I flush. “Because I remind you so much of Rocky?” My childhood nickname comes back to me with a jolt. Manly Cleary. In a thousand ways big and small, I’ve gotten this message since I was a kid: don’t be so strong, so big, so fast, so aggressive, so you. When people referred to me as a big, strong girl—which I always was—it wasn’t always meant as a compliment. I didn’t care so much when I was an athlete, but now I’m just a woman.

“Yes!” G says. “Exactly. It’s your eyes. You look so intense in class, like you must learn tango. It’s adorable.”

I nod, bemused. Adorable? Fuck him. Well, fuck me. The armor is gone and he sees a fleshy, ordinary girl.

“Actually, it’s mesmerizing.” He leans in. “I can tell your heart is in it. But we’ve got to get you to loosen up a little. To tell you the truth, you’re my special little project.” Just then, Cali returns with his drinks. The bar’s gotten busier, so I just ask for a glass of wine when she asks if I want another. I tell her she can choose.

Is my heart in it? I realize that I want to become a good tango dancer while I’m here; it would be nice to stop feeling so useless. I want more of whatever it is I’ve been feeling on the dance floor. Perhaps if I had that focal point, that goal to work incrementally toward each day, it would give me some relief. Perhaps it would make me feel that my body was my own again. Right now, it’s a padded cell that houses my addled brain.

“G,” I say, as he is getting ready to take his drinks to his friends.

“Tiger.”

“I’m wondering about . . . that is, if you offer private lessons.” I don’t mean this to sound suggestive, but once the words are out of my mouth, they’re absorbed by the air of sex that surrounds him and transformed. “I’d like a coach,” I continue, trying to anchor myself in that familiar, anodyne word. “I’m not happy with my progress.”

He is smiling at me in that maddening way, as if I am just too amusing. As if I am not a fucking former world champion. And I find myself nearly saying this out loud. Do you know who I am? What I was?

“Is that right? That’s funny because you’re one of my best students, but those are always the ones who want to work harder. And, as a matter of fact, Tiger, I do teach privates. But only for very special students. Only if I know I’m going to enjoy it.”