67/

The bar’s dimly lit and packed, so Iris steps back past the guy checking IDs and into the cold to wait for Ian, who clambers up the block with his duck-footed gait a few minutes later. They hug. Iris says, “You ever think you missed your calling as a ballerina?” and Ian says, “What?” and Iris says, “Nothing, never mind.”

Inside, Iris has just begun to lament the lack of open seats when she spots two people shrugging on their coats at the stools in front of the window. The changeover requires a fashionable aloofness: Iris and Ian stand with their backs semi-turned on the departing pair, eager to sidle up to the seats after a short but respectable pause.

Iris tugs the cuff of her socks up and the hem of her dress down, crosses and uncrosses her legs, sits up straight. Shoulders back, but not so back that it seems she’s pushing her chest out. In the middle of brushing her hair behind her ear she stops, unsure if this motion is flirtatious, trying to recall how often she does it on her own.

Ian just got back from a trip where he spent the night with an ex-girlfriend. They didn’t do anything, he insists, hands held up and fingers spread. Well, they cuddled. And kissed. And had one of those deep, intimate, post-coital talks where she traced idle figure-eights just below his collarbone. Ian insists that this is not a big deal. Iris nods and doesn’t hang on to the nervous shake in his voice or his lack of indifference.

Ian asks about that guy and Iris groans and stretches her arms out over the bar to press her forehead into the wood. “I hate courting,” she says, loudly, to make up for the muffling of her position and the crowd. “I’m no good at it. I don’t know how long to wait. I don’t know how to keep his interest. I don’t even know if he likes me, which I guess is a good sign he doesn’t.”

“Yeah,” Ian says, flatly.

Iris sits up again. “Is it too much to ask that a guy just makes his intentions clear? Buy me flowers, text me more than one word, bite my nose so hard it scars?”

Ian, who’s been dutifully nodding along, balks. “Sea otters,” Iris says with a wave of her hand and a mischievous smile.

“Explain,” says Ian.

“No.” Iris’ smile widens.

Ian sighs. “So what was the issue with the last guy?”

Iris watches a pair of people walk up the sidewalk past the window, sharing a cigarette. It’s burned down, and the woman hands it sideways to her partner. Letting it hang from between his index and middle fingers, the man tugs a new one from the white, plastic-wrapped box and lights it with the other’s ember. The whole thing happens without either breaking stride. He hands the freshly lit smoke back, and the woman takes a long drag as they pass out of sight. Iris can’t decide if she thinks this is romantic.

“Having an equal partnership isn’t possible in a heterosexual relationship because it will always require work and teaching by the woman.” Iris has practiced this line in the mirror, delivers it as a recitation. Her voice takes on a sardonic harshness. “Did you know married men live longer, and single women live longer? I don’t know — the last guy was fine. It’s not like he built me a beautiful green nest out of leaves and grasses and reeds. Maybe that’s where he lost me.”

Iris wants to tell Ian about red milkweed beetles, who usually pair by accident. She wants to make a joke about how the male hits the female with his antennae to gauge interest, but she’s already made the nose-biting joke and doesn’t want to lean too far and turn the conversation into an analysis of the entanglement of mating and violence.

“You’ll meet someone,” Ian says, patting Iris on the back with a kind of patronizing awkwardness. “It’ll happen when you least expect it.” She half expects him to call her champ or kid, but bites back a barb about the condescension and decides she’s rising above, complete with smug, internal praise.

Ian shifts on his stool, uncomfortable, picking at his fingers, and he isn’t the right person for this conversation anyway. He can’t understand, not really. Iris barely understands her own repulsion toward the push-pull of relationships with men. She chooses to give up, burying the desire to be seen or understood beneath her sex-given responsibility to keep the peace.

“If red milkweed beetles can meet and mate by chance, I guess I can too,” Iris says, resigned. “I mean, who could resist this sparkling personality?”