"I'm obsessed, thank you very much."

And who wouldn't be?

It's raining in torrents as Dale arrives at the party. She is escorted out of the car and up the steps to the house. Her mac, tie-belted and buttoned close, reaching almost to her ankles, glistens somberly as the street light catches it; in its element, protecting, absorbing the storm.

In the brilliant party room someone helps her out of it. Off her bare shoulders it slips, and the inside, smooth, cool, creamy white opens to the room, a sail swelling for a brief moment in the breeze.

Later, the pathetic Kirby in tow, she unlocks the door of her flat.

"You don't even know me."

She has put her mac back on for the journey home. It is unbuttoned now, floating about the tight little cocktail dress which clasps her torso.

Working miracles with a script that was probably the work of Kirby himself, she lets him down with infinite patience.

"I'm very average. I'm full of flaws."

She moves over in the shadow to a lamp.

There is light now and the pristine white of the mackintosh claims the screen as she crosses the room to the lamp on the other side. It is almost as if she is striding along the cat-walk, showing off its classic perfection of style. Dale is tall, but the trenchmac reaches almost to her ankles. The sleeves are generous, with the cuffs folded back. The belt is undone, but it hangs with infinite correctness, sharply defined round her back where it runs neatly through its loops, the ends then falling vertically with military precision. The yoke at the rear adds a sculptural edge to her profile, which strikes sparks as the crisp fold of an epaulette is glimpsed on the shoulder, revealed for a teasing moment by the sway of her hair.

"I'm a slob," she says, looking infintely more than a million dollars. "I can't even make a bed straight."

She bends to the second lamp, the mackintosh following her movement but in its own way, broad expanses of the magic fabric sweeping down from pin-sharp angles, which shift and stay and shift again, a staccato counterpoint to the smooth balleticism of her limbs.

The second lamp is on. She straightens and moves back across the room.

"I steal people's magazines from my dentist's office.", she says, her litany of self-deprecation reaching its coda.

Her hands stray upwards to her lapels, where they suddenly threaten the end. They take the lapels, pull them apart - oh so gently - but her shoulders shrug and the mac slips off, slithering into the hands which have moved deftly behind her back. Continuing the same single graceful manipulation, they gather the garment and deliver it, folded neatly, to the back of the kitchen chair.

Dale reaches for a third light switch, and turns, mortal again in her little black dress. She looks at Kirby.

"And look," she says, "I rarely take out the garbage."

LE