The Last Milonga

About this book

In the barrio, the old people still give directions by it: past La Paloma, they say, though the confiteria on the corner has been shuttered since 1978, its windows painted over, its salon, where the barrio danced for fifty years to the house orchestra of the great Fabian Torres, sealed like a held breath. The lease has been refused to three banks and a burger franchise across the decades by an owner nobody has ever met. Camila Rios, thirty eight, audio archivist turned reluctant cafe dreamer, is the first applicant ever approved, by a lawyer's letter that contains one strange clause: the piano is not to be tuned, moved, or opened, except in the presence of E. Quiroga.