Twelfth Night Tango

Someone called last night, with a voice from the past, and introduced himself as Astor Piazzolla, supposedly one of three biblical Magi. We were told by a Catholic priest in a sermon today that it's not the trip to Bethlehem that is the significance of the story of the Epiphany, but how the Magi navigated home and what happened on the way. I appreciated the reminder.
While I didn't recognize the voice on the phone last night, I did recognize the sound of the bandoneon and knew that whoever was calling had the wrong number, since the real Astor died years ago. He actually died of a stroke on his way to mass at Notre Dame. In an effort to be polite, however, I didn’t hang up immediately, but listened to the disk as it continued to spin (pirouetting) over and over on his turntable. I suppose he imagined that I was following him, every little thing he was trying to say, like the perfect dance partner. Or maybe he was just some old dj who had had too much to drink. Then, without waiting to be moved by the leitmotif, he hung up. Adios. I have since found out that he was born disabled, crippled for life by a hearing defect.
What tension he must have felt in that exacting impulse to hang up, allowing himself to be catapulted into the firmament, then back like a boomerang, past the computer screen and blurred proof sheet, dragging all the cords and pulling out all the plugs in the process.
Sigh. How effortlessly we seem to be thrown back by the music into our everlasting youth, hung up, and then suddenly turn (on slightly bent knees) to face that ever warm and lightfooted follower from another life, another time, another continent. We call it “work in progress". Who will hold the small of Viola's back on the next impulse to dance? Who - if not me - is prepared to follow her to the very end of a brief score on her way home, adieu.
I have to laugh (and cry) at a bizarre comedy of errors that is as well-written as well-directed to entertain. Sometimes we need these diversions - like Let's Dance - before the end of the holidays, huh?