself at the appointed time at the Amorous Pole Dance Studio, a bottle of Freixenet Cava in hand.

Di Sarli’s “El Amanecer” was playing to a dimly-lit and apparently empty studio, defined on one side by a mirrored wall lined with bistro-type tables, and on the other by a floor-to-ceiling plate glass window overlooking an ornamental pond illuminated by discreet landscape lights. I settled into one of the tables, put on my dance shoes, poured some Cava into my wine-glass, and looked around. In the far corner of the room, eclipsed by a shadow cast from the DJ’s laptop, a woman in a black cocktail dress, in coral earrings and matching pumps, studied the slick obsidian surface of her phone. No stranger to existential memes and noting that the cortina now playing was “Stairway to Heaven”, I weighed in the balance, Libran that I am, the probability that she was a covert emissary of Death, intent on gaining viral lebensraum in the current standoff between man and life as we know it, or that she had come merely to dance.

As the cortina segued into a new tanda, desire overcame caution. I deployed my well-practiced cabeceo, leaning slightly forward with intent, back straight, ready to rise to the occasion. The woman, sensing my presence, cast a casual glance across the dance floor, caught my eye momentarily and almost imperceptibly inclined her head before settling her gaze on the tiny electric candle that decorated her table. Thus empowered, I drained my glass and shot my cuffs. I walked the length of the dance floor to Miguel Calo’s “El Vals Sonador”, my hand held out. She was adjusting a strap on her coral pumps, and looking up, she affected surprise to see me, collected herself, and offered me a pair of translucent tissue-like plastic gloves, the kind you buy at Dollar Tree for $1 a hundred. She was wearing some herself. And now she draped a coral silk scarf over her face, leaving her eyes, narrowed and smiling, gazing into mine.

I slipped on the gloves, and thinking statistically, I wondered if I should don the triple-layer surgical-grade mask folded into my breast pocket. But before I could, she folded herself, much like my mask, into my embrace, and we waltzed an entire circuit of the empty dance floor before she said, lowering her coral scarf just enough to whisper in my ear, “What are the odds?” I thought about the $100 I’d never won and never would, and I said, “Don’t buy a Lottery ticket. Just dance with me.”

How cruel is this pandemic? My Tango go-to is now argentinetangoradio.com on my iPhone. Good, but a poor substitute for an easy salida across polished parquet, embraced by a kindred spirit whose intuition reflects my own, all to the sultry insinuation of Di Sarli’s “El Pollito”. The Coronavirus has put paid to such delights. A creeping dopamine deficit confers varying degrees of tedium on everyday life. I energize my grey cells with online chess, peer-review of manuscripts for medical journals, voracious consumption of New York and London book reviews (all libraries are shuttered), cautious sallies to the grocers, and humdrum household chores.

Friday evenings as the sun sets over the Ashley River I can be found at the yacht club, IPA in hand. Chris, my confederate in this enterprise and partial to IPAs and clever banter, is neither a chess-player nor a Tango aficionado. But Coronavirus accommodates all-comers. Two meters apart, masks at the ready, and upwind of everyone else, we bask in rocking chairs on the club patio and sip ice-cold Sculpin. We are diverted now and again by bikini-clad women minding their kids in the shallows by the boat-ramp, while their mask-free husbands josh and glad-hand at the bar service window.

Rocking gently, shaded from late-afternoon sun by water-oaks, Chris and I reflect on trials suffered by the less fortunate, air scabrous details of office intrigue, and speculate about the upcoming presidential election. Inevitably, fascism makes an appearance. We decide that Germany, having largely missed out on lucrative 19th century colony acquisition, and mesmerized by Hitler, was just playing catch-up by launching an insanely violent takeover of Europe. We pause for Sculpin refills as the metaphorical parallel with the present takes hold.

By-and-by our mood lightens. We observe through binoculars a Maersk freighter passing under the Ravenel Bridge, threading the channel buoys past Castle Pinckney and Fort Sumter, heading for the North Atlantic. Its Plimsoll line is high and dry, so the towering multi-colored containers visible above deck are probably empty. Having delivered their cornucopia of consumer dreck to America, they now return to China for more.

As dusk advances, a flock of purple martins intent on their southerly migration fly in from Charleston Harbor over the club jetties and are gone. At least their American sojourn, immune to Coronavirus, has neither sullied the landscape nor infantilized us. Perhaps there’s a measure of justice in a pandemic that targets us, tolling the bell we’d rather not hear. And yes, I miss you, Tango; farewell for now.