“No, no, those days are behind me,” said Frank. He winked at Jacky.
“Any comment on the rumor that you’re hoping to open a European office?”
“T’etait jolie comme enfant?” said Frank.
“I’m sorry?”
“That means ‘Were you pretty as a child?’ in French.”
“So, I’ll take that to mean Paris is on the horizon for you?”
“It means whatever you want it to mean,” said Frank. “Now, why don’t you come down here and get yourself a drink on me. Jacky, take this off me, please.”
The reporter was still speaking as he handed the phone back to her. The music surged back on. He made his way to the rear of the room, accepting congratulations and handshakes from the throng around him. He was looking for Eleanor. He couldn’t help it; he was always looking for Eleanor. He found her perched on a stool at the far corner of the bar, where the crowd was thinner and less raucous. He leaned on the wooden countertop next to her.
“Look who it is,” she said. “The prodigal son.”
“You’re not wearing your glasses,” he said.
“I got contacts,” said Eleanor. “I was sick of seeing dead animals.”
“What?” said Frank.
“Nothing,” said Eleanor.
“Well,” said Frank. “You look good.”
“I think the real bar of adulthood is the willingness to touch your own eyeballs on a daily basis.”
“That,” said Frank. “And owning things like a wine aerator.”
“You have a wine aerator?”
“I have two,” said Frank. “We got given another one as a wedding present.”
“Such maturity,” said Eleanor.
She sipped her drink and smiled to herself in that funny, secret way she had. She always seemed to be keeping up an amusing dialogue with herself in her head, one that he was constantly hoping to become a part of.
“Anyway, as a man—，” Frank said.
“Oh, you’re a man?” She gasped. “I wish you’d told me earlier.”
“Piss off,” said Frank.
“A British man no less.”
“That’s Cleo’s influence,” said Frank. “Anyway, I was saying that yes, as a man, I always thought that contact lenses were kind of effeminate. I don’t know why. But I keep losing my glasses at the moment, and if you’re really near-sighted, like me, when you lose your glasses you also lose your source of finding them. Sight, that is … So, it’s a conundrum.”
What was he even talking about? He was blabbering. He had just wanted to talk to her.
“Truly,” said Eleanor with her ironic half smile.
“What I mean is,” he said, “it might be time for me to switch, too. Life is a constant renegotiation with one’s own vanity, after all.”
“Now that I agree with,” said Eleanor.
“We agree on a lot,” said Frank, realizing, as he said it, that it was true. “What are you drinking?”
“Soda with lime.” She shook her glass. “Zesty.”
“You’re zesty.”
Eleanor laughed and looked away. Frank cleared his throat.
“That sounds great,” he said. “I’ll have the same.”
She raised an eyebrow as he ordered. “You’re not drinking?”
The bartender shot soda from the tap and plonked the glass in front of him with a dehydrated-looking lime on the rim. Frank took a long, unsatisfying sip.
“Doing my bit to keep the bill low. This lot are going to bankrupt me.” He nodded toward the crowd at the other end of the bar, where one of the account execs was already, inexplicably, shirtless with his tie secured around his head.
“Is that right?” said Eleanor.
“And.” Frank gave her a sidelong glance. “I’m thinking of stopping.”
“That’s a lot of thinking,” said Eleanor.
“You’re telling me.” He tapped his forehead. “Most dangerous neighborhood I know.”
Eleanor laughed again. Her laugh was the sound of a slot-machine jackpot, a soda can cracking open, fairground music in the distance, a Corvette engine coming to life, a thousand hands applauding all at once. It was one of those truly beautiful sounds.
“You should try it,” she said. “Do the things you’ve never done to get the thing you’ve never had. Or whatever.”
“Whoa,” said Frank. “Where’d you hear that? Oprah?”