"He was still there."

"I checked to make sure, peeked in. Then schmoozed the valet parking guy to let me sit there and wait, double-parked. Randy comes out, finally, with the two ladies and stands there talking to them while they wait for their car. Randy, I was sure, parked on the street, he never spends his own money if he can help it. He gets the ladies into their car, still bullshitting them. They drive off and he walks along the streetside of the cars parked along the curb. I creep up next to him, my windows down, and go, 'Hey, asshole,' to get his attention. I told him I'd hound him, I'd keep showing up and make his phony life miserable until he paid back every cent he stole from me. But without any idea how I'd do it. He came around to my side of the car, the Ford Escort, and tells me with his face in the open window, 'Don't fuck with me, kid. You're not in my league.'"

"That did it," Terry said, "calling you kid, huh?"

"That and his tone of voice, Mr. Fucking Superior. I see him walking away, across the street to where he's angle-parked against the median, Royal Poinciana Way, lined with palm trees. I had to go after him. I floored it. I saw his face as he looked back and saw me coming and I plowed into him, bounced him off a couple of cars and drove off."

"You left the scene?"

"That was my mistake, a premeditated hit-and-run, witnessed by everybody standing in front of the restaurant."

Terry was sympathetic. "That's a shame, have all those people watching. You hurt him much?"

"He had to have a hip replaced."

"I hear that's a common procedure now."

"He fractured his other leg, punctured a lung. There were lacerations, I think thirty-five stitches in his scalp. The state's attorney wanted to bring me up on attempted murder. I had a court-appointed lawyer who did what he could. He tried for man two, where I'd get maybe a year; we settled for aggravated assault, three to five."

"You poor thing," Terry said, slipping his arm around her shoulders.

"Being locked up with all those offenders. It must've been awful."

She looked up at him with sad eyes, holding the yobie away from them, and he kissed her for the first time, a tender kiss, Terry seeing what it was like, then putting a little more into it to see where it would take him, then glad to feel Debbie getting into it with him. When they came apart he took the yobie from her and put it in the ashtray on the coffee table. But then when he turned to her again there was a different look in her eyes. Not quite sure about this.

He said, "I'm not HIV, honest."

"You swear?"

He raised his right hand. "Scout's honor."

"You don't have any, like, weird African diseases you might've caught?"

"Not even malaria."

She kept staring at him and pretty soon the look in her eyes softened.

She smiled and he believed he was home.

He was.

They went in the bedroom and kept on kissing and now touching each other as they took off their clothes, Terry holding her from behind as she pulled down the bedspread. They left the lamp off but could see each other in the light from the hall, where the bathroom was. She said, "It's been so long for me." And said, "I know, it's like riding a bike."

Only a lot better. But Terry didn't tell her that. He wasn't a talker in bed.

After, when they were lying there in each other's arms, Terry said,

"We were trying to remember what those crucified guys were singing?"

"The Life of Brian, "Debbie said, "yeah, what was it?"

" 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.'"

She said, "Right, and then all the crucified guys would whistle the refrain. Yeah, I can hear it." She was quiet, maybe thinking up something funny to say. Terry waited, then turned his head to see her looking down at herself, chin pressed against her chest. She said, "It's hard to tell when you're lying down, but you can see they're just starting to sag a little."

"They look okay to me."

"When you see them sitting straight up and the person's lying down? You know they're fake."

"Is that right?"

"You put on an act sometimes, don't you?"

"Like what?"

"Like you're this simple soul."

"I am."

She said, "Uh-huh. Are you hungry?"

"I thought we might twist one and go for seconds."

She said, "Oh my. Really?"

So they didn't get to Randy and how well he was fixed until the next intermission and were resting again, Debbie telling about her visit with Randy's ex, Mary Lou Martz. "See, she didn't change her name when she married Randy. She's always been Mrs. William Martz in Detroit society, a patron of anything that has to do with the arts-the symphony, the opera company, the art institute. She's active, and very popular, known to her friends as Lulu."

"You call her that?"

"I didn't call her anything. On the phone I told her about my experience with Randy and she invited me to her home in Grosse Pointe Park, a beauty, like a French chateau on Lake St. Clair. I was surprised she was so willing to talk about him. She was Miss Michigan first runner-up about thirty years ago, looks good, keeps in shape, has had a couple of lifts-"

"She told you that?"

"You could tell. I asked if Randy wanted her to sail around the world with him. She said it was almost the first thing out of his mouth. At some black-tie affair."

"The guy works hard, doesn't he?"

"Yeah, but you know what she said to him? 'Your yacht or mine?'

Cool? She had her guard up and still fell for him. He told her he was writing a book on the conflict in the Middle East, having covered it during the past ten years for the Herald Tribune, living in Paris most of the time. Though he kept his boat in Haifa, Israel. Four months from the time they met, Randy supposedly hopping back and forth to the Middle East, they were married."

"How'd she get on to him?"

"Little things. He lived in Paris for years but didn't speak any French. He told her it wasn't necessary, everyone there spoke English.

Lulu had been to Paris enough times to know that was bullshit.

She wanted to hop over to Israel with him, take his boat out and cruise the Greek islands. Randy goes yeah, let's do it. Then he's gone for a week. The next time she sees him he tells her the PLO blew up his boat. They hate him and he's on their hit list. Tell a big enough lie you can get away with it for a while. But now he's running up charges, buys a new Jaguar… Lulu wants to know what happened to his money. He had told her he was given a two-hundred-thousanddollar advance by a publisher, but it ran out as he worked on his book.

Lulu said, 'What book? I don't see you writing any fucking book.'"

"That's what she said?"

"Words to that effect. He told her he'd had writer's block for the past year but believed he was about to break through and get going again. Lulu put a detective on him and that was that. But, it didn't happen soon enough. Because the marriage lasted more than a year, the prenuptial agreement kicked in and Randy walked away with his settlement, a few rail and the restaurant."

"Have you seen it?"

"Not inside. I don't want him to know I'm around just yet. Lulu won't go near it. She said if she knew how to make a bomb she'd blow the place up. With Randy in it."

"She wanted to get laid," Terry said, "and it cost her."

"She wanted to meet a nice guy, that's all, and have some fun."

"What was her husband's company?"

"Timco Industries. Automotive suppliers, they make fittings."

"Yeah?"

"You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Nuts and bolts."

"Connectors," Debbie said. "What they use when they're putting together subassemblies on a conveyor line. Like, you know, engines, transmissions, fuel tanks, they have to be connected on a line that's turning out a car every minute. You can't use a wrench, it would slow up the line. So Lulu's husband, Bill, invented a way to snap the parts together with a plastic fitting.., and an O-ring for a seal. I remember it in case I want to use it sometime."