Also, circling allowed judgment of whether I really liked how she looked. Because on first impression I like every woman. I’m willing to say they are all beautiful in their own style, and mainly I wander the bars of New York thinking, Wow, wow, wow. What a city of beautiful women. It really is.
And to me, when you look at people’s faces you’re seeing their characters. It’s scary: we’re all too naked that way, not just literally, in that we don’t conceal our faces with clothes, but figuratively, in that somehow our true characters get stamped on the front of our heads like a map. An obvious map of our souls—I don’t think it’s appropriate, to tell the truth. Like living in a nudist colony. It must be an evolutionary thing, adaptive somehow no doubt, but looking in the mirror I could wish for a nicer face myself—meaning a nicer personality, I guess. And when I look around I’m thinking, Oh no! Too much information! We’d be better off wearing veils like Muslim women and showing only our eyes!
Because eyes aren’t enough to tell you anything. Eyes are just blobs of colored gel, they aren’t as revealing as I used to think. That whole idea that eyes are windows to the soul and tell you something important had been a matter of projection on my part.
This woman’s eyes were hazel or brown, I couldn’t be sure yet. I stood there at the bar and ordered my white wine and looked around, roving my eye in a pattern that kept returning to her. When she looked my way, because everyone in a bar looks around, I was talking to the bartender, my friend Enkidu, who claimed to be full-blooded Assyrian and went by Inky, and had bad old green tattoos all over his forearms. Popeye? A can of spinach? He would never say. He saw what I was doing and kept working on drinks while at the same time giving my roving eye a cover story by chatting floridly with me. Yes, high tide in three hours. Later he was going to sling his hook and float down to Staten Island without even turning on his motor. Nicest part of the day, dusk under the blurry stars, lights on the water, ebbing tide, topless towers of Staten lighting up the night, blah blah on we went, either looking around or working, drinking or talking. Oh my, this woman was good-looking. Regal posture, like a volleyball player about to leave the ground. Smooth easy spike, right in my face.
So when she joined my group of acquaintances I slipped over to say hi to all, and my friend Amanda introduced me to those I didn’t know: John and Ray, Evgenia, and Paula; and the regal one was named Joanna.
“Nice to meet you, Joanna,” I said.
She nodded with an amused look and Evie said, “Come on, Amanda, you know Jojo doesn’t like to be called Joanna!”
“Nice to meet you, Jojo,” I said, with a mock elbow into Amanda’s ribs. Good: Jojo smiled. She had a nice smile, and her eyes were light brown, the irises looking as if several browns had been kaleidoscoped. I smiled back as I tried to get past those beauties. I tried to stay cool. Come on, I said to myself a little desperately, this is just what beautiful women see and despise in men, that drowning-in-the-whirlpool moment of agog admiration. Be cool!
I tried. Amanda helped by elbowing me back and complaining about some call option I had bought on the Hong Kong bond market, which had followed her lead but multiplied it by ten. Was I drafting her or accidentally spoofing? That was the kind of thing I could riff on all day, and Amanda and I went back months and were used to each other. She was beautiful too, but not my type, or something. We had already explored what there was to explore between us, which had consisted of a few dinners and a night in bed and nothing more, alas. Not my call, but I wasn’t heartbroken either when she claimed business abroad and we went our separate ways. Of course I will like forever any woman who has gone to bed with me, as long as we don’t become a couple and hate each other forever. But affinity is a funny thing.
“Oh she’s such a JAP,” Evie said to John.
“Jap?” he said ignorantly.
“Come on! Jewish American Princess, you ignoramus! Where did you grow up?”
“Lawn Guyland,” John reparteed. Good laugh from us.
“Really?” Evie cried, also ignorantly.
John shook his head, grinning. “Laramie Wyoming, if you really want to know.”
More laughs. “Is that really a town? That’s not a TV show?”
“It is a town! Bigger than ever, now that the buffalo are back. We rule the buff futures market.”
“You are buff.”
“I am.”
“Do you know the difference between a JAP and spaghetti?”
“No?”
“Spaghetti moves when you eat it!”
More laughs. They were pretty drunk. That might be good. Jojo was a little flushed but not drunk, and I was not even close. I am never drunk, unless by accident, but if I have been careful I will never be more than lightly buzzed. Nurse a single malt for an hour and then switch to ginger ale and bitters, keep compos mentos. Jojo looked to be doing the same; tonic water had followed her white wine. That was good up to a point. A woman does need a little wildness, maybe. I caught her eye and chinned at the bar.
“Get you something?”
She thought it over. More and more I liked her.
“Yeah, but I don’t know what,” she said. “Here let’s go check it out.”
“My man Inky will make suggestions,” I agreed. Oh Lordy, she was cutting me out of the rude-and-crudes! My heart did a little bouncy-bouncy.
We stood at the bar. She was a little taller than me, though not wearing heels. I almost swooned when I saw that, put my elbows on the bar to keep myself standing. I like tall women, and her waist was about as high as my sternum. Women wore high heels to look like her. Oh Lord.
Inky dropped by and we got something exotic he recommended that he had made up. A something or other. Tasted like bitter fruit punch. Crème de cassis involved.
“What’s your name?” she asked with a sidelong glance.
“Franklin Garr.”
“Franklin? Not Frank?”
“Franklin.”
“As in, you be lyin’, but I be franklin’?”
“Ben Franklin. My mom’s hero. And my job needs a fair bit of lying, to tell the truth.”
“What are you, a reporter?”
“Day trader.”
“Me too!”
We looked at each other and smiled a little conspiratorially. “Where at?”
“Eldorado.”
Oh my, one of the biggies. “What about you?” she asked.
“WaterPrice,” I said, happy that we were substantial too. We chatted about that for a while, comparing notes on building location, work space, colleagues, bosses, quants. Then she frowned.
“Hey, did you look at the CME for yesterday?”
“Sure.”
“Did you see that glitch? How for a while there was a glitch?” She saw my look of surprise and added, “You did!”
“Yes,” I said. “What was it, do you know?”
“No. I was hoping you did.”
I had to shake my head. I thought it over again. It was still mysterious. “Seems like maybe tweakers must have gotten in?”
“But how? I mean, things can happen in China, things can happen here, but the CME?”
“I know.” I had to shrug. “Mysterious.”
She nodded, sipped her punch. “If that had gone on for long, it would have gotten a lot of attention.”