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the pages. I flipped back.
    “The Argentine tango spirals up from hearsay and legend,” I read, between photos of men and women dressed in severest black and bloodiest red, photos of men and women tight and close. “It comes from slang and intrigue, from the habañera rhythm that had drifted out from the ports of Havana toward Argentina. From the iniquitous Barrio de las Ranas of nineteenth-century Buenos Aires. From the rising tide of European immigrants and pampas cowboys, from native impulses and European influences, from the primitive and the lyric, from joy and melancholy. Tango is barrel organs and guitars, opera traditions and street singers.” I tried to understand what any of this meant. I tried to fathom the fox-trot of NewYork City and the waltz of the Hapsburg court, the cha-cha of Cuba, the samba of Brazil. I couldn’t get enough of the pictures or the words. I could not stop checking the clock. Some new dancers buzzed in and strapped on their shoes. Some dancers left. I kept reading.
    “Rosie Keith?” Finally I heard my name and looked up, and it was Max, Max releasing Annette from his arm, Max bowing in my direction. “Your first lesson?” he said, opening his elbow for me.
    “My first,” I said, and let him help me up. I hooked my arm in his in my best Annette style. I took the long way down the hall.

SIXTEEN
    H E ASKED ME TO walk across the floor, just a regular walk; I did. He said to walk backward, and because he asked me to, I did, self-conscious in tall shoes. Do you know how when someone is looking at you and very exclusively at you, you feel put together wrong? That, right then, was me.
    Max was—best guess—early thirties. He wore his hair short and slicked back, and up the long pole of one of his forearms were little twines of leather. His jeans were dragging-on-the-floor black jeans. His shoes poked outfrom his jeans. “Chin up, back straight, “Max told me, and then: “Put your heart toward my heart. Yes. Right. Now hold this frame and dance.”
    He stepped forward, and I slid back. He stepped to the side and took me with him. He stepped back and I stepped forward, and then we did it again. “The waltz,” he said, as if he’d just introduced me to his aunt. “And the count is three-quarter time.” I could feel the muscles of his arms beneath his shirt. They were Olympic-caliber muscles.
    It was three fifteen in the afternoon, and besides me and Max and a wedding couple there were Eleanor and Peter, who was tall with narrow hips. She was leaning her forehead lightly against his, an odd, nervous look on her face. “Turn the music off,” I heard her say after she’d tried several moves, none of which had made her happy. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
    Peter said something about the bend inher knee. Eleanor said she was feeling off-balance. The music kept playing, and they started again. They wound their way close, and I stepped back.
    “Keep your focus on your own lesson,” Max said. I blushed, and we box stepped and made yet another round of boxes. Max said I’d need about a pound of attitude. He said I’d have to come to think of music as my skin. But first, he said, there is posture and spine. There are the basic fundamentals, and we’d spend our time on that. I thought about Granddad down the street, maybe asleep. I thought about Leisha, and Nick, and Rocco, and my mom. I thought a lot about Mom.
    We boxed again and then more, long enough for Max finally to take what he called my measure. There were little crumbs of green in his eyes, though his eyes were mostly dark, and he stood so straight, you’d have thought he carried some coin upon his head. Rubbing the bottom of his chin, he shook hishead thoughtfully. Then he framed me up again with his arms, and I remembered a doll I had on a shelf at home, propped up in a metal wire stand. You can’t actually look at someone who is standing so close, even if you want to, even though you know, when you tell Leisha