VLVL Takeshi

[jbor]

> If anything, the "genially" might offset the "malicious intent,"

Obviously. A "leer" is "a glance (esp. sideways) with sly, lascivious or
malign expression." (Oxford)

Takeshi meets Prairie, shakes her hand, and "leered genially". I take it
that's pretty much his standard look when greeting a female. There's not
much in it at all, and Prairie takes no offence. But my point is that DL's
comment about keeping "an eye on his feet" isn't to do with sex dancing, and
it has nothing to do with the narrator's joke about him being "high" in
describing how he "glided" across the airport lobby (160.13-14). I think
those two assertions are "misreadings".

On first meeting him Prairie looks him up and down and immediately takes him
for a jerk, dismisses him outright. DL notices this and feels a "little
apologetic" because he does indeed look like a jerk, and not at all like the
saviour she intimated to Prairie he might be. So she kids around with them
both. She tells Prairie to "keep an eye on his feet", as if he's some hero
in a Run Run Shaw movie (is my guess), and thus to build up his mystique,
and she musses Takeshi's hair and makes the obligatory TV movie connection
for Prairie's benefit ("Moe!"), and succeeds in rescuing the situation with
humour.

best