Emily watches the others, the dancers, the way they move around each other, how the feet and the upper bodies initiate motion independent of one another. It’s a packed floor, small, the air thick and moist, laced with cigarette smoke and a smell of beer. She knows by George’s look that this is the kind of place he can’t stand: too much humanity and all the wrong kinds, the unrefined, minds dull as mud, passions unexamined, crude tastebuds awakened only by the strongest flavors.

She likes them, the fat plain-faced women with their sinewy husbands, hangdog faces enlivened by the music; the magic of the notes, the rhythm of it, moves into swollen feet, callused feet, moves into them with gentleness. It caresses tired toes, makes them young again. The oldest of the dancers move with the frenetic energy of forgotten youth. The light shifts and flashes. It is full of smoke like quartz, softened at its edges. Like all hallowed moments, it exists and yet it doesn’t.

“I’ll have the bacalhau à bras,” she says to the waiter.

Emily sits in the middle, at the back of the round table. Her back faces a wall. At her right, George won’t drink. He refuses the wine suggestions, the sangria, the bottles of beer that the waiter tries to tempt him with. Emily takes a sip of sangria. At her left, Jason has a bottle of local beer standing half-empty in front of him; it’s been in the same place for the twenty minutes the three of them have been sitting, at the high table in the corner, off to one side of the dance floor. The sangria is delicious. A pitcher of it occupies the center of the table, its heart’s blood packed with thin slices of orange. The atmosphere of the room weaves through the ice and makes it darker.

“I’ll have the same,” says Jason.

George smiles at the waiter. “I’ll have the cozido à portuguesa.”

There is bread at the center of the table. Bread in a basket, little round rolls of it, the crust dark and shiny. No one touches it.

“So.” George leans back in the chair and picks up his glass of club soda. A slice of lime floats adrift on the ice. He looks at Jason, his gaze turned sidelong and framed in a whiff of nonchalance. “What brings you here? To Portugal, I mean?”

“It’s a vacation, but it’s also kind of a test drive.” Jason looks back and forth between them. He picks up the beer bottle. It hovers near his mouth. “A clinic in Terceira wants to offer me a job.”

“A clinic.” Emily turns her sangria glass. She prints the scarred wood with interlocking rings. “You’re a doctor?”

He nods. “Yeah.”

“We don’t work.” George takes a sip. “There’s family money.”

Jason pauses. He glances at Emily and nods. “I see.”

At the edge of the dance floor, a man takes hold of his partner’s waist and she falls into a dip. Emily watches them over Jason’s shoulder. Her partner leans over her, hauls her up, lets her drop again. The woman’s long dark hair whips in a circle. Strands of it cling to the corners of her sweaty mouth. They rise together and Emily’s stomach drops, fluttering.

Jason looks at her, a closed smile hovering around his mouth. He takes a drink and blinks and it all seems orchestrated: his blink timed to the rise and fall of his throat, his mouth wet with beer as he lowers the bottle, his tongue licking its flavor away at the exact moment the glass touches the wood.

“Excuse me,” she says, glancing at George and looking at Jason. “I need to use the bathroom.”

Emily slides down out of the chair. She walks through the dance floor, moving toward the back. She circles the bar.

The bathrooms are always in the back.

It is tiny, water-closet style. She closes herself in. Within the enclosed space, the music beats all around her. It permeates her bones. She uses the toilet and washes her hands in the little sink. It juts out of the wall, a clamshell balanced upon the curve of a pipe. The mirror is cracked, the silver backing worn the way it is in bars all over the world. Emily’s toes tap to the beat.

She dries her hands on the small towel hanging on the wall. She holds her curled fingers over her nose, smells the mingled scents of mineral water and lilac soap.

She runs into Jason at the bar. His body, tight with forward motion, relaxes upon sight of her. Emily hooks a thumb over one shoulder. “The men’s room is that way.”

“Do you want to dance?”

She turns her ear to him, standing on her tiptoes. “What?”

He grins. “I said would you like to dance?”

“You know how?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “A little.”

Emily lifts her voice up over the music. “This is salsa.”

He smiles. “I know.”

She goes into the center of the floor where a space appears and reappears, hemmed in with feet and then torn open by the spinning of bodies. Jason follows, close enough behind her for her to feel his heat, his arms and legs pushing it up against the bare parts of her skin that are already sweating.

Emily turns to face him. She moves with the music, steps into it and he takes her hand. He holds it up and concentrates on the rhythm of her steps. His hand feels different, it is its own thing, it is separate from the moment. There’s nothing like it in her mind. It’s thicker in places. The skin is dry at the edges, rough. He holds her arm aloft, his weight rocking from side to side. He is not tall. His body is thick and muscular, his strength visible, quiet but there, sleeping like an animal. He is easy to follow. His form is solid, like his physique, a body that is made to scale things, to climb. His hips are loose and fluid. He looks up and smiles, that easy smile, his weapon spreading white across his face. It kindles something in his eyes, some awareness. The sight of him makes her buoyant.

He unfolds her and she spins, the tiers of her skirt unfolding, the noise of the dancers roaring. It feels like liftoff.

He pulls her close. She sways into it and her vertebrae are loose, unlaced from the rest of her body.

“Are you married?”

She puts a hand on his shoulder. Her touch is light. He watches her face.

“Because I can’t figure it out.”

“What? No, no.” The interior turns around them. “We’re not married.”

He looks down, the sweat dark in his hair, the tiny beads glimmering on his upper lip. “Am I doing something bad right now?” He looks into her eyes and his hand grazes her hip, hovers over the way it undulates. “Is this going to make life difficult for you?”

Her smile turns lazy. “What an interesting way of asking that question.”

Jason twirls her once, twice. The centrifugal force spreads out to the edges of her hips. Each turn of her head is crisp. The walls blur and then slow into the turnout. She steps closer.

“He comes off as a controlling guy.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

He loops her arm up over her head, slows it down. She pulls the elastic out of her hair. The backs of his fingers brush her collarbone.

“You don’t come across as the kind of woman who likes to be controlled.”

“Do you think our food as arrived yet?”

“I don’t know.” He catches her hand. “Shall we find out?”

Emily walks out of the dance. She moves ahead of him through the changing crowd, her shoulder joint stretching. It’s a pleasant sensation, this tug in her bones. She enjoys towing the lightness of his weight, the way he balances on the balls of his feet.

At the table George is eating a bit of the bread. The small loaf is broken open, crumbs scattered on the plate. He watches her approach with darkened eyes, a shielded gaze. She watches him as they come to the table and she knows, she reads it in his gestures, that she has become a conspirator. Emily takes her seat, a vague cold climbing into her lap. The food comes as she is folding her legs, settling into the seat. She glances at George as he eats. The nonchalance, the calm in his gestures, his toned-down smile, all of it whispers of Jason’s impending doom.

He has been thinking all along that this is a choice.

She shakes out her napkin, smoothes it into place with cool fingertips. She catches Jason watching her. He grins and she is warm, a prisoner in her skin, helpless.

He is thinking that I have chosen the way a girl chooses a doll. He’ll wait until the right moment, until Jason goes to use the bathroom, until noise has come between us. He’ll lean over, he’ll put his hand on me, he’ll murmur it into my ear.

She takes a sip of sangria and imagines George’s fingers shifting the cotton, pulling it up past the knee. The music, the lingering flavors of the sangria, the delicious aromas of food all drown out the ghost of her thought: blunt nails drawing lines on the inside of her thigh.

But Emily, her mind whispers. You said you wanted a girl.

The fish on her plate gives off delicate curls of steam. She stirs it up and takes a bite. Her throat closes.