What I actually did, in fact, was maneuver myself into Bette Porter’s line of vision, catch her eye, and give her a very aloof, very distracted nod of acknowledgement before turning to the bartender and ordering a beer.

This, my friends, is what is called “playing cool” and this is not something I do often, for obvious reasons deriving from my usual lack of cool.

Bette, who is impossible to manipulate, took her sweet time coming over to me, but she eventually handed a beer off to the random blonde girl and walked over to me, where her opening words were, “I didn’t think I’d see you here.”

To my ears, these words smacked of guilt, which is somewhat the effect I was going for.

I said, “I thought you hated Milk.”

“I do,” she replied, “but I do come here sometimes.”

She did not add that she probably usually came so that she could, you know, find a girl and give her the best ***** she’d ever had and then not call her, so I added it for her. In my head.

Then she smiled radiantly at me, leaned in (as a result of the music suddenly getting louder) and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t call you. I’ve been swamped with work.”

“Oh,” I said, melting a little from the cute smile. “It’s okay.” And it totally was, all of a sudden.

“You know,” she added, tilting her head to the side and being generally cute with the smile and everything, “you could have called me.”

So right. I was terrible. I groveled before her feet in my infinite ignorance. In my head, of course.

“I was, too,” I said. “Swamped with work, I mean.” This was another example of my random lying.

“Oh.”

Then I started to ask how she was doing at the same time that she asked me if I’d spoken to Max lately, which led to an awkward moment where she said “I’m good,” just as I was saying, “No, not for awhile,” and then we both had to say “What?” because neither of us had heard the other. This terribly awkward and ugly piece of conversation cycled two more times before we both figured out what the other was saying, but by then, it was the least interesting conversation anyone had ever had.