Tango.(Short Story)

Tango is a passionate dance; a conversation between two people in which they can express every musical mood through steps and improvised movement.

--source unknown

Just before nine o'clock in the evening, Sofya gets out of her car and looks up at the sky. She has sensed a shift in the weather. There is another breath of wind, a whispering in the air, but the clouds are stagnant against the dark night. She turns and moves downhill IF towards the club, ejecting the chewing gum out of her mouth with a loud splat into the bushes, feels the first drops of rain on her bare arms. She passes the public phone box where frangipanis lie on the grass, picks one up, sniffs at it, throws it back, then quickly enters the club.

It is not one of her best days. She doesn't know why. Her dress is not uncomfortable, her skirt just right around the waist, the outfit not faded or balled, her black strappy shoes high, not too high, wrapped around her feet following the shape of her instep, and the new shampoo and conditioner make her hair curl naturally around her face. For reassurance she strokes the pearl and bronze necklace nestled into the groove of her neck.

At reception she pauses to flash her card and takes the lift to the third floor and then continues along the long hall, at the end of which is the thud and bounce of Latin American dance music.

She turns into the room, which is set up with tables and chairs in a horseshoe shape around the wooden dance floor, the DJ on the stage above and a bar at the back of the room. She sees Nino down the front sitting with that older couple he usually sits with and wonders whether to join them or not. It is not easy coming to these places. It takes a whole day of psyching herself up.

"Sofya, you'll never find a rich husband if you're fat," said Mother, raising her glass. It was Mother's fifty-third birthday. Her hair was silvery with flecks of white now that she'd let her own natural colour grow through.