Friday evenings, homeward bound, Max often turned into the shaded cul-de-sac off Meeting Street to shrug off his professional life for an hour or two at the Hotel Fakir. There he danced occasionally with beautiful women lost in Tango dreams, traded philosophical insights with the elderly bartender Ignatio, and fretted about putting words to paper. Like many academics, Max was an aspiring novelist immobilized by writer’s block. Max thought that a rich imagination leavened with real-life experience would attract legions of readers if only he could summon simple declarative sentences.

Once, nursing a glass of Malbec, Max told Ignatio that Tango got in the way, muddling his thinking. “Everything I need is in a tango embrace, but I don’t know how to say that,” he said. “…if only I could touch-type, or maybe just tape my thoughts…” Ignatio remembered the tiny Sony recorder he’d used that day at a tedious budget meeting with his accountant. He paused his reflective polishing of the zinc surface of the bar, set the Sony next to Max’s Malbec, pressed Record, and said,  “What’s on your mind, Max?”

Anibal Triolo’s orchestra was playing in the background as the recorder captured Max’s words.