“How long?”
“Ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Be seeing you.”
I went back and closed the door, settled down and lit a cigarette. Fifteen minutes later she joined me, and thirty minutes after that we were seated in one of the less exclusive nightclubs with cocktails in front of us, and a special de luxe dinner ordered.
Getting a girl drunk is always a risky business. You don’t know what she’s going to do or what she’s going to say when the cautiousness wears off and she gets right down to the real low-down. What’s more, you never know whether you’re not going to wake up with a terrific headache and find your victim has drunk you under the table.
I suggested a second cocktail. Roberta took it. She turned me down on a third, but admitted that some wine would go nicely with the dinner.
I ordered sparkling Burgundy.
It was a place where people came to dine and talk, laugh, proposition, and be propositioned. Waiters made quite a show of bustling about, but didn’t try to serve the dinners under an hour or an hour and a half.
Our dinner dragged into its second bottle of sparkling Burgundy, and I could see Roberta was getting tight. I was feeling pretty darn good myself.
“You never have told me what your partner said to you.”