"Taking his side now?"
"I am not." She gave a little sniff and fumbled for her handkerchief. "You're so mean and masterful I'm surprised you don't make me go up front and tell him what a sap he is."
"He was a sap smiling at my wife all right." He uplifted his cigar with a mollified grin. "He wasted a smile there. Two-bit pilot, who does he think he is?"
"He did smile at me though," she appended in a small voice.
His voice snapped out again: "And you smiled back!" He ground his unlit cigar into the ash tray. "I think you were just now trying to flatter me; I think you were trying to turn me off the track when you said you'd go up and tell him what a sap he is."
"I was not."
"Don't try to wiggle out of it. That's what you said."
"All right, if you think I should, I will."
"Well now—" He paused smiling and carefully trimmed the crushed end of his cigar with a gold plated cigar cutter before he continued: "If you insist, go ahead."
"There's not much time left," she said, pointing at the neon-dialed clock above the powder-room door. Beneath it hung an orange luminescent sign: U. S. Eastern Standard Earth Time Equivalent.