The Unexpected Waltz by Kim Wright Page A

hands thoroughly after group,” says Pamela. I’m not sure how she knows this, since apparently she’s never done group. “The women scare the men so bad their hands sweat. Come on, I’ll show you.”
    She leads me down a dark-paneled wall to the little ladies’ room, where we take turns rinsing our palms over the bright yellow and blue ceramic sink.
    “You dance with Nik, right?” she says, looking at her reflection in the mirror as she talks.
    “Right,” I say. She already knew this. “My lesson is right after yours on Thursday. He’s great.”
    She cuts off the water with her elbow and wipes her hands. “Yeah, he is,” she says. “But don’t get too attached.”
    I pull down a paper towel. “Why would I get attached?”
    “You’re single, right?”
    My mind flashes back to Isabel and her BFE. “Yeah, but come on. He’s a baby. His bio says twenty-four. It’s a little sick that we’re even dancing with him, don’t you think?”
    She doesn’t answer. Just uses her forearms to open the door without touching the knob, and we walk back to the table.
    When we get there, only two open seats are left—on either side of Dr. Boob.

    "I MAY AS WELL not have been there,” I’m telling Elyse an hour later on the phone. “First he flirts with the Russian Internet bride and then some poor little mess in angora who’s the studio gossip, and then he moves on to this Silver dancer who, get this, orders chicken tortilla soup without the chicken or the tortillas, and he finishes up by hitting on a pair of lesbians. And all he says to me all night is that I rushed the rock step.”
    “Do you even like this guy?”
    “God, no. Can you imagine dating a plastic surgeon who specializes in breasts? It would be the lowest circle of hell.”
    “Then why does it matter?”
    “It doesn’t. I don’t even know how we got off on this doctor guy when I was calling to tell you that I had a good time. I’m going back for tango tomorrow.”
    “We got off on him because every man you’ve ever met has automatically fallen in love with you at first sight and for some reason this guy didn’t. Of course it bugs you.”
    I walk off the deck and toward the back lawn with the phone pressed to my ear. The soil in the garden is soft and loamy, causing my heels to sink in like little golf tees, and with the next step I stumble, making a noise loud enough that all the way from Arizona Elyse asks me what’s wrong.
    “Remember how we always used to say that when we got old we were going to move to Scotland?”
    “Sure,” says Elyse. “We were going to get a job as caddies and wear sensible tweeds and stomp around in the mist.”
    “How old did you think we’d be when we were wearing those sensible tweeds?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe seventy? Eighty?”
    “Exactly. We had a plan for when we were young and we had a plan for when we were old, but we forgot to make a plan for all those years in between. So what’s a woman supposed to do between the ages of fifty and seventy? There’s at least twenty years in life when you’re not young and you’re not old and there’s absolutely no plan.”
    “We’ve sailed into uncharted territory,” Elyse says. Her voice is light, breathy, almost on the edge of a laugh. Maybe she’s agreeing with me or maybe she’s only pretending to agree with me to humor me out of my mood. I look down at the rosebushes. A few buds are still intact and I give one a yank. I think it’s one of the Moonstones, white with a pink center, but it’s hard to see colors in the darkness so it might be a First Kiss or a Mermaid. I should scavenge whatever blooms are left for Carolina. She’d probably like them. She likes everything.
    I ordered the rosebushes from catalogs when we first moved here, more romanced by the sounds of the names than by any thought of how the colors would look together or what would thrive in this crumbly clay soil. I don’t particularly like roses themselves, or even the way they