Swedish Tango / the Rhythm of Memory by Alyson Richman

were no more movies to be made and he could return to a life of poetry without feeling guilty.
    Now, however, he just wanted to make sure his family had financial security. He needed to feel that he was indisputably a “good provider” and that Salomé’s father would utter his name with respect, not with the contempt that he knew he had spoken of him when they had first met.
    And so Octavio did sign the second contract. He got up every morning and kissed his wife on the cheek, only to come home late every night, weary and exhausted. He tried to keep a low profile in his newfound fame, doing only the interviews that the studios demanded and attending only the premieres of the movies that he was part of. But sometimes he could not avoid commitments and several days would pass before he’d be able to return to the Casa Rosa.
    Six months after
Buenos Dias Soledad
opened, his second film,
Escapando de un Sueño
premiered. Again, the reviews were spectacular and the attendance in the theaters unprecedented.
    Still, Octavio remained unsatisfied by his success. He hated saying lines that he didn’t believe in. He detested rehearsing the same scene over and over only because one of his colleagues had forgotten to memorize his or her lines.
    Some days, when he was reduced to sitting around in his studio chair, he would fantasize about his life as it had been when he was a student. He was barely twenty-two now, yet his existence as it had been when he was inscribing poems by candlelight seemed like ages ago.
    His nights with Salomé remained the highlight of his day. In between scenes he would always try to squeeze in a brief telephone conversation with his wife, because Octavio was well aware that by nine o’clock, when he usually arrived home, she would be so tired from taking care of their infant son.
    Still, she would allow him to hold her to his chest and to stroke her long black hair. If Rafael was sleeping soundly, sometimes he would take the Victrola upstairs, turn the volume down low, and extend his hand to her sweetly so that they could dance a tango or two in the privacy of their bedroom.
    Salomé knew that the endless hours her husband spent on the set were wearing him down. And she had grown used to his reluctance to speak of it. But she also felt that it had been his choice to sign the extended contract.
    Still, she hated seeing him so tired and unhappy.
    Octavio tried to make the best of the characters he was assigned to play. The movies he starred in mimicked the psychological dramas being imported from France and Italy. “They’re second-rate scripts,” Octavio complained. “The European writers aren’t concerned with this ridiculous romantic melodrama!” he grumbled to Salomé over his morning coffee and
churro
.
    The females he was cast against were caricatures. Written asone-dimensional characters whose only purpose was to show off the prowess and emotional fortitude of the leading man, whom Octavio was invariably cast as. Their physical appearance was uninteresting to him. Their black hair was never as lustrous nor as thick as Salomé’s. Their eyes were flat and devoid of the depth that he had recognized in his wife’s from atop a balcony twenty-five meters away.
    The plots were silly and inane to Octavio. He had just received the script for his third film,
Siempre Carmen
, in which he was to play the object of an older woman’s affection.
    He knew that he was blocking off his wife from his daily life. He knew that even after her exhausting day with their infant son, she still tried to make a few hours available so she could dote on him. But he had been unable to open up and tell her how he truly felt about the direction his life was heading. He thought such complaining might appear unmanly. Hadn’t men suffered for generations in jobs that were far less glamorous than his? And hadn’t they toiled for wages that were far less lucrative? He knew, in one way, he should be grateful because now Salomé