“Joke’s on them,” Cleo replied.

Once they had all formed said circle, which took some time because Suzanne Sonnenfeld kept insisting it should go boy-girl-boy-girl, the choreographer explained the rules. They would each be matched with a professional; they’d spend the day working on the professional’s dance of his or her choosing; they’d perform it that night, where the crowd would vote on the winner.

“What do we win?” Suzanne asked.

The choreographer scowled. “It’s a fundraiser, Ms. Sonnenfeld.”

“So pride?” she replied. The rest of the circle tittered, because for this group, pride was enough.

The pairings were handed out one by one, and Cleo regressed back to PE class in middle school, standing shoulder to shoulder with MaryAnne, waiting to be picked for teams. Neither was ever in the top half of the selection, for obvious reasons. After each classmate was selected, the two of them would mutter one of the terrible nicknames they’d given said classmate under their breath. Craterface. Or Spaghetti brain numbskull. It was their way to feel superior in the face of being inferior, Cleo could see now. At the time, it was self-preservation.

To her dismay, Cleo was not paired with the highly muscular, highly limber hero type she was hoping for. He, naturally, went to Suzanne, who squealed and ran her hands up and down his washboard abs in a completely inappropriate and objectifying way, but Suzanne was usually inappropriate and objectifying, so no one so much as raised an eyebrow.

“It’s amazing,” Cleo said to Bowen. “How we all lower our standards to what we come to expect from her rather than raising our standards to demand that she’s not an asshole.”

“So what you’re saying is: Not All Men?” Bowen replied with a grin on his face.

Cleo rolled her eyes.

Bowen was paired with a lithe ballerina who didn’t look much older than Marley or Esme, and as he walked off to the practice rooms, Cleo was gutted with a pang of jealousy. Which was pathetic, she knew. She’d given Bowen his chance, he’d firmly passed, and what was the point of pining? Cleo wasn’t the pining type. She literally could not think of a time in her life or a man in her life she’d pined for. Not for Matty, though there had been a twinge, perhaps, at the bar in the Sheraton. She thought of him now and how kind he was and how cute he had looked. She reminded herself to check and be sure he got the care package from Alaska. Not even for Nobells, who was obviously off-limits even while they were sleeping together.

Cleo’s partner was a skinny jazz dancer who had been part of the national touring company of Chicago and A Chorus Line, among others, and now ran the Dance DC studio, which catered to bigwigs who thought they had missed out on their chance in their youth and thus burned calories and stress in leotards and headbands and tights after their work on the Hill. Francis was slight and had a frenetic energy about him, and though it wasn’t gracious, Cleo thought he looked a bit like a mouse. She thought of MaryAnne again and how they would have nicknamed him something like Mousecheeks, and she was surprised that this made her sad—not the nickname but that she and MaryAnne had so deftly obliterated their friendship, that just thinking about middle school PE now depressed her. (To be clear, there was a lot about middle school PE to find depressing, but the secret monikers about their classmates were not one of them.)

Francis, who couldn’t have been more than five foot six, informed her that they were going to be doing a mambo and asked if she knew anything about the mambo. Cleo immediately felt defensive and wanted to turn it around and demand if he knew anything about eliminating the trade deficit but caught herself just in time.

“No,” she said. “I don’t know the first thing.”

If this displeased Francis, he didn’t let on, and Cleo resolved that he must be a very good teacher if he could convince Washington, DC, types to spend their evenings living out their misplaced dreams and not become jaded or judgmental, so she decided right then to let him take charge.

“That’s OK,” he said. “I chose it because its history is born from strength and passion.”

“Oh!” Cleo said.

“I watched your video,” he said, and Cleo wondered if there would ever be a place that she could now go in the entirety of her life and not be defined by that video. “And you have both.”

Cleo was not the type to blush, and yet she found herself blushing quite unexpectedly.

“Strength, yes . . . passion . . . I’m not sure.”

“Have you seen Dirty Dancing?” he asked. “That’s the mambo there too. I call this dance Dirty Dancing Lite or Mambo for Beginners.”

Cleo had seen Dirty Dancing because who hadn’t? But not for years. She wasn’t the type to flip listlessly through the channels late at night and stumble upon a movie that rendered her nostalgic. If she were, she’d remember that MaryAnne had been obsessed with Patrick Swayze in seventh grade, while she, naturally, had gravitated toward Baby’s independent streak.

“Wait,” Cleo said. “Please tell me we’re not doing that lift? There is no way I can do that lift.”

“Dance isn’t about what you can’t do,” he said. “It’s about retraining your brain and your body to prove that you can.”

Cleo started to point out that they had only six hours, and no miracles, in the history of life, had been pulled off in such time, but she was trying to be more trusting, so she decided to stay mum and leave it, literally, in Francis’s hands.

Cleo had always been competitive, too competitive really. Just look at what she did to MaryAnne. So she was determined not to lose the competition, even if they were only playing for pride. Pride! What else could you be playing for? Wasn’t that ultimately the point of anything? Cleo was surprised that Suzanne Sonnenfeld even had to ask.

By the time they broke for lunch, Cleo had a decent sense of the choreography, though Francis kept barking things like “Cleaner!” and “Hit that beat!” and “Come on, show me your paaaaassssion!” and she really didn’t know what that meant, much less how to show it.

“All I want to do is not humiliate myself out there,” she said to him as sweat poured from her brow and her armpits and also her belly button and lower back. “I’m giving it my best.”

“That’s not all you want,” he snapped. “You want to win!”

“Well, sure.”

“So then stop apologizing for yourself with words like humiliate! The body senses what the brain is thinking!”

Cleo didn’t mean to apologize, so she reached for her water bottle, and they trudged back to the ballroom for a catered lunch of finger sandwiches and kale salad. Cleo checked in with Georgie, who reported that Lucas had perked up significantly at the notion of watching her perform on YouTube this evening, and then she checked in with Gaby, who had promised to stop by for moral support.

“What’s your dance?” Bowen said, pulling up a seat at her empty round table, which later this evening would be adorned in gold and silver linens and crystal wineglasses and butter knives and rolls and a fairly average lobster salad followed by prime rib.

“Mambo.” Cleo shrugged. “Like from Dirty Dancing.”

“Ooh.” Bowen’s eyes went wide. “I had such a thing for Jennifer Grey.”

Cleo wondered if there was a woman in the world Bowen wouldn’t sleep with other than her.

“We’re doing a jive,” Bowen said.

“Yikes.”

“Yeah, it’s not gonna be great,” he replied. “I think they overestimated my abilities.”

“Tends to happen with men,” Cleo said.

“What does that mean?” Bowen stopped chewing his sandwich.

“Just, you know, the producers probably took a look at you and thought: What isn’t he capable of?” Cleo knew she was being petty, but she didn’t feel like being kind.

Suzanne Sonnenfeld slid up right at that moment, so Cleo dropped it.

“You guys ready to taste blood?” she said.

“Oh, eat shit, Suzanne,” Cleo snapped.

Bowen, who had been sipping a Perrier, nearly choked.

“Well, well, well,” Suzanne said. “Look who suddenly isn’t hashtag Team Woman.”

“I’m not hashtag Team Woman for women who suck. ‘Not All Men’? Give me a break.” Cleo narrowed her eyes.

“Oh, Cleo, lighten up. It’s all for show. It’s all for my show. I think your professor got what was coming to him,” Suzanne said.

Cleo stood, dabbed her mouth with her napkin, and threw it on the table. “I’m a senator, Suzanne. You can address me accordingly.”