“Deal.” I hold out my palm for her to slap. She looks at it and leaves. I bite off half the carrot stick. Someone sits on the couch’s other end. An actor I’ve seen in lead roles on public TV. He’s also worked in theater and movies. I smile and say hello. He nods, sets his glass down on the cocktail table, spills a little of it, “Shit!” He gets up for what I suppose is a napkin. “Here, use this,” taking out my bandanna handkerchief.
“I have one of my own, thanks very much.”
“I didn’t mean I’d think you’d use yours. Excuse me,” removing a scrap of chewed carrot off my lip, “the carrot. Because believe me, I’ll have to wash it some time after I get home, since I already wiped something up with it tonight, and wine leaves a nice smell.”
“Does it? Wouldn’t think so. What it does leave is a gorgeous stain, at least the piss I usually drink. I’ll get a paper towel,” and leaves.
He’s a good actor though I’ve never seen him in a movie or on the stage. He goes to the bar, gets a fresh glass of wine and a napkin for the bottom of the glass. Movies and TV have to be different than theater: many takes and the entire part doesn’t have to be memorized. I don’t see him anymore. Maybe they’re tougher than theater just because of those many takes and that the scenes aren’t filmed and taped in sequence. I don’t know much about those fields really, but can surmise. Accessible to so many women, but all those casting calls and waits. Bell rings. Cat weaves around lots of feet as he heads for the bedroom. I put on my glasses. Can’t see the cat but bedroom door crack widens an inch when nobody’s that close to it, so must be him going in or a draft. More people. Four to five greeted by Diana at the door. Just popping by, I overhear, on their way to wherever it is people go these days in evening dress, one saying “Rain’s frozen me stiff — what I need’s a drink,” and makes for the bar, tapping shoulders, poking triceps, startling some people when they see him in a tux. Maybe now she’s somewhere around. Coat hung up, umbrella snugged beside mine in the holder perhaps. It was, so there had to be some room left in it, and seeing her take out hers when she left is another reason I didn’t leave mine behind, or maybe only she tried squeezing her umbrella into the holder or someone leaving had just taken out his. Actor hasn’t come back. If they’d met, which they might have, and arranged to meet another time, they’d make a very handsome couple, though I doubt she’d enjoy knowing him after a week. That And-who-might-you-be? look and no smile given back, though could be he thought I was gay and he’s demonstrably or questionably not. I hear him from across the room. “‘It’s outrageous,’ he said, ‘and I simply won’t stand for it,”’ and a moment later everyone around him laughs. I don’t know why. Wasn’t an impersonation of a notable politico let’s say. Maybe he made a motion to sit. That’s an old slapstick shtick that could always do it, though I might be underrating his intelligence and overestimating his age, and I didn’t hear his entire remark. My glass is empty. I bring it down from my lips. Frozen man’s reaching below the bar where I suppose he knows or assumes the hard stuff is. I don’t remember emptying my glass. When I watched the crowd around the actor laugh or frozen man poke his way to the bar? I put the actor’s glass on the end table, wipe up the mess he left with my handkerchief and smell it. He’s right. Don’t know why I said it’d make a nice smell. Stupid, but something more. Policemen and performing celebrities as well as psychiatrists at parties and maybe even brain surgeons or all doctors and also scientists doing encephalic research make me uneasy at times and overeager to please. What else can I do for you, like your shoes and socks shined? Wine’s left a white cloud on the wood that won’t wipe off. Not my fault but someone who had only watched me when I wiped it might think it was, but I’m sure Diana or her cleaning women will know how to get it out. Should I tell her? I look at my lap. No matter how large in the crotch I buy my pants or how dark they are, my genitals still show through. Maybe I wear the wrong kind of underpants. This isn’t much fun. Should I get up and if up go to the door or bar? But I don’t want to go so soon. A woman might still come in whom I’ll want to meet and what do I have cooking at home? Bell rings. And drink his. In the Himalayas maybe one can still get a liver-eating amoebic disease. I pour his wine into my glass.
“That was smart, taking two with you when you sat,” woman sitting down on the couch says.
“This? It was someone else’s and I didn’t want to waste it.”
“Someone you know I hope.”
“No, but I trust him. I figured — one of Diana’s friends? How contagious could he be?”
“What if, and this is just a what-if, it happened to be a friend of her friend’s — someone he just picked up at a bar? I don’t mean that, since I’m sure everyone here is more than all right, but only as an example to be more cautious other times?” and drinks from a mug of beer.
“Oh, beer. That’s what I should’ve got. I didn’t see any.”
“In the refridge. Mugs in the cabinet above. Like some of mine?”
“Sure you’d want to drink from it after I took a swig?”
“You’re an actual friend of Diana’s, aren’t you? Or at least not someone she picked up at a seedy bar minutes before she put this whole thing together, and naturally I don’t mean it, and you look clean.”
“Very clean. And hand-invited, that’s me. But shower a day. Obsessively clean. Believe me, I change my teeth at the very minimum once a week.”
“Maybe we ought to drop the subject.”
“Right. Sometimes I never know where my mouth’s going to go.”
“That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. And if you want some beer you’ll get your own then, not that I’m worried I’ll catch anything from you.”
“No, tainted wine suits me fine and the alcohol in it kills the — but I should stop that. Honestly, thanks for the offer.” I turn to the party, figuring she no longer wants to talk and not being that interested in the conversation either.
“Who are you,” she says, “besides Diana’s friend if you are?”
“I am. From summer camp.”
“From hundreds of years ago when you were both counselors or campers there?”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed everyone knew that reference. An artist colony upstate.”
“That place. With the signed Tiffany windows and where she went this summer. You must be a painter. You look like one.”
“Nope, a translator. And before you ask — you were going to?”
“I’ll have to now.”
“For the present a not, in English, very well known contemporary Japanese poet. Name’s Jun Hasenai.”
“Never heard of him. But I’m not familiar with most poetry. My husband’s the one.”
“That so? What’s he do?”
“Forget about him. I always talk about him when I sit on couches at parties. I want to know about your work. Your poet’s very good?”
“Believe me. But most translators, when they choose what they’re going to translate out of love or whatever you want to call it—”
“Certainly not money.”
“Money? Money? What’s that? Some new form of currency? No, that’s not funny. Anyway, they think all the previous translations of it aren’t good enough, though with Hasenai I’ve been lucky since there’s almost been nothing in English and not one book.”
“I’m excited, a terrific new writer I’ve never heard of. Can you quote some of it?”
“In English or Japanese?”
“You speak Japanese too?”
“Now who’s kidding whom?”