Calle Roja at any other time would look like an ordinary, slightly shabby Argentine café. The floorboards are smooth with wear, and the photographs on the wall are aged and yellow with cigar smoke. But at this moment, with the tables piled high and haphazard in the corner and the chairs pushed to the edges to create a dance floor, it’s like something from an old film. The lighting is low, with giant candelabras blazing from the corners. The dancers are expert: there are some oldies who look like they’ve been at it for a century mixed in with young, impossibly sleek-looking couples who move with the precision and barely constrained drama of professionals. I spot several team members locked in with one another.

“There’s G,” Cali says, and I look to where he’s standing in the corner, talking to a rotund older man. The sleeves of his shirt are rolled to his elbows, he has a glass of Fernet in his hand, a day’s worth of scruff on his chin, and a smile on his face. My stomach lurches with a mix of desire and humiliation. Cali pulls me along.

“Ah good, you brought Liz,” he says. He kisses Cali’s cheek and then puts his arm around my neck in a proprietary way. I stiffen at his touch, but it makes him pull me closer.

“Oh,” says the old-timer, “qué bonitas. Young ladies, I must insist that you dance with me this evening.”

“You don’t want to say no,” G says exuberantly. “Horatio was practically there at the invention of tango.”

“It’s my bar, so I get to dance with the most beautiful women first. Droit du seigneur,” says Horatio. “Also, I have to show cocky young bailadors like Gianluca how it’s done, it’s a service.”

“Well that’s the first time anyone has called me young in a while, Viejo, but I’ll take it. You know”—Gianluca leans in, and I can smell the anise of the Fernet, feel the heat of his breath— “Horatio started this milonga when the junta was in power and tango was forbidden. He has an outlaw soul.”

The song ends and the next one begins. Horatio extends a hand to Cali, which she delightedly accepts.

“We’ll dance in a bit, Tiger,” he says, leaning back against the bar top on his elbows. “What’s your poison?”

“What’s on offer?”

He glances over his shoulder. “Looks like Malbec and Fernet.”

“Malbec.”

He nods, pours me a paper cup, and hands it to me; as he does he studies me. I’m avoiding eye contact.

“You’re not mad at me, are you?”

“Of course not,” I say too quickly.

“Oh,” he says, putting down his glass and looping his arms around my shoulders. “You are. I’ve hurt your feelings. Cariño! I forget how sensitive Americans are.”