“Hey baby, this is the itsy old art lady you sleep with, so don’t be giving me that shit.” “Then speak like a lady, act like a lady,” and he gives more reasons why he can’t, shouldn’t, won’t introduce himself to Milikin and when she tells him to stop being a child and particularly with a voice so loud the whole world can hear, he says much lower that he’s not a child which she should know by now if she sleeps with him as she says and if she hasn’t been then he’s been having one hell of a ball with someone else the last ten years. But all kidding aside. If she has anything like that to say to him, say it at home. Then I see Helene. Of course I didn’t know her name at the time. Looking at me when I first looked at her. I’d lifted my head. First I turned my head away from Jane and Phil while they caviled about what each had just said, looked around the room, saw the woman from the couch, man with the pipe, Alan making a point, Milikin nowhere about, Cylette I think her name was being offered a light, looked at the rug, raised myself an inch or two on the balls of my soles, raised myself an inch or two on my heels, seesawed back and forth a few times like this, sipped some wine, set the glass down without looking away from it, then lifted my head while Phil told Jane how in many ways he’s more honest than she despite anything she might say, but none of it loud enough it seemed for anyone else to hear, and found myself looking at Helene looking at me. Well what do you know I told myself — hello, hello. She was standing between the food table and bar, about seven feet from the bar and seven from me. A crowd stood behind her, crowded around the bar, and there was an opening between us a foot or so wide and while we looked at one another people moved past it but nobody blocked it. She was being spoken to by a man whose whole body her whole body faced, but her face was turned sideways to me. She held a wineglass with two hands. Only the stem and lip of it showed, so I couldn’t tell what color wine she drank. We looked at each other for about ten seconds. Then I turned my head back to Jane and Phil while she was still looking at me. That’s when I said to myself Well what do you know, hello hello. I don’t know why I turned back to Jane and Phil. The position — body facing one way, head the other — could have been making me physically uncomfortable, but I don’t think that was it. If it was and I’d corrected it by turning more of my body to her, she might have construed that move as too open and provoking. I suppose I also didn’t think it right to look too long at someone looking at me whom I didn’t know, though she did to me. Jane said something to Phil about iguanas and sausages. Phil said “What do you think about that, Dan?” I said “About what?” “Damn lf he wasn’t even listening when we figured out the key to his past and present and all his future configurations but swore on our children’s heads to say it only once to him and never again. Tough luck, fella.” “He’s better off,” Jane says, “and you’re an awfully slick liar. Now let’s drop the subject, darling, okay?” “J’agrée, mon queen — to any sing.” She grabs his hand and yanks him closer to kiss him. I turn my head and more of my body this time to this woman. She’s facing the man with her body and face, listening to him engrossedly it seems. “We’ll saunter up to him en duo,” Jane says. “It can’t hurt. Speak to you later, Dan, unless you want to join us,” and I say “No thanks, I’ll save your place,” and turn back to the woman. She’s still listening. He’s using the words “quiddity,” “tendentious” and “rhetoric” in one sentence. If I look at her long and hard enough without looking away I bet she looks at me. Seconds after I think this she turns her head to me. It never worked before. It didn’t work now. She just turned to me again, or turned this way, not realizing I was still here, and last time I tried that trick I was probably in high school. We look at each other. She starts to smile, sort of smiles, then smiles because I smile or maybe I smiled because I felt her full smile about to appear and we smile at each other like this and I bob my head once and she blinks her eyes once, more a reflex than a signal I’d say, and turns to the man who has stopped talking to her and might have been looking at us looking at each other since she turned to me but is now looking at her, and raises her empty glass and he says “Not yet but it could stand some filling up,” and they go to the bar.
