Boots on the Line

The match happened on a Tuesday, I remember that much because Tuesdays are the night I teach beginners and the app never got any action until after nine. I was thirty-six last spring, recently moved from Chicago, and the pickings in a ski town this small are slim enough that I'd almost deleted the whole thing twice.

Then there was this message. Not a "hey" and not a dick pic, which in my experience covers about ninety percent of what men send. This guy wrote: "Your profile says you like honest men. Full disclosure, I'm wearing one brown boot and one black boot right now and I only noticed at the fuel stop in Innsbruck."

I laughed out loud in an empty dance hall, which takes some doing.

I wrote back: "How does a man not notice his own boots for a whole morning?"

"Truck," he wrote. "I dress in the dark so I don't wake the whole boarding house. Some days the dark wins."

His name was Roger, he was thirty-eight, and he drove freight over the pass four days a week. We traded messages for two days. He was funny in a dry way, the kind that doesn't try too hard. He asked about the tango. He didn't ask for a single photo, which I liked more than I expected to.

"Drink?" he wrote on Thursday. "I'm parked at the Gasthaus most nights. I know that's not romantic, but the beer is cold and the chairs don't wobble."

"Friday," I wrote. "After my intermediate class. I'll be the one with sore calves."

* * *

The café he picked was the little one by the church, the one with six tables and a stove that made the whole place smell like woodsmoke. He was already there when I came in, which told me something good about him right off. He stood up and stuck out his hand like we were closing on a used car.

"Samira," he said. "You're taller than your messages."

"That's a new one," I said, sitting. "Usually it's the other complaint."

"Well, you typed short." He sat back down. He had one of those faces that looks like it does honest work, creased around the eyes. "Beer? They have wine too but I can't vouch for it."

"Wine. Live dangerously."

He flagged the girl behind the counter and ordered without looking at a menu, which told me he really did live here most of the week. "So," he said. "Tango. For real? Like people pay you?"

"People pay me," I said. "Whether it's tango they're getting is between me and my conscience."

"How'd a woman from Chicago end up teaching tango in the Alps?"

"Bad breakup, good map. I stuck a pin in it." I shrugged. "The hall was cheap, the town was pretty, and I figured a winter would clear my head. You?"

"Twenty years driving. Started local, went long-haul, now I'm pass-and-valley freight for an outfit out of Innsbruck." He turned his glass around on the table. "And in the spring they're moving me to a desk. Logistics. My knees are celebrating and the rest of me isn't."

"You don't want it?"

"Want isn't the word. It's a promotion. It's more money and a bed every night and my mother would stop worrying." He looked out the window at the road. "But I like the driving. I like being done when I'm done. A desk doesn't end."

I knew what he meant. Teaching classes that end is one of the few things I still trusted.

"What's the pass like in a truck?" I asked. "I've only seen it in a hatchback, white-knuckled."

"Winters? It's work. You respect it or it teaches you." He grinned. "Best views in Austria though. Some mornings the valley's full of cloud and the peaks are sticking up like islands. I've pulled over more than once just to look. Don't tell my dispatcher."

"Your secret's safe." I sipped the wine, which was actually decent. "What mornings? I'm up at five to practice before classes."

"Up at four-thirty, at the summit by six most days." He raised an eyebrow. "You're a five o'clock dancer?"

"Five o'clock anything," I said. "Old habit."

We talked until the girl started stacking chairs around us. Two hours, maybe more. There was a stretch in the middle, I couldn't tell you what we were even talking about, where neither of us looked away for a good while. He wasn't smooth about it. He just didn't pretend he wasn't looking, and I decided I liked that.

Outside, the cold hit and we both did that sharp inhale at the same time and laughed about it.

"So," he said, hands in his pockets. "I was going to ask if you wanted to see the summit at night, but that's a fool's errand in February and I'd be showing up at your hall at eleven like a creep."

"Like a creep with a truck."

"Still a creep." He rocked on his heels. "Walk with me Saturday instead? Afternoon. There's a trail above my cabin that looks over the whole valley."

"Your cabin?"

"I rent it weekends. Hunting shack, honestly, but the view earns its keep."

"Saturday," I said. "It's a date. A real one, not a café one."

He smiled at the road the whole walk to his pickup, and I caught myself doing the same.

* * *

Saturday he was waiting at the trailhead, and I saw it before I saw him: the boots. One brown, one black. Same as the message.

I stopped dead and pointed. "You're doing it on purpose now!"

"Doing what?" He looked down like he'd never seen his own feet.

"The boots, Roger. Four days later. Same crime."

He stared at them and swore, and it was so genuine I cracked up. I grabbed his arm while I laughed, and I didn't let go right away either, and he didn't move away.

"I dress in the dark," he said, wounded. "The dark has it out for me."

"The dark has excellent taste." I was still holding his arm. "Come on, show me your valley."

The trail was packed snow and we went slow, which suited me. He talked about the route he drove, pointed out where the hairpins got nasty, where a bridge froze before anything else did. He'd been over it so many times he knew it like a face.

"And in April I'm in an office," he said. "Looking at this on a screen."

"Then look at it now," I said. "All of it. Consider it work."

He looked at me sideways at that, and something shifted. We stood at the overlook a long while, wind coming up the valley, and I thought, well, this is the part where one of us does something or doesn't. Neither of us did. It felt almost better that way. Slow. I hadn't done slow in years.

"Monday," he said as we walked down. "You said you practice Mondays. Alone?"

"Alone until seven, then class fills the hall."

"Could a man with bad boots sit and watch? I'll bring coffee and stay quiet."

"Roger," I said. "You can watch. But fair warning, tango alone looks like a woman arguing with an empty room."

"Those are my favorite rooms."

* * *

Monday evening the hall smelled of floor wax and cold radiators. I'd pushed the chairs back for practice, and he came in at six with two