94
LEONARD COHEN
and they huddled forward to enliven thcir talk, baiting it with cocky
indifference so as to invite and trap her in it. She stared at me in
a way that said they had no claim on her, and I knew that
if
one
of them had slept with her he had done it badly and risked punish–
ment.
She was a very pretty
girl
to have stare at you in a big city at
two
in
the morning, very well-dressed, an experienced 18-year-old
who frequented Algerian beds perhaps, very Parisian
in
the way she
used an expression of pain to convey interest, especially around the
mouth. I was so suddenly happy to be stared at, delivered from my
hack reading, so suddenly removed from the plot of the morning,
that I laughed out with the delight of the elected. I committed
some breach of the solemn inspection ritual which demands a mutual
promotion of heroic voluntary solitude, and she laughed beautifully
at our surprise. The obsolete conversation withered to silence and
raised faces as she stood up, not more than five three, a very tiny
waist which the tailoring advertised, and high heels without stockings.
The upturned faces launched her in a special mist of bitchy triumph
as she crossed to my table, their eyes on me before she got there. I
did not know what her eyes were doing but her smile was gone as
she stood rather militarily before me, inviting me not so much to
inspect her as to benefit from a perfect example. I expected perfume
but she smelled of soap, her nails very clean and pink, her hair had
been wet an hour before and would be brighter when really brushed.
She smelled of impatience, like white sheets rippling dry in the wind.
- I'd like some tomato juice.
- Help yourself.
- No, I'd like my own glass.
- All right. Sit down.
- No thank you.
She stood by the table until the glass came and she drank it
standing up, scrutinized by everyone, a tight-rope act of grace be–
cause a snicker might have made a fool of her, or a slut. Even the
jukebox was silent throughout the space of her risk. Then she ab–
dicated the arena, sliding
in
beside me, the happiest spectator of the
emotion she had herself created, which the ordinary diffusion of the
cafe
soon replaced. Her companions asked for their bill.
- That was very well done. You didn't even have to wipe
your
lips.
