Confiteria Ideal

Dos medialunas y un cortado.

Tres medilunas con queso y jamon y un cortado.

A cortado is a wonderful, short expresso with just a dollop of foamy milk dropped on top. A media luna is a thin, wispy looking croissant, covered at times in a sheer of sugar, at others, bare and buttery. The one this morning, or what I am currently calling morning after coming home at 5:45am last night and sleeping until almost noon, is crispy and perfect, from Mamma Rosa's cafe and wine and ham shop on the fringes of Palermo. It's 27 degrees out in the shade. I've never seen so many beautiful people in one place in my life.

I also haven't had so much caffeinated coffee since Cuba. Perhaps that explains the events of yesterday, which seemed to keep unrolling around me in a strange dance.

The photography session with the Prince of Pakistan and his family took place before the lunch they served us, at the residence for the Ambassador, in an old colonial building near Puerto Madero. The sounds of car horns and traffic faded into the background as Jocelyn and I were taken upstairs in an old, cage elevator and introduced to the Prince's parents and brother. The floors are covered in Persian rugs and the walls with the ambassador's art, strong, direct women gazing out of each painting, surrounded by colour. She was dressed in a sari of salmon silk and gold thread, and the sons posed with practiced smiles as I held the light reflector and Jocelyn directed them and shot. I had walked there from the outskirts of Recoleta, winding through the leafy, narrow streets and pausing every half hour for more coffee. After the photo shoot we had a four course lunch of traditional Pakistani food, served while the father discussed poetry and the sons told us about their international finance jobs. They teased one another. They were lovely. Choukri to the family for their generosity.

On the walk back to Plaza Mayo, we passed Confiteria Ideal and dropped in to ask the prices for tango classes. On a whim, I left Jocelyn in the square--her meetings with a co-worker begin at 8pm every week and last until midnight, when they go to dinner--and walked back for a lesson. The ceiling of Confiteria is carved wood filigree. Marble stairs lead to the second floor dance hall. Giant fans mounted on posts loom down from the plaster walls between antique mirrors. The space has been a traditional tango gathering spot since 1912.

Travelling at 36 is so much better than at 21. I will do anything. I will show up to a class sin pareja and not feel lonely or shy. I thought I would end up practicing alone, but at the last minute, an Argentine from Patagonia, a geologist with a one night layover in the city, showed up and took me through first the class, then the entire evening of milonga, until 1am. It was only in the last hour that he revealed himself as one of four teachers of tango in his hometown. When he goes back, he's putting on the town's tango festival. Suffice to say I was in good hands.

I watched while we talked about Patagonia and the oil and gas industry in the country. Picture one hundred Renes and Hildas (my gorgeous Argentine tango teachers at home); picture two things becoming one and gliding around the floor, some with constant flarings of heels, some with barely perceptible turns. Men in their eighties. Women with bellies, their breasts pressed against the man's chest, their heads turned to the side and their faces simultaneously nostalgic, bored, impassioned and intense with concentration. Men in suits with spats. Women with heels three inches high. I knew I wasn't supposed to be grinning when the geologist could coax me onto the floor, but I couldn't help myself. Argentina. Outside, the city darkened and people began thinking about taking a nap before a midnight dinner. The room was stifling with heat; the Oswaldo the geologist dripped; the fat dancer, who had so much grace when on the floor, fanned himself; the Australian couple who had taken their first lesson that evening watched from their table, the woman longingly, the man with slight panic. Poor men who are learning. So much depends on them knowing the moves. Though our teacher said the most helpful thing that I have heard thus far; tango is improvisation and style, not steps--he purposefully taught us six beats of an eight beat move so that it could be finished as one liked, with a front ocho, with a traditional close, with a molineta; como quieres.

I am a terrible dancer, but I left feeling as if I had been wrung out and filled again with amber. My friend Garth--from Canada--appeared at midnight and after the dancing ended Garth and I found a bar on Avenida de Mayo that was still open and talked about poetry until the sun rose. Minutes before we sat down, two men high on meth tried to mug me. I pushed his hands from my throat and we continued walking to the bar. It didn't even arouse a feeling of panic. The paradoxes of the city seem just like the ones I have learned to live with and love in Mexico City, in Sevilla, in Bangkok, in Barcelona or New York. I am glad, and realize I am lucky, however, to still have my computer (which I was carrying at the time) on which to write all of this.