2. "Here's looking at you, kid."

*****

        they were, this first time, in Rick’s apartment in Paris,

        he had opened a bottle of champagne, served

        two glasses,

        asked her who are you

really,

        and what were you before, she

said, we said

        no questions,

        here’s looking at you, kid,

        he said

then,

        and they drank

*****       

        now they are in that “small café in the Montmartre”,

La Belle Aurore, Sam

is playing As Time Goes By,

Rick gets three glasses, a bottle of champagne,

walks over to the piano beach,

where Ilsa has been

stranded,

pours,

exchanges with Sam a few bitter wisecracks about the oncoming nazi occupation,

looks at Ilsa,

says,

Here’s looking at you, kid,

        a loudspeaker, in the street,

        growls in German, Ilsa,

“very distraught”,

nags him,

kissmekissmeasifitwerethelasttime

*****

        it’s her second time up the stairs,

        in Rick’s room above his saloon,

        they have made up (they have made

out),

        “there is a bottle of champagne on the table

and two half-filled glasses”,

Rick has been watching “the revolving beacon light at the airport from his window”, Ilsa

tells her dubious story,

says oh I don’t know what’s right any longer says

you’ll have to think for both of us for all of us,

Rick says, all right I will, Here’s

looking

at you,

kid

*****       

        they are at the airport, the script gets Laszlo

        off

        a moment,

        so they can have this little scene

        apart,

        this

        sad

        aside,

        but what about us,

        we’ll always have Paris, blah

        blah

        blah,

        Here’s

looking

at you,

kid

 

*****       

        here’s looking at you, it is

some old pub talk, also poker

        slang

        (la Bergman was learning the game on the set,

        played with her hairdresser and her English coach, hairpins

        as chips,

        Bogart found it funny, taught her some hampa voc,

        used the line

first

that afternoon of July 3,

they were back at La Belle Aurore

“for some retakes”,

the Epsteins liked it)

*****       

        here’s looking at you, kid,

tough guys, of course, can’t say a plain

iloveyou,

their male-

ness

might recoil,

but this silly toast

        would do

        instead,

        and does

indeed

*****

        the endearing salutation serves, see?, as a token, here, of their foreplay,

        here, of the tired,

sweet

aftermath

*****       

        here’s looking at you,

        kid,

        says Rick,

        and puts on, with that, his sugardaddy

        act,

        dons

the mask

(the hat)

of papa

*****

        the fact that the last time Rick says here’slookingatyoukid,

at the Casablanca airport,

there’s no champagne,

no glasses,

makes

it

a dry

toast,

signalling bad luck

and failure

*****       

        here’s looking at you, kid, it is Rick’s clumsy,

        anxious

        way

        of trying to appropriate Ilsa (his rights over her were,

alas,

questionable)

*****       

        here’s looking

        at you,

        kid,

        Rick is trying to record Ilsa in his memory,

        so that he will still be able to blubber,

        on the smelly beach of his drunken stupors, I

        remember

        everything,

        iremembereverything