“Hello, darling, are you enjoying yourself? It’s Liz, right? You’ll have to forgive me, I’m just terrible with names.” She clutches my forearm, in affection or maybe just to remain upright. “Better with faces.”

I smile. “It’s fine. Me too,” I lie. I’m good with names. I’ve just realized that I want to be friends with this woman. “What’s going on?” I ask.

“It’s time for the dancing to begin!” she says with a mischievous grin.

“Everyone’s been doing a pretty good imitation,” I say.

She waves a hand. “Amateur hour. Gianluca is going to dance for us now,” she explains.

Sure enough, on the makeshift dance floor that’s emerged stands a man—is he thirty? Fifty?—and his beautiful young partner. Both have sparkling dark eyes and glossy black hair, fair skin, like many Argentines. This man is the cause of all the fuss? I can’t decide if he’s ugly or handsome. As he makes a series of movements to ready himself for the dance—his partner settling into his arms, her eyes shining and her face intent—he rapidly switches between one and the other: he is slender and wiry, a little taller than me maybe, with dramatic cheekbones and a long Roman nose. I decide he’s more compelling than handsome. So unlike my golden boys, Luke and Blair. Luke with his thick sandy brown curls, his irreverent, crooked smile, and Blair’s surfer boy locks, his blue eyes, his star quarterback smile. I’m convinced people thought I was better-looking because of my constant proximity to them.

The song begins and Gianluca holds his partner in a close embrace. There is a loaded moment where tension builds, and somehow the two of them there, scarcely moving, is breathtakingly intimate. Then they begin in a kind of walk across the floor, so deeply synchronized with each other that they almost appear to be one body. The drunken crowd is captivated into silence. A few bars in, the two of them up the drama, the space between them widening as she goes into a series of intricate patterns, swooping her long legs in tight figure eights and looping them around Gianluca’s waist. He spins her and pulls her in, pushes her away. It’s like watching a couple fight, or make love, or both, but more elegantly than any couple has ever done either of those things. The crowd murmurs exaltations—exploding into applause at the final move. When the song finishes, Gianluca and his partner are immediately swarmed with partygoers trying to get to them. The two gamely lead a few people through some moves.

“So that’s the mysterious Gianluca?” I ask Gemma, trying not to sound as impressed as I feel.

Gemma laughs, and now Edward is with us again as well. I was so wrapped up in watching the dance, I didn’t notice him.