They come in, one by one or couple by couple, some before the tables were even set up to allow space for dancing. She watches them and as soon as each seems comfortable in his or her seat, she walks over, greets them, and gets their order, or at least give them the menu. Many she has already seen quite a few times, what she would consider regulars. There's the young woman who comes very early and seems a favorite. Many men at least mentally line up to have a chance to dance with her. She is graceful, not only when dancing, but when she is talking. Her fashions a short haircut, and her clothes are always a little eccentric, just a touch. The waitress knows this. She has seen a lot of people come through this restaurant that becomes a tango dance night on Tuesdays. Most people in this city don't dress in a way to says something about their individuality. This young woman's clothes don't scream but always smiles out that individuality. She is very friendly, to the waitress but also to her friends. The waitress always notices when the woman dances; grace is not the best word to describe her style. The waitress feels that at least when the young woman dances, she is absorbed in her feelings and the being with her partner.
Like any social dance, tango, as the waitress observes, involves many partners, but unlike any dance she has seen, at any given dance a dancer is dedicated only to his or her partner. And the closeness of most couples at first alarmed the waitress, who has never reserved such intimacy for anyone but a spouse, although she has lived in this city, this culture, for quite a few years and has just a slight accent left from her younger years in Nepal. Besides the young woman whose passion and grace get her attention all the time, the waitress also notices some of her friends. There's the married couple who obviously have, also, been dancing for a while. They don't, however, manifest the passion of the dance so clearly. The waitress allows herself to believe that she simply doesn't understand the dance. But she knows the couple is married, but the familiar closeness, as well as distance, that they allow between them. They are very young, and very different. The man is slightly taller than the woman, though both are taller than the waitress. The man dances with precision, nothing sloppy in the waitress's inexperienced eyes. At least greater precision and confidence than many other men. He smiles quite a bit when not dancing, and when he is dancing, his face is purposefully, it seems to her, written with emotional words that in the end show no emotion. She, on the other hand, truly seems to have no emotion. She smiles sometimes, but her demeanor doesn't allow the waitress to make any guesses as to how she looks if she were angry or sad.
Even at the height of the best night, the floor, small as it is, isn't all packed. But the people are very friendly towards one another, and they collectively form a very lively band. By now the waitress knows more or less the names of most people, the regulars, though she also knows she constantly misspells their name. None has a Nepali name, or even just names from that region, and so she tries her best to remember within the handicap of cultural and phonetic differences. Still, they are all very friendly to her. She finds it funny how during the second half of the night she would be serving a lot of water to the dancers. Many would order a wine in the beginning of the night, but as they keep dancing, they just keep asking for more water.
There are many things the waitress doesn't understand about the dance. Not just the style, the purpose, the difficulty, which she finds skyhigh, but also the social side of it. It's true that she finds the people in general are very friendly, in good spirit. But then she notices that emotions are charged, and not just emotion of enjoyment. She notices, for example, that when that much-demanded young woman dances with someone with whom even the waitress can see is not very good, the young lady has her eyes wide open and her face is full of perplexity. The waitress by now can almost feel the pain the woman is feeling. With that close embrace, that close distance, she assumes that you have to really feel comfortable with the person. And if not, you just are stuck there. The waitress notices that there are short songs that are obviously not tango, and at that moment most people bid each other goodbye. That's usually a good time for her to go check on the tables, see if there are things to pick up, or if people want more drinks or snacks. And when the young lady had a bad dance, the waitress always notices that she wants to just leave the dance floor as soon as possible. What she can't understand is why the young woman, or anyone, just doesn't stop during the song, or at least after the song.
Sometimes she sees a person sitting, watching the dances but not really paying attention. She doesn't know this one dancer, but she knows him by the blank look on his face whenever he isn't dancing, as if something is preoccupying him. He is an Indian man, or maybe Pakistani, though somehow she doesn't think he is Nepali. He has thick, black eyebrows, small nose, slightly lifted jaws, and thin lips. His receding hairline is often masked by the shortness of the haircut. When he's not smiling or talking, he is just sitting and watching with a blank stare. The waitress wonders what he could be thinking about instead of enjoying dancing. He dances often with that young lady, and they seem to have a very enjoyable dance. She thinks so because she closes her eyes when dancing with this man and seems very attentive. Furthermore, she accepts his repeated request for a dance each single time. She notices. She notices people, their interactions, their conversation using just facial expressions and gesticulations. And so it isn't every hard for her to see that this man is pensive, at least, when he is just watching. And even when he starts to dance, except with that young lady, he is always pensive looking, full of thoughts while initiating a dance. The waitress assumes that people develop feelings during the dance, and these feelings, she can't imagine, wouldn't cross the boundaries of the dance. She notices that most of the time and for most people they make a clear separation between the passion during the dance and what happens when they bid each other goodbye with a "thank you." They just return to what she would call reality, of sitting down with the buddies and talking about things she would hear other people talking, people who don't come on Tuesday nights for tango.
She usually leaves work a little before the last tango song is finished. And in the chill of the winter night, as she walks to her car, she wonders a little, every Tuesda night, what people are like in this community. How can people be so emotional, so physically close, and so passionate about their dance but still be people, emotionally unattached, after the song is finished. And she watches her own breath condense in the subzero air, and she wonders a little more. These people keep coming every week, some weeks have more people than others. By the time she is inside her car she has mostly forgotten about the night. She just wants to go home and have a little rest. She works two jobs, and the other one will be starting in about eight hours. By now, her thoughts about tango people, vanished until the following week.
