The October List

War.
    She could listen to the Professor for hours.
    As Gabriela returned to the lease, the man beside her set his drink down and continued to speak into his mobile phone.
    Gabriela stiffened and blurted, ‘Oh. Hey.’ When he didn’t respond she spoke more forcefully. ‘Excuse me.’
    He finally realized that he was the object of the comment. He turned, frowning.
    She was displaying her sleeve, which was stained brown. ‘Look.’
    His square handsome face, eerily resembling that of a well-known actor, beneath close-cropped, black hair, studied the sleeve and then her face. His eyes followed hers to his glass of scotch. His brows rose. ‘Oh, hell.’ Into the phone, ‘I’ll call you back, Andrew.’ He disconnected. ‘Did I do that? I’m sorry.’
    Gabriela said, ‘When you put your glass down, yeah. Just now. On the phone, you were talking, and you turned. It spilled.’
    ‘Sorry,’ he repeated. It sounded genuine, not defensive.
    His eyes migrated from the stain to her white blouse, all of the blouse, beneath which a trace of bra was visible. It was pale blue. Then his gaze settled back on the stain. ‘Silk?’
    ‘Yes, it is.’
    ‘I know what to do,’ he explained. And took charge, summoning the bartender, a young man who seemed to be covering tats on his neck with makeup; this was a Wall Street, not an East Village, bar.
    ‘Soda water and a towel, no, not the green one. The white one. The white towel. And salt.’
    ‘Salt?’
    ‘Salt.’
    The remedies arrived. He didn’t apply the water and seasoning himself but let her do it. She’d heard the trick too – from her mother, as he had from his grandmother, he told her.
    ‘Careful with the salt,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how well it works on silk. You might hurt the cloth if you rub too hard.’
    The magic trick did a pretty good job. Just the faintest discoloration remained.
    She examined him with eyes beneath furrowed brows, then: ‘Why don’t you drink Martinis like everybody else here?’
    ‘I don’t like Martinis. I’d probably have a strawberry Cosmo, and if that was the case, the stain would never come out. I’ll pay for the cleaning.’
    ‘If I were a man would you make that offer?’
    ‘I don’t make any offers to a man wearing a silk blouse.’
    She kept a straight face for a moment then laughed. ‘No, thanks. It’d have to go to the laundry anyway.’
    ‘Well, I apologize again.’
    She lifted her palms. ‘Accepted.’
    With détente achieved, she returned to the lease and he to his mobile. But when the last page of the document was marked up and when his call disconnected, the silence prodded them to glance toward each other – in the mirror at first – and conversation resumed.
    ‘I’m sending you back home stinking of whisky. What’s your husband going to say?’
    ‘He probably won’t find out. Since he lives thirty miles away from me.’
    ‘Ah, you’re in that club too. I’m Daniel Reardon.’
    ‘Gabriela McKenzie.’
    They shook hands.
    Conversation meandered for a bit, both of them testing the waters, and then found true north, which included the question you can never avoid in New York: What do you do for a living?
    Daniel worked as a venture capitalist, private equity, he told her. ‘The Norwalk Fund.’ He nodded. ‘We’re a few blocks from here. On Broad.’
    Gabriela glanced at the documents. ‘I’m office manager for a financial adviser. Prescott Investments.’
    ‘Don’t think I know them.’ He glanced down at the documents before her, then away quickly, as if looking at confidential client details was tantamount to glancing through an inadvertently left-open bathroom door.
    ‘It’s a small outfit. He was with Merrill years ago but opened his own shop. He’s a lot happier.’
    ‘Your office is near here?’
    ‘No, Midtown, east. Turtle Bay.’ She sighed. ‘My boss – he’s a great guy – but he dumped this in my lap this morning. He wants to lease a warehouse on Bankers’ Square – near Wall Street – and the deal fell through. I got elected to check out some new space… and go over a forty page lease. We need to sign it up in two weeks.’
    ‘Two weeks ?’
    ‘Yep. And you know Banker’s Square? It took hours even to get inside and look the place over. All that construction.’
    ‘Oh, the new stock market annex. Supposed to finished by now.’
    ‘Anyway, I came here to jot some notes and unwind.’
    ‘And get a drink spilled on you.’
    ‘It sounded like you were