Could this be DeeDee Lukatis? I wondered. The way things were going, my ego needed a boost.
It took her a long time to get to our table.
She slid into the chair opposite me and became part of it, stroking the stem of her margarita glass with
a forefinger as though she could feel every molecule of it.
“Hi,” I said, dragging out my smoothest line.
That?s when I found out she wasn?t interested in me.
She had eyes for the Stick, who was leaning back in his chair with his hands in his pockets, a cigarette
dangling from a lopsided smile.
“Well, what d?ya know,” he said. „The place has a touch of class after all.”
Her voice, which started somewhere near her navel, was part velvet and part vodka. “Wow, it can
talk, too,” she purred.
Class dismissed. Suddenly I was an eavesdropper.
The Stick had an audacious approach.
“The joint?s full of younger, better—looking, richer guys. Why me?” he asked, certainly one of the
great horse?s mouth lines of all time.
Her smile never strayed.
“I love your tie,” she said. “I like old, rotten ties with the lining falling out. The suit, too. I didn?t think
they made seersucker suits like that anymore.”
“They don?t. It?s older than the tie,” the Stick said.
“Are you going to be difficult?” she asked. “God, I love a challenge.”
I leaned over to the Stick and said, “This is some kind of routine, isn?t it? I mean, you two have been
practicing, right?” My wounded ego was looking for an out.
“Never saw her before,” he mumbled, without taking his eyes off her. “Who are you?” he asked her.
“Lark,” she said.
“That your name or your attitude?”
That earned him a big laugh. Her gray-green eyes seemed to blink in slow motion. Her look would
have melted the icecap.
“Wonderful,” she said. “Let?s go.”
Just like that. Disgusting.
He jabbed a thumb at me.
“He?s got the car.”
She looked at me. Flap, flap with the slow-motion eyelids, then back at him.
“How about a cab?” she suggested.
