The Unexpected Waltz by Kim Wright

wouldn’t have gotten into the closing position at all if I hadn’t practically yanked him there and then he tells me not to rush it?
    “Just one more thing tonight,” Quinn says. She’s been dancing her way down the line, switching between taking the male and female roles, and her forehead has a slight glow of moisture. I’m suddenly conscious that I’m sweating too. She shows us how to roll out of the sweetheart pose and back into basic and then we try the whole thing a couple of more times. Luckily, I’m once again at the point in the cycle where I just dance by myself.
    “Next time we’ll crank up the tempo and start on open kicks,” she says. “By the end of the month we’ll have a nice little routine.”
    I’m humming as I go back over to my stuff and begin to unbuckle my shoes. “We all go down to Esmerelda’s for the five-dollar margaritas after class,” Isabel says. “Want to come?”
    “Sure,” I say. “Everybody?”
    “Well, everybody except Lucas. He’s a Southern Baptist preacher and they’d have his head on a platter if they even knew he came here to dance, much less drink. And the instructors don’t come. Anatoly doesn’t think they should fraternize with the students. You know, got to keep their distance and all that. But the rest of us, sure.”
    “I’m in,” I say, and we all change shoes and step out into the night. I love this time of year, when you know fall is coming. Jane’s lover has pushed her way out from the couch to join us and to my surprise Steve and Pamela are both tagging along too.
    “What’s your favorite dance?” I ask Harry, who’s beside me.
    “Tango,” he says, and to prove it he does a big jerky promenade down the sidewalk in front of the grocery.
    “Bye, Lucas,” Isabel calls out, and the preacher waves before climbing into his sagging gray car. “He’s a good person,” she says. “I don’t know what sort of God would try to make a man ashamed to dance.”
    Esmerelda’s is the kind of strip-center Mexican where they have sombreros and silver-framed mirrors on the wall and the chips and salsa on the table before you halfway sit down. “How long did you say you’ve been dancing?” Isabel asks me, as we wait to be seated.
    “Six weeks maybe. No, more like eight.”
    “So was it a shock when the price went up?”
    I roll my eyes.
    “Yeah,” she says with a giggle, interpreting the eye roll exactly as I hoped she would. “Here’s the thing. Ballroom is cocaine and Anatoly knows it. He gives it to you free at first, then fairly cheap, and once he knows they have you completely hooked, that’s when the price begins to climb.”
    “If my husband were here, he’d say we’re all paying good money just to be flattered.”
    Isabel snorts. Not a play snort but an actual honk, like she’s blown her nose. “Flattered?” she says. “Maybe the whales are flattered. The rest of us are paying good money—rent money, car payment money, or at least Time Warner Cable bill money—just so we can fail at something.”
    Before I can ask her what she means by that a voice at my shoulder says, “That’s a gorgeous ring.”
    Pamela has come out of nowhere to stand on the other side of me and has apparently managed to appraise my diamond ring at a glance. I don’t know why I didn’t take it off before I came to class.
    “It’s a family heirloom,” I blurt out. “My mother’s.”
    Why did I go and say that? I’m a terrible liar. I never can manage to keep the details straight. Now I’ve got to remember to pretend my mother is dead. Isabel makes a little tsk-tsk sound of consolation but Pamela isn’t fooled in the least, and why should she be? One trophy wife can spot another at a hundred paces.
    The server gestures that she’s finally pushed together enough two-tops to make a table for eight, and we all start to file toward the back of the restaurant.
    “I’m grubby,” I say. “Where’s the bathroom?”
    “You always have to wash your