And thus alcohol was not involved. Recklessness pulsed through her. She made a tourniquet of her napkin under the table and it dropped to the floor when she stood. Two seats down, his back to her, he had risen as well, his wife across the table still chatting with the kind of ferocity that the woman beside her used her program to fend off, waving it between them.
Even his back drew her. They had been introduced; he helped companies to stay together while his wife ran down creditors and wrote about how. This information did not interest her: his back did, how he held his fork across the table, his nod. She stood behind him, herself someone who handled policies that no one trusted, or few, until they had nearly died. But her policy handling and her power of persuasion with regard to her clients' future had nothing to do with his attraction. She wanted him. Her husband, a pleasant medical examiner, jabbed his finger in the midst of a joke she had overheard twice on the phone and it was still funny. But she wasn't measuring men, she merely wanted this one, now, and badly.
She stepped closer to his back and he stepped away, saying goodbye to the man beside him, a dance of propriety, until he sensed how close she stood, and when he turned she sensed an attraction that was mutual and animal and thrust out her hands. There they were, holding hands chastely as if about to bow to each other. They had, after all, glanced at each other through the water glasses all evening. She smiled and he squeezed her hand. In a kind of do-si-do, he placed his free hand on the curve of her back, and steered her out of the ballroom while his wife was still seated and talking. They floated out of the room with purpose, as if they had left something very important elsewhere.
Double doors opened. Ballrooms when empty suggest beachfronts with their expanse of tan carpet and pillars of stacked chairs. This one needed only umbrellas.
She found a light switch and offed the light.
The start of a migraine, she said to her husband after, without originality, also without bother and fuss when she located him amongst the stragglers pulling on their coats. Even the bathroom was too loud. I wet the towels. She pointed to her forehead.
The man she'd just coupled with was pulling his wife away from her thank yous. She must've been used to his disappearances, or their reunion perfectly contrived. The two couples ended up sharing a cab, and through the duration of the trip what she wanted was a double life. In her memory the next day, what they'd done didn't hurt and he hadn't taken out his wallet to show her his two children.
