Your colleagues, coworkers, clients, don’t see it. Out for a walk at lunchtime, passersby ignore —in that midtown New York, we’re-too-busy-to-notice-anything way — the woman in the evening dress, tailored jacket over it to make it more business-appropriate.

After work, the jacket comes off. People notice. They can’t help themselves; nobody could. It’s a dress that says so much about its owner, shows easily (to anyone who cares for the lesson) the difference between “fashion” and “style,” and why the two are not synonymous. Fashions come and go; style is eternal. Fashion is drapery, window dressing, all outward and superficial; style emanates from within, and is far more important and substantial. This dress is fashionable, to be sure; but it is worn with style, and on you will still look au courant long after the fashion fades. And this, this is apparent to the whole room. You make an entrance.

The cocktail hour moves slowly, segues into dinner and then dessert. The entire evening, indeed, is a bust: boring from start to finish, food middling at best, the weather just the wrong side of sufficiently warm for a postprandial stroll. But you feel good, wearing the dress; you know you’re turning heads, but something is missing.

I am finishing my own coffee when I see your email; and I smile, and hurriedly write back: “thirty minutes” and an address. You make your apologies, disengage from your date, and head outside to hail a taxi. I made good time and am waiting when you arrive, and have already arranged for a good table. We go inside, to a setting from a bygone time: what is this place? The band takes the stage and begins the set; I rise and extend my hand, lead you out to the floor.

A dance is an intimate encounter between two people: subtle touches, body language, posture; the closeness of two bodies, or (even) the distance between them, can be a magical, almost mystical experience. In its time, the waltz was a scandalous thing: it was deemed too intimate for polite company. (What would they have thought of the tango?) Though we have never danced together before, there is an electricity that connects us as my feet recall things I never knew they knew and you follow as if we had been at this for years. When the set ends, we go reluctantly back to our table and pick up our drinks. I speak close in your ear, and watch the hair stand up on your neck: more intimate magic.

The dress has not been wasted, and heads are still turning when we walk home, arm in arm, to resume the dance.