Nude Men

street without a job. You understand.”
    “Of course; how thoughtless of me.” And the person walks away, saying, “Ah! The deceptive simplicity of it! I love the way she magics.”
    How real is her magic, I wonder. How big are her powers? Can she make people love her? Are they under her spell?
     
    T ables are reserved weeks in advance. People order a meal, but many of them barely touch their food, they are so moved and affected by the show.
     
    P eople send their kids to her for lessons. She has so many students that she has to divide her class into three levels of difficulty. The lowest is for traditional magic, where ordinary tricks are taught, such as pulling rabbits out of seemingly empty hats. These basic tricks provide a good foundation and background. In the second and slightly more difficult class, students learn how to take flowers and wands out of their boots, and marbles out of their mouths. The last and most difficult class focuses on tricks like taking off jackets whose insides are of a different color than their outsides.
    It feeds into the system, the fact that the beginning classes are more difficult than the advanced classes, the fact that students progress from learning sleight of hand to smelling candies to winding watches to wiping their foreheads with Kleenexes. They love it that way, the parents and the public, but the children have trouble understanding this system and are told they are too young to understand; it’s experimental, abstract, avant-garde, intellectual, an acquired taste.
     
    A fter I broke up with Charlotte, I got a few short letters from her, which I didn’t mention because she is too unimportant in my life right now. They all said pretty much the same thing: “I do not need you. Thanks for breaking it off.” Or: “I do not need you. I’m dating other people.” And then I didn’t hear from her anymore. And still haven’t. And I don’t care. She was almost a stranger, even though I had been with her for a year.
     
    D on’t think my mother’s agents have stopped coming up to me. Certainly not. But I’ve learned how to deal with them. Actually, I’m quite proud of myself, because I don’t merely deal with them, I fluster them. It’s quite fun: the same sort of fun children have when they set insects on fire.
    One of these annoying little bugs reveals himself to me one evening at Défense d’y Voir, during Laura’s show. He’s an elegant man, with white hair, sitting at a nearby table. He leans back in his chair and asks me if I have a match. Even though neither Laura nor I smoke, I do happen to have a lighter on me, for reasons too complicated to get into right now. Actually, if you must know, I saw a scary movie recently in which a man got buried alive in a coffin, and I decided a lighter could come in handy in a life-or-death situation. The buried man had a lighter and was therefore able to see where he was and to understand what he was going to die of. And then he died.
    The elegant man lights his cigarette with my lighter and says, forgot mine at home, because I left the house in a rush, very upset. My eleven-year-old granddaughter drives me mad. She—”
    “Really, she’s eleven?” I interrupt him.
    “Yes. She—”
    “That’s such a wonderful age. They still love their parents at that age. And they make lots of friends,” I ramble. “They start throwing parties, becoming conscious of fashion—”
    “Yes, actually that’s part of the problem,” he interrupts. “They start becoming attracted to the opposite sex, and unfortunately, the opposite sex becomes attracted to them. Even older members of the opposite sex, if you catch my meaning.”
    “Oh, exactly. And then they start fighting with their parents, and the parents become unreasonable, and the problems don’t quit, you know, even as the years pass. And then sometimes the parents send agents to pester their children.”
    The insect is on fire. The elegant man is flustered. He takes a long drag on his cigarette, nodding and frowning, probably racking his brain for something to say or do.
    “Yes, exactly,” he says, and turns his back to me.
    I put my hand on his shoulder and add, “But what the parents don’t realize is that the children love it when the agents come to them. It’s so much fun. Someone should let the parents know that.”
    The agent clears his throat and says, “I’ll keep that in mind.” He gets up and leaves the restaurant.
     
    A nother time, I’m in a