By their third dance evening, Robert had finally stopped counting the steps aloud. Ivana rewarded him with a smile and permission to choose the next song. Both were over forty and had enough bad wedding memories to make dancing a difficult invitation. They had arrived at the small hall separately, through different friends. Now they were already waiting for each other by the entrance.
When the organizer raised a camera for a group photograph, Ivana went to get water. Robert assumed it was a coincidence. The following week she stepped behind a pillar as soon as someone began filming on a telephone. Afterward he asked whether she was married. The question came out more sharply than he intended. She looked at him as though he had suddenly changed the music in the middle of a step.
She was not married. Her former partner had posted every outing, ended every argument with a photograph of them together, and taken offense if her comment was not affectionate enough. After the breakup, a whole public exhibition remained of a relationship in which she had often felt alone. Dancing was the first place she had returned to without needing to prove to anyone that she was enjoying herself.
Robert lowered his eyes. His former partner had hidden their relationship from colleagues, so an absence of photographs meant something very different to him. He told her that. Ivana did not promise to change her habit to repair someone else's old injury. Instead, she asked whether he would like to have Sunday lunch with her friends. Without secrecy, and without compulsory recording.
He arrived with an excessively large box of cakes. One friend asked whether she could photograph the table. Ivana said yes, as long as she kept them out of the picture. Nobody demanded further explanation. Robert spent hours talking to people who knew his name and why he was there. As he left, Ivana kissed him in the open doorway while someone behind them asked where the spoons had gone.
At the next dance evening the organizer invited them into the photograph again. Robert said they would stay to one side this time. Ivana took his hand and drew him toward the nearly empty dance floor. The song began, and he got the second step wrong. She rested her forehead against his shoulder as she laughed. Later she had no evidence of how that moment had looked. But she could describe it exactly when her friend asked.