Cab drivers often ask me what I’m doing here in Argentina and whether I came alone. This time I decided to lie and created an imaginary husband in New York and two children who are here with me, ages 5 and 8. My cab driver was very concerned that we were not really in love because how could I be so far from my husband for a month at a time. No, love does not work that way, he said. He thought we had love in quotation marks and not real love. He thought I had an open mind but not an open heart. I could not really say a word. I was so astonished by his outpouring in reaction to my trickster story. I wanted to amuse myself with a lie.

He told me of his long-distance loves, and how he is single now and wants to come home and cook with someone. We said we would meet again if it is our destiny. I shut the door to the cab and opened the door to my apartment in Buenos Aires with takeout food, wondering what it would be like to have that imaginary husband in New York and two kids with me here, and also happy to go home in quiet and peace. In between fiction and truth, imagining other lives.

P.S. Today we start the second Tango Adventure in Buenos Aires.