Hot Tango

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At 13:53hs the first tender flame appeared.

The tell-tale fizzling sound that had been overlooked repeatedly by repair crews sent into the below-sidewalk chamber to make other, more-urgent repairs at last ignited the paper wrappings of someone’s forgotten lunch left in flagrant disregard of company regulations and burst into flame. Within minutes, the chamber and its contents were blackened and burned out of commission. Needless to say, electrical service to the entire neighborhood at that point ceased. 

Just before this, Marcela was in the kitchen of the social club slicing her famous apple crumble into equilateral triangles. Twice a week she brought her homemade pies to serve at the milonga and twice a week she carefully cut the pies. Trained as an accountant, it pained her to serve a slice unfairly narrow. So she took her time. 

With her sleeve, she wiped the sweat from her forehead. Why did it never occur to people to put air conditioning in kitchens where it was needed most? In the next room, a long dance hall with painted scenes of the Spanish countryside, two formidable cooling units struggled against the summer heat until the sudden collapse of current brought them to a spluttering, ignominious stop.

Walking toward the milonga in the late afternoon, I hadn’t noticed the lack of light in the buildings I passed. Long golden rays of sunset shot down the cross streets. But when I saw two women leaving — two hard-core milongueras, the sort who stayed till the very last note — I knew something was badly amiss. 

Climbing the stairs to the first floor dance hall, everything was dark. The white teeth of the ticket taker smiled sheepishly in the half light and waved me in without charge. 

It quickly became apparent that the problem was not the lack of light but the excess of heat. Summer in Buenos Aires is nothing to be scoffed at. Residents head to the beach or to the countryside. Rational people take flight. Tango people, ever in the thrall of the next embrace — no matter how sweaty — are clearly not rational. 

Sure enough, a few figures danced in silhouette against the far windows. They moved slowly like ships becalmed. Others were scattered at tables around the room. In their hands, like captive butterflies, paper fans fluttered against the sofocating air.

I must have hesitated before stepping into the hall because Marcela, the organizer, shrugged and said apologetically, “At least dance a few sets. You don’t have to stay.” 

I found a seat at the far end of the room near the open windows. Usually it’s the least crowded part of the hall but today it was full of people who had migrated here to get closer to an opening. Of course, it was purely psychological; outside the air was every bit as sultry, dense and humid. But being by the window gave the illusion of something different.

As I settled at my table, I noticed that the power company building across the street, whose offices were already empty at this time of day, was filled with artificial light. Computer screens (many of them left on in an endless dance of screensavers) and flickering overhead fluorescent tubes all smirked at us. In the end, we’d be the ones to foot the bill. In a last cruel irony, even the stainless steel EDESUR sign was lit up in impudent electric blue light.

For a moment, I considered leaving. But having managed to leave real life behind, I’d at least sneak in a few tandas. After all, as they say, a dancer’s sweat is sacred.

And a waitresses too. Vicky, flushed and with beads of sweat dripping down the side of her face, took my order. “Give me the coldest thing you have,” I said hopefully. She told me the refrigerator had been without power for several hours now; what was cold had already been sold. Before hurrying off, she explained with admiration how Dani the DJ had snaked an extension cord to a neighboring building that inexplicably still had service. “If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t even have any music.”

He couldn’t run the lights or the air conditioning but he could at least keep the old orchestras playing. It takes more than a blackout to silence tango.

Changing into my dance shoes under the table — always an awkward maneuver — I observed the room. People were scattered rather than clumped together as they normally would be. When the set ended, several couples wandered over to the tall French Doors and fanned themselves on the tiny balconies. 

Thinking back now I realize that I danced with only one woman from Argentina; the rest were all Europeans, mostly French, on tango escapades. It seems that the Argentine dancers were quicker to throw in the towel. The single Argentine woman was my first dance; afterwards she said, by way of piropo, “Now I am satisfied; I can go home!”

After that, I danced with a woman from Paris, another from Montpellier, a woman from Serbia who observed that the porteños were getting sloppy in their cabeceos, the beautiful and very practical art of invitating someone to dance with a nod of the head. 

“They think they can just walk right up to you and you’ll accept,” she said, indignant. “What’s the world coming to!”

Those who braved the heat and the copious sweat (theirs and that of their dance partners) threw themselves with great abandon into the dances. They had passed the point of no return. The men’s shirts clung to their bodies. The women’s hairdos had become clumpy and stuck to their scalps, especially where they had leaned in close to their partners. 

The heat was taking its toll. After every set, I would watch someone gather their belongings and head for the door.

Eventually, just two of us were left. The woman leaned down in preparation for removing her shoe but she couldn’t resist one last glance around the room. It was fateful. I caught her eye. She chuckled and shrugged as if to say “Why the hell not?”

We slipped moistly into each other’s over-heated embrace. We had the entire floor to ourselves.

“You know, we are the last ones standing,” I said.

“Yeah and we don’t even know what the prize is. How silly is that?”

 When the set ended we hugged goodbye and headed home to strip off our garments, soaked as we were with my sweat, her sweat and the sweat of every other partner with whom we had shared the ritual. 

We smelled of something exotic, almost animal, something not entirely ours, a cross-pollination of scents that left us, all of us, fused, commingled, anointed and, just as surely, blessed.