Angelina
Tango rode her black Ford F-250 down Highway 550 towards
Albuquerque. Barreling along at 80 mph the large wheels and heavy suspension struggled to create the impression of control. A sticker on the pickup truck's bumper read, “Silly Boys Trucks Are For Girls.” On the edge of New Mexico's Navajo Reservation her speeding vehicle painted a disappearing black line in the fading winter sunset in this desolate land
of sage brush and tumbleweeds.
Working as a superintendent for Haliburtons's southwestern gas well operations, she was mentally fried and physically exhausted after weeks of riding herd on hillbilly oil-riggers from Louisiana. She needed to get away, to relax and do something feminine, something social, or she feared she would lose her identity and possibly her sanity. The gas industry was a man's world and she worried that she would become one of them if she didn't get back to civilization for some gender recognition. She was going tango dancing.
From her
large leather purse she produced a tube of hand lotion and squeezed out a dollop
onto her hand as she passed two young Navajo bucks stumbling down the side of
the road, thumbs sticking out at their sides. Slamming on the brakes she stopped and waited for them to run up to the truck, spreading the lotion over both hands thoroughly, hoping she could
soften them up before the dance tonight. She needed to feel like a woman and
she didn’t want the men she danced with to react to her rough hands as they often did.
As the young men neared the vehicle she wondered if this
would be the last time she picked up strangers in the desert. She laughed and
unlocked the doors with the touch of a button.
“Don’t
mind the mess,” she said as the two climbed in, one clutching a bottle of
liquor, both smelling of cigarettes and alcohol.
Forty miles later darkness had fallen when she dropped them off at their shack near a mesa, two miles off
the highway and down a dirt road. She was glad to be rid of them and their stench
but she had done what she thought was right, wondering what their night would have
been like walking as the temperatures dropped way below freezing.
Her thoughts
flashed to her two daughters who were in college a hundred light years away,
spending her hard earned money. In her rear view mirror she saw one of the men pissing on the side
of the shack in a cloud of frosty steam, she imagined
her oldest girl, Chloe, with a frat boy stumbling home on her own adventures
this night.
Two
hours later she was showered, dressed and parked in front of the dance hall.
Usually she went country dancing with the cowboys but lately she had soured on the rodeo mentality of the men. That was exactly the kind of atmosphere she was trying to escape. She needed a man but not that kind of machismo.
Recently she had been
learning the tango and liked how close it got her to the men; she like the anonymity maintained by the dancers. She found the men masculine but also civilized.
Looking
at the steel door illuminated by a yellow light dancing above it on a wire in
the chill wind, her thoughts went back to Max, her husband, who was killed by
an angry spouse while he was sleeping around on her when she was deployed as an Army chopper pilot in Iraq.
“I miss
you Max,” she said to no one as she sat there in the throne of her truck, “you
cheatin’ bastard of a man.”
With
that said she drew a breath of warm air and stepped out into the cold to cross
the narrow strip of pavement to the doorway. It was 10 o'clock and the street was deserted but she scanned
both directions thoroughly, looking for snipers and signs of landmines.
Before
she opened the door to the hall she freed another button on her silky red shirt just
in case the men didn’t notice her. She was almost certain they would, they were, after
all, men, primal creatures slightly more evolved than apes and often not as bright. She paid her money to a gentleman seated at a table inside the foyer. She mused that
he must be gay because he didn’t look when she leaned over to sign the register.
Moving to the main hall she felt at home. The room was large, the
ceiling so high that it could not be seen in the darkness. The space was
illuminated by two large lights hanging above the dance floor surrounded by
cocktail tables covered with red tablecloths. Each table hosted a vase with a
fake rose and a small tea candle. She liked the ambiance. It was like an
airplane hangar in Kuwait without the smell of oil and gas.
Sitting
down at a table by herself she was thrilled to feel that she was slightly
nervous. She felt young, adrenalin coursed her veins in anticipation of
attention from the men around her. She did not look around the room as she bent
over to put on her heels, her breasts dancing inside her shirt like children
playing without a care. Her nipples hardened as the gaze of a hungry wolf
locked onto her.
She didn’t
need to look up to know he was staring at her, waiting for her to strap on her
shoes so he could invite her onto the floor. All of a sudden the hot flash
came, much to her annoyance. The buckles secured, she
sat up and saw who was staring at her. There were several, it was going to
be a good night.
She
tried to smile as she made eye contact and accepted the purely visual invitation but her body
had become so hot she hardly felt comfortable. A white-haired man dressed in
black walked over to her table and extended his hand; she rose to take it.
Suddenly
she was back in Iraq, in the desert heat, she could hear chopper blades
whirring and the shrill scream of massive engines whining penetrating through her earplugs.
Then she
was back, moving towards the gentleman’s chest with her own. With her three inch heels she was just as tall as he. She easily slung her left arm around the top of
his shoulders and made a soft landing on his frame.
Man at last, she thought,
and briefly forgot about everything: her job, her children, her bills,
menopause.
He
slipped his right arm under her armpit and around her back, his hand
resting lightly beneath her right shoulder blade. His chest pushed firmly but not offensively against hers and his shoulders offered not a hint of tension. She inhaled; he smelled like a man and nothing else, freshly showered.
Red lights flashed in her mind
as the music began to play and she grasped the thumb on his left hand, trying to
make as little contact with his skin as she could so he wouldn’t notice the roughness of
her palm; she did not succeed. She felt him recoil ever so slightly, his muscles tensed; there was disappointment.
She
began to sweat. She was uncomfortably hot. Her head was spinning. Why did she
come here, she asked herself. She thought about cold beer and rock n’ roll
music. She began reciting the the pledge of allegiance to herself in
preparation for being captured by the enemy.
She could hear the music, it was
sad, like her. She could barely discern a rhythm when the man began to move.
Hopelessly
she rested on his diaphragm and rode him live a wave on an ocean of despair.
The music was relentless, it was so sad and together they became friends
because it was more hopeless than she, sadder than she could ever be. Barely
aware of the man in front of her she moved backwards through the crowd,
trusting him to steer the ship that was them, taking care to stay on her toes
lest her heel catch the ground and cause her to stumble.
A river
of emotion flowed out of her and into her partner. She felt relief in having a
place for it to go and the room began to cool down for her. The song continued
with its rhythm and sad melody. His frame relaxed and suddenly she could sense
his intention much more clearly, the disappointment was no longer evident and
there was something else, something primal but remote. She listened to his body
more intensely to hear a feint sound in the wilderness that was a man. It was barely audible but she
could still hear it. It was the sound of a lonely wolf howling softly.
The song
ended and she stared at him meekly, trying to smile unsuccessfully. In tango the dance does not end with one song, there would be more, two, maybe
three, before the cortina plays and the two could disengage.
Another
tune began and he presented his hand. She charted a course and landed in the
same spot but with more familiarity, with ease and grace. She could feel him
swell with confidence and she fed on it like a starving baby sucking on the
tit. She couldn’t get enough at first, moving with him to the melody, stopping
with him when he paused passionately as he breathed her in.
Her
perfume was working, she mused with an audible sigh, worth every bit of seventy dollars. She began
to feed more calmly, steadily, the river was flowing back in her direction. She could tell he was feeling the music, letting go of his own
emotions, relaxing into her embrace and moving with certainty.
She imagined a
wolf running through the snow of an open field. He wanted her.
The song
ended and she stood there again trying to smile. She did not manage it but she
was able to look into his eyes and try to express her gratitude for
making her feel like a woman again, to let him know that he was……he was
winning.
Another
song began and she melted into him. The tune was sad, sadder than the previous
two selections. She closed her eyes and let him lead her to the melody, through
the crowd which then disappeared. She found herself on a boat in the ocean at night.
The waves rocked her gently. She became warm again but it was not a hot flash
this time, it was a soothing warmth and she bathed in it like a hot bath.
In his
embrace she felt safe. He was confident and hungry for her. She felt like he
could protect her from the others in the room so that he could devour her all by
himself. She wanted to be his meal, to feed him in return for what he had done
for her, for helping her to remember who she was once again…a woman, not just a
worker, a mother, a paycheck. She was half of something wonderful and she was
alive in a world full of promise, full of things that could happen, joyous
things, horrible things, any thing. She could go on again.
The song
ended and the cortina played. She found it awful and shocking, part of some
rock n’ roll tune. It was the cortina, definitely not tango.
Almost
smiling, she said to her partner, “Thank you, thank you very much.”
Wobbly
kneed she made her way back to her table and sat down, the room spinning.
Fixing her eyes on the flame from the tea candle she exhaled completely and
said to herself, “I needed that.”
Leaning
back into chair she could feel the eyes of another wolf upon her. She met his
gaze without fear and waited for him to come over and to be devoured once
again.
