“Oh.”
The waiter brought her whisky glass full of cold tea, gave me a rye highball, and a check for a dollar and twenty-five cents. I nicked Bertha Cool’s roll for a dollar and a half, waved him away, and said to Carmen, “Here’s happy days.”
“Looking at you,” she said and tossed the cold tea down her throat, reached quickly for her glass of water as though the stuff was unusually potent, and then, after a couple of gulps, said, “Gosh, I shouldn’t drink. I get funny when I get tight.”
“How funny?” I asked.
She giggled and said, “Plenty funny. You haven’t been here before, have you?”
“Once,” I said. “My last trip into town — and boy, did I have a time.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Girl by the name of Evaline,” I said. “I guess she isn’t here any more.”
She pulled a curtain over her eyes and said, in an expressionless voice, “You knew Evaline?”
“Uh-huh.”