The Unexpected Waltz by Kim Wright

arguing with Nik. “Happy in a certain way,” I say. “Like when you die and go to heaven. You know, happy like an angel.”
    He nods. “Is good word.” He walks over to his desk, pulls out his iPhone. I spell “rapturous” to him and he types it in.
    “Yes,” he says, walking back to me. “Like angel, so raise your chin.”
    I’m trying very hard, but then we go into a series of turns and I lose my form. Why am I so unable to spin? All the other girls can. When I do turns in the cha-cha or the jive, I control my vertigo by looking straight at Nik, but you’re not allowed to look at your partner in the waltz, and besides, it’s not just a turn here and there. The waltz is a dance of endless circles and maybe this is really why it frightens me.
    “I’m sorry,” I say. “Shit, I’m so sorry.”
    He shakes his head. He hates it when I apologize. “Close your eyes.”
    Against all logic, it works. A little voluntary self-blinding does calm me down but the minute I find myself relaxing, my eyes startle open like that jerk thing you do when you’re falling asleep. It scares me to lose my position in the room, to not be able to see where the other couples are, or how close Nik and I are coming to the wall.
    “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s just that I get dizzy.”
    “Because your head go back and forth like dog in car.”
    I glance at the clock. Twenty-five minutes to go. Usually my lesson flies by, but today time is dragging. He walks back over to his desk. Opens a drawer and digs around for a minute, then returns with a scarf.
    “Here,” he says, handing it to me.
    The scarf is silky, a swirl of blue and green, clearly a woman’s. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
    He sighs, hugely, as if he’s regretting the day he first left Moscow. He pulls the scarf from my hands, folds it twice, and ties it around my eyes. The world goes soft and black. The knot in back is tight, tight enough that I can feel the pulse in the dome of my head. I’m too surprised to be angry or frightened.
    “Where did you get this?”
    “Lady left it. Now we waltz.”
    I lift my right hand and he pulls me gently toward him. Puts his arm around me, moves me into his side, and in that exact same instant my left hand descends in perfect position and comes to rest lightly on his shoulder. Is anyone watching us? There are other people in the room. Anatoly has a student and I think Quinn is here somewhere too. Does Nik do this with other women? Or is the scarf the sign of the most stubborn, the most hopeless, the ones who can’t listen to reason and have to be treated like horses in a burning barn? Nik pulls his leg back from mine and settles into position.
    “Breathe,” he says sharply.
    I exhale and we begin. Are we turning? I think we are but not very much. It feels slow and easy to follow. Maybe it’s just like they say on the Discovery Channel—that when you obscure one sense the others become sharper—because I can feel every nuance of the floor beneath my feet and the music sounds more distinct, broken into units. One-two-three, Nik counts, or do I merely think it? The first step of the waltz is the big one, a surge of movement either straight forward or back. The second step is to the side and you rise with it, and then hover on your toes for a split second, stretched to your greatest height before you sink in the third beat. You sink, you rest, you settle, you wait. This is the tricky part of the waltz. This third beat, this part where you hardly move at all, where it is all energy and anticipation and shaping. The third beat is what separates the amateurs from the pros.
    The blindfold is helping. I can feel the beats in the music as completely separate spaces, the one-two-three, the surge-rise-fall, and for once in my life, I don’t rush the rest. This rhythm is like a wave that comes and lifts you and then there is another. Why would I fight this? Fighting this would be like refusing to float on the surface of