"I have to work tomorrow," she protested.
"Cannonballs! Tell 'em you're down with Twonk's Disease and need the rest of the week off. Now grab your purse."
She followed him then, shivering. He drove her car slowly, to give her and the drink within her time; he spoke of trivia.
She hung back a moment when he had parked outside one of Oakland's first-class restaurants. "You can't afford this, Bob," she said.
"If you mention money once again, I'm going to wash your mouth out with five-dollar bills," he snapped. "Old greasy ones."
She smiled. "You know," she said, "you aren't so unlike Bruce after all. I remember how he also used to go out of his way for people. And then once when I tried to praise him for it, he answered, 'Ah, I'm no God damned saint.'"
"Sounds like Bruce," agreed Kintyre.
"He worshiped you," she said over the cocktails. "Did you know how much? You were everything he could dream of being, a traveler, an athlete, a scholar. He was even thinking of doing his military service in the Navy, because that's where you were. And then you treated him as an equal! You did more to make him happy than anyone else."
"I'd say you did," he parried, embarrassed.
"You know you pushed that affair." She was a little drunk, he saw, but no harm in that: under better circumstances, he'd have called it a happy drunk. "Remember how he and I first met? You were pub crawling with him one evening last year after you got back from Europe. You ran into me at the mulled-wine place; I was eating piroshki and looked very unglamorous, but I thought I'd have some fun with you—oh, hell, Bob, I thought there might be a chance to make you jealous—so I gave Bruce a big play. And you were delighted!"