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this part, where we begin to put the movement to music, even though I make lots of mistakes. Music seems different to me lately. I listen for the beat. I surf among stations while I drive, trying to figure out what you would dance to each song, whether it’s a samba or a salsa or a tango. Foxtrot music is especially great, all the big-band stuff from the old MGM movies. Nik points at the screen, his fingertip hovering above “Fly Me to the Moon.”
    He’s considering it because it’s slow, I realize, an easy practice song, but I don’t care. When I was growing up my dad loved that song. Our shaky old hi-fi was as big as my bunk bed and I can remember albums stacked up to drop, one at a time, onto the turntable. It was the era of the Rat Pack, and space exploration. Telescopes on the front lawns of suburban houses, Tang on the breakfast table, and our teachers pushing TVs into our elementary school classrooms so that we could watch the astronauts coming and going. We were so sure that someday we’d all have flying cars, robot maids, and rocket-ship vacations. Everyone was wrapped up in the race to the moon and it was the Russians we were racing against. I start to ask Nik what it was like over there, then I remember he’s a kid. The space race was over before he was born.
    He points at “Fly Me to the Moon.” “You like this?”
    “Very much.”
    We walk back to the corner and he invites me into hold. “If you do not want two lessons, you should take group classes,” he says. “Much more practice for not much more money.”
    “How many seats are in the Senate?” Anatoly calls out.
    “A hundred,” Quinn yells back. “Two per state.”
    “Hold the slow-slow,” Nik says. “You are rushing.”
    “I don’t know about group,” I say. They just put the October schedule on the wall beside the bathroom. At fifteen dollars a class or a hundred dollars a month for unlimited classes, the group classes are a definite steal, so I suspect they’re populated by people looking to stretch their dollar or maybe, even worse, people who are dancing to meet potential dates, who consider this whole thing a social outing. Since I take my lessons in the afternoons, I haven’t encountered many of my fellow students, most of whom come in at night after work, and I’m terrified at the thought of dancing with another civilian. Nik makes it easy. He puts me where I need to be and I would imagine that all the students who take private lessons are similarly dependent upon their instructors.
    “I need a few more private lessons before I take group,” I tell Nik. “Look. I’m even screwing up a silly underarm turn.”
    “Slow down,” he says. “You have four whole steps to make turn. Slow, slow, quick-quick. You are back to me too soon.”
    “I don’t want to be late.”
    “You are early.”
    “Isn’t that better?”
    “No. In true dance when man leads and lady follows, she is just behind him in time. Not a whole beat, not a second, just a—”
    “Millisecond?”
    “Yes. So slow down. Is better that I wait on you than you wait on me.”
    “Well, all right,” I say. “But I always like to get to places early.”
    “I know,” he says, with a trace of a smile. “You are nerd.”
    I laugh. He may be the only person who’s ever figured that out about me.
    We try it again, and damn if I don’t make a four-beat turn in three beats. I’m back so fast that I’ve pulled us off the count and he has to hold us still for a second before he makes the next move.
    “What are you scared will happen,” Nik says in my ear, “if man has to wait for you?”
    The question startles me. I stop dancing entirely and look at him. “I don’t know. I never had enough guts to find out. Maybe I’m afraid that if I take my time, that when I get back, you will have disappeared. Gotten bored and gone off to dance with some other girl.”
    Or died, I think, but I don’t say that part.
    He is still smiling. “Let me wait for you. Is my