The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing - Melissa Bank [66]
He's aware of performing a kindness; he seems to regard me as poor, plain Catherine from Washington Square or poor, sick Laura from The Glass Menagerie.
He takes my hand and leads me danceward.
"Bow to your partner," Braidy says. "Ladies, curtsy."
When Gus and I promenade, he smiles encouragement at me, like I'm Clara from Heidi and he's teaching me how to walk. But I suddenly remember square dancing in gym circa third grade, and it's the nine year old in me swinging my partner and do-si-doing.
"Great!" Bonnie says.
Faith offers up a restrained, "Yee-haw."
After dancing, I'm about to say I'm parched as a possum, but Faith interrupts: "Say, `Let's get something cold to drink,'" and those are the words I say.
"Sure," Gus says.
We go to the beer-sticky bar, and Faith says, "Ask him what a stage manager does."
"Men love to talk about themselves!" Bonnie says.
So I ask, and he says, "I do what no one else wants to do."
I'm told to smile as though captivated.
Sipping a beer herself, Faith says, "Now let him do the work."
I am only too happy to oblige.
Bonnie says, "Let your eyes wander around the dance floor!" But this seems unkind.
"He's a prospect," Faith says, "not a charity."
I look around, and Gus, trying to regain my attention, asks me if I'd like to dance again.
Bonnie says, "One dance per customer."
Instead of saying a jokey Much obliged, but I should join my kin, I anticipate Faith and say, "It was nice meeting you, Gus."
Like a caller herself, Bonnie says, "Circulate!" And I do.
Faith says, "Do not establish eye contact."
"Really?" I ask.
"You think that's the only way to get a man to notice you, don't you?" she says.
"You poor lamb!" Bonnie says.
I've never acknowledged this even to myself. I sound pathetic.
"Yes," Faith says, "especially because nothing is more compelling to a man than a lack of interest."
To my astonishment, she's right. Men appear out of nowhere and glom on to me. Bonnie and Faith tell me what to do, and I obey: I refuse a second dance with a man I'm actually attracted to; I don't enter the pie-eating contest; I ask questions like "What kind of law do you practice?"
By the end of the night, my phone number is in a half-dozen pockets. "This never happened to me before," I tell Faith.
She says, "I know I should feign surprise."
When my brother and Liz walk me to my bike, he says, "Who were those guys you were talking to?"
"Who knows?" I say, giddy with the freedom to make jokes. "I feel like the belle of the ball."
He says, "The ho of the hoedown."
"You know what just occurred to me?" I say, laughing. "I went to a singles square dance in a gym, to meet men."
When Liz says, "You can't think that way," I'm reminded of Faith in personnel saying, "Just do the best you can."
I wonder if my brother is going to marry her.
—•—
Right before Robert arrives, Bonnie says, "Don't be too eager!" When I look in the mirror, my smile is huge and my eyes bugged out with anticipation. I tell myself to think of death. When that doesn't work, I think of yesterday's brainstorming session to name a new auto club for frequent drivers.
Robert buzzes. I open the door and he looks as excited as I did a moment before. He sees Jezebel and gets on his knees and rubs her haunches. "Jezzie," he says.
"Do you want a glass of wine?" I ask.
He does.
He follows me into the kitchen. He's still in apartment-hunting mode, he says, and do I mind if he looks around?
"Go ahead," I say, and he goes.
He asks if I've had a chance to check on vacancies in my building, and I'm reminded of Erich von Stroheim in Sunset Boulevard saying, "It wasn't Madame he wanted, it was her car."
"I'm sorry—I haven't," I say, and if I were in one of his cartoons, there would be icicles hanging from my balloon.
Maybe he hears it, because he's quiet a moment. He walks around my living room and stops at the table with my little cardboard barnyard animals on their wooden stands. He picks up each one