Nude Men

your paintings?” I ask.
    “How perceptive,” she says, smiling, probably relieved that I dropped the subject. “Recently,” she goes on, “I realized more clearly than ever that movement is an excellent thing to study for painting. Especially now, for my new, more moderate paintings. Everything is more subtle, so I have to start observing things that don’t seem relevant for painting. Like voice, conversation, and intelligence.”
    I’m a teeny bit jealous that she looks at other people so much. Obsessively Infatuated Martyr.
    “I like optical illusions,” she adds.
    I can’t think of anything else to say, so even though I don’t really care about the answer, I ask, “Where is the dancing magician?”
    “She should be out soon. She’s getting ready. It takes her a long time.”
    I wonder why she is smiling when she says this. The waiter comes to take our order for dessert.
    Henrietta says, “I would like the poires aux amandes sur une mousse de vin blanc .”
    I say, “I would like the homemade honey ice cream, please.” The background music suddenly stops, and a different music begins. It sounds rather Arabian.
    A woman comes out on the stage, carrying a box full of objects. She puts it down in a corner. I guess this is Laura. She has not been announced, but since she starts dancing, it must be her. She is dressed rather normally (for living, that is, not dancing), wearing boots and a loose jacket, no special costume, except for a top hat, which looks out of place with the rest of her outfit. The hat is held on her head by an elastic under her chin, so that it won’t fall off when she dances. She’s not bad-looking, except that her mouth seems a bit deformed. She twirls and skips and raises her arms. I can tell right away that her dancing is very amateurish: the kind bankers might do, on the spur of the moment, in the privacy of their homes. The magic has not come yet. She bounces, taps her feet. She pulls a flower out of her boot and raises it triumphantly, leading me to believe with disbelief that this flower-out-of-boot business is to be considered a magic trick. I’m bewildered. She does a touch of tap dancing, a touch of belly dancing, a bit of moonwalk, a modest leap, and pulls a small toy rabbit from inside her jacket. Oddly Incompetent Magician. I’m astonished. She skips some more, jumps, spins, kicks up one leg, and takes a big white marble out of her mouth, which explains why her mouth looked deformed. She is much prettier now. She raises the shiny wet marble to the audience victoriously. It’s appalling. I try hard not to grimace. She claps her hands, slaps her thighs, swings her arms, pivots on her heels, and from her other boot pulls out a stick, which I think is supposed to be a wand. She waves it wildly, at first like a lasso, then, more appropriately, in the manner of a witch. She turns her back to the audience for a few seconds, doing something we cannot see. She then faces us and (ta-da!), she is wearing glasses. Her grand flourish of a pose leads us to understand that she has just accomplished her fourth magic trick, unless the wand-out-of-boot was supposed to be one, in which case this would be the fifth. It’s exhausting, trying to pinpoint her tricks; I must give her credit for that.
    Not trusting my own judgment, though, I lean toward Henrietta and whisper, “I don’t understand.”
    “There’s nothing to understand,” she whispers back.
    “It’s very unusual. Is she very successful?”
    “No.”
    “Then how does she get hired?”
    “Connections, first of all. The club belongs to a friend of her father’s. Other than that, the way I see it is that the dancing compensates for the mediocrity of the magic.”
    “The dancing? But it’s as... problematic as the magic.”
    “Well, the magic makes up for the lack of skill in the dancing.”
    “The overall effect is not unpleasant, though,” I lie. “Lack of competence in magic and dance mix quite well.”
    For the first time, Henrietta laughs rather hard at my wit and looks at me with interest through her squinting eyes. I want to milk my witty idea, so I add, “That’s what you have to look at: the whole.” This does not make her redouble with laughter, but oh well.
    Back onstage, Laura takes a tennis ball from the box, holds it in her hand, slowly turns her back to the audience, and when she faces us again, her hand is held out in front of her, gloriously empty. I feel like hiding under the table with