Commonwealth(32)

“I was born in Los Angeles,” Franny said, once the couple were mercifully gone. She’d been waiting such a long time to say it she wasn’t sure the point still had any conversational relevance.

“But you had the sense to get out.”

“I like Los Angeles.” In Los Angeles she was always a child. She swam the length of Marjorie’s mother’s pool, skimming its blue bottom in her two-piece bathing suit. The shadow of Caroline, half-asleep on her inflatable raft, was a rectangular cloud above her. Their father was just at the water’s edge in a lounge chair reading The Godfather.

“You say that because we’re in Chicago and it’s February.”

“If L.A.’s so awful why do you live there?”

“I have a wife in Los Angeles,” he said. “That’s something I’m working on.”

“That’s why people come to Chicago,” Franny said, “To get away from wives.” She was thinking of divorce law, thinking now there was a practice she’d never touch, before she remembered that she’d never touch any of them.

“You sound like a bartender.”

She shook her head. “I’m a cocktail waitress. I can’t mix a drink.”

“You’re the bartender to those of us who don’t need their drinks mixed, and I’d like another scotch. You did a very good job getting that first one in the glass.” He studied her then as if she had only now stepped in front of him. “You’re taller again.”

“You told me it might improve my tip.”

He shook his head. “No, you told me it might improve your tip, and it won’t. I don’t actually care how tall you are. Take off your shoes and I’ll buy you a drink.”

When had Leon Posen finished his scotch? It was a remarkable trick. She hadn’t seen a thing and she’d been watching. Maybe it had happened while the whiskey sour was being made. She had been distracted for a minute. Franny took the bottle from the counter behind her. “You can’t buy me a drink. It’s against the rules.”

Leon leaned forward. “Verboten?” he asked quietly.

Franny nodded. The ice in the glass looked bright and undiminished so she didn’t see the point in changing it. She didn’t measure out the scotch either, she just poured it in on top of what had been there before. The silver spout made her overconfident and she poured the scotch from too great a height and spilled some on the bar beside the glass. She wiped up her mistake and set the glass on a fresh paper napkin. In truth, she wasn’t a good bartender, even for drinks containing a single ingredient. “So why are you in Chicago?”

“Maybe you’re an analyst.” He took his cigarettes out of his jacket and shook one free from the pack.

“When I tell people I waited on Leon Posen they’ll ask me what he was doing in Chicago.”

“Leon Posen?” he asked.

This was a possibility she hadn’t considered, but it wasn’t as if she’d ever met him. She was working off jacket photographs, old ones at that. “You’re not Leon Posen?”

“I am,” he said. “But you’re younger than my regular demographic. I didn’t think you’d know.”

“Did you think I was just an extraordinarily helpful cocktail waitress?”

He shrugged. “You could have been trying to pick me up.”

Franny felt herself blush, something that didn’t usually happen in the bar. He waved his hand as if to dismiss the observation. “Strike that. A ridiculous thought. You’re a smart girl, you read books, and now you’ve poured a scotch for Leon Posen, but you should call me Leo.”

Leo. Could she call Leon Posen Leo? “Leo,” she said, trying it out.

“Franny,” he said.

“It isn’t just that you’re Leon Posen,” she said. “Leo Posen. I’m interested in people in general.”

“You’re interested in why I’m in Chicago?”

Somehow this wasn’t going the way she had intended it. “All right, I’m not interested. I’m conversational.”

He lifted his glass and took the smallest sip, dipping in his upper lip as if he were only tasting it to be polite. “Are you a journalist?”

She put her hand on her heart. “Cocktail waitress.” Actually, Franny had been saying this to herself every day in front of the bathroom mirror, after she brushed her teeth, before she left for work, I am a cocktail waitress. Practice had made perfect. She took the heavy Zippo lighter out of her apron pocket and flipped open the lid with her thumb. He leaned forward and then back, shaking his head.

“No, you don’t look at the cigarette, you look at me. When you light a cigarette you have to look the person in the eyes.”

So Franny did this, even though it was nearly impossible. Leo Posen leaned towards the little flame in her hand and kept his eyes steady on her eyes. She felt a rocking in her chest.

“There,” he said and blew the smoke aside. “That’s how you get a better tip. It isn’t the shoes.”

“I’ll remember that,” she said, and shut down the flame.

“So I’ve come to Chicago to have a drink,” he said. “I’m living in Iowa City for now. Have you ever been to Iowa City?”

“I thought you lived in Los Angeles.”