I was wearing a black wraparound jersey dress and black knee boots, which seemed not unreasonable attire for a party.

Then he demanded, “What’s with the Addams-family thing you’ve got going on?”

The strange thing was I had never before in my life been accused of looking like Morticia. Why, why, why? And I wished he’d let go of my dress. It was stretchy but not in the first flush of youth and I feared it could lose its bounce and never return to its correct configuration. “So, Goth girl, what do you do when you’re not being a Goth girl?”

I was wondering whether to tell him I was an elephant voice coach or the inventor of the inverted comma, when a voice cut in on us and said, “Don’t you know Anna Walsh?”

Butch said, “Say what?”

Say what, is right. I turned around. It was Him. The guy, the one who’d spilled coffee on me, the one I’d asked out for a drink and who’d blown me off. He was wearing a beenie and a wide-shouldered workingman’s jacket and he’d brought the cold night in with him, refreshing the air.

“Yeah, Anna Walsh. She’s a…” He looked at me and shrugged inquiringly. “A magician?”

“Magician’s girl,” I corrected. “I passed all my magician exams but the assistant’s clothes are a lot cooler.”

“Neat,” Butch said, but I wasn’t looking at him, I was looking at Aidan Maddox, who had remembered my name, even though it was seven weeks since we’d met. He wasn’t exactly how I remembered him. His tight hat made the bones of his face more pronounced, especially his cheekbones and the lean cut of his jawbone, and there was a twinkle in his eyes that hadn’t been there the last time.

“She disappears,” Aidan said. “But then—as if by magic—she reappears.”

He’d taken my number but he hadn’t called and now he was hitting me with some of the corniest lines I’d heard in a long while. I looked at him in cold inquiry: What was his game?

His face gave nothing away but I didn’t stop looking at him. Nor he at me. What seemed like ages later someone asked, “Where do you go?”

“Hmm?” The someone was Butch. I was surprised to find him still there. “Go? When?”

“When you get magically disappeared? Hey, presto!” He winked brightly.

“Oh! I’m just out back, having a cigarette.” I turned back to Aidan, and when his eyes met mine again, the shock of our connection made my skin flame.

“Neat,” Butch said. “And when you get sawn in half, how does that work?”

“False legs,” Aidan said, barely moving his lips. His eyes didn’t leave my face.

I could actually feel poor Butch’s smile trickle away. “You guys know each other?”

Aidan and I looked at Butch, then back at each other. Did we? “Yes.”

Even if I hadn’t known that something was happening with me and Aidan, the way Butch treated us was a sign: he backed off—and you could tell that ordinarily he was supercompetitive. “You kids have fun,” he said, a little subdued.

Then Aidan and I were left on our own.

“Enjoying the party?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I hate it.”

“Yeah.” He scanned the room, at a different eye level from me. “What’s not to hate?”

Just then, a short, dark man, the sort of man who’d been my type until I’d met Aidan, butted his way between us and asked, “Whereja get to, buddy? You just took off.”

A look passed over Aidan’s face: Were we ever going to be left alone? Then he smiled and said, “Anna, meet my best buddy, Leon. Leon works with Kent, the birthday boy. And this is Leon’s wife, Dana.”

Dana was about a foot taller than Leon. She had long legs, a big chest, a fall of thick multitoned hair, and radiant, evenly tanned skin.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” I replied.

Anxiously, Leon asked me, “It’s a sucky party, right?”

“Um…”

“You’re with the good guys,” Aidan said. “Tell it like it is.”

“Okay. It’s supersucky.”

“Jeez.” Dana sighed and fanned her hand in front of her chest. “Let’s mingle,” she said to Leon. “Sooner we start, sooner we can leave. Excuse us.”

“Bail just as soon as you can’t stand it,” Leon told Aidan, then we were alone again.

Was it the two giggling men running off to the bathroom like a pair of schoolgirls with their little plastic baggie or the poor six-months-away-from-rehab girls scooping out the creamed chicken from the choux pastry horns and smearing their fronts with it that made Aidan ask, “Anna, can we get out of here?”

Can we get out of here? I looked at him, annoyed at his presumption. All that spur-of-the-moment, let’s-do-the-relationship-right-here stuff is fine when you’re nineteen, but I was thirty-one years old. I didn’t just “get out of here” with strange men.

I said, “Let me just tell Jacqui I’m leaving.”

I found her in the kitchen, showing a cluster of rapt people how to make a proper Manhattan, and told her I was off. But before I could leave, I had to retrieve my coat from beneath a grunting couple having sex in Kent’s bedroom. All I could see of the woman was her legs and shoes, one of them with gum stuck to the sole.

“Which coat is it?” Aidan asked. “This one? ’Scuse us, buddy. Just need to get this—”

He tugged and the coat moved an inch, then another, then with a final yank, it slithered free and we were out the door. On a high from our escape, we couldn’t wait for the elevator, so, fueled with more energy than we’d normally have, we belted down several flights of stairs and ran right out into the street.

It was early October, the days were still bright but the nights were chilly. Aidan helped me on with my coat, a midnight-blue velvet duster, painted with a silvery cityscape.

“I like your look.” Aidan stood back to check me out properly. “Yeah.”

I liked his, too. With the hat and the jacket and the big boots, it was very Workingman Chic. Not that I was going to tell him. And good thing Jacqui wasn’t there to hear Aidan because remarking on my clothes was classic Feathery Stroker acting-out. (Details on Feathery Strokers to follow.)

“Just a point I’d like to clear up,” I said, a little snippily. “I didn’t ‘disappear.’ I went away. Because you didn’t want to go for a drink with me, remember?”