As she rides by

her mother’s White Shoulders, she had even dreamily recalled.
    “Bet you were gorgeous back then too,” I said as we danced.
    “I wasn’t,” she said. “I had pimples. They used to call me zit-face.”
    “No!”
    “They did.”
    “So when did you realize you were a dish?”
    “The first time you told me, dreamboat,” she said.
    “You tell the sweetest lies,” I said.
    “What about you? Did you have zits?”
    “No.”
    “The odd boil on the back of your neck?”
    “No.”
    “Acne?”
    “No. All I ever had was too much size.”
    “Sure makes you easy to find in bed, though,” she said.
    “Who’s hiding?” I said.
    “So when did you start being comfortable being a giant?”
    “I start tomorrow,” I said.
    “My God!” she said suddenly. “I bet I’ve still got it!”
    “The sheet’s slipping,” I said. “Try and be a little more careful, please. Got what?”
    “His autograph!” She threw on the first thing to come to hand—my shirt—and headed for the hall, where she started rummaging around in the hall cupboard. And there, in a cardboard box, among other faded souvenirs of yesteryear, she finally came up with her old autograph book. Rapidly she flicked through the multicolored pages, and there it was, signed with many a loop and whirl and artistic flourish—that cad jerry’s name, written in green ink.
    Hence half of my mixed emotions—how would she behave when she came face-to-face with lover boy again after so many years? Naturally she had every record he and Tom made, or she used to, anyway. So you can well imagine that, when she discovered that not only had I met him but we were fast becoming good old buddies, how little rest I got until I promised to get them together. Would she get all coy and giddy? Would she get plastered from nervousness and throw up all over his bell-bottoms? Only time would tell, amigos, as it does so often. Speaking of mixed emotions, I was in Dave’s Bar once minding my own business pretty much when a glum-looking postman two stools up said to Dave, “Know what mixed emotions are? It’s when your teeth are killing you and you know this dentist that’ll give you fifty percent off, but she’s your mother-in-law.”
    My other cause for anxiety was none other than S. Silvetti, scribess. When I’d phoned Evonne from home to fix a specific time and place for our rendezvous that evening, which was to be at her place after supper, she’d said, “OK, babe, we’ll be waitin’ on needles and pins.”
    “This ‘we,’ ” I said. “Is it like the royal ‘we’ or the editorial ‘we,’ we hope?”
    “Nope,” she said. “It’s like the ‘we’ in ‘us.’ Meaning I asked Sara to come along.”
    “Oh,” I said. “In that case, we is not amused.”
    I picked up the girls, as scheduled, at Evonne’s place shortly before ten. Evonne looked ravishing in a salmon-colored pantsuit, white high heels, and white silk scarf around her fluffy tresses. Sara looked ravished in a man’s three-piece suit complete with tie, color dark gray, black nurse’s shoes, and diamond-patterned socks. Her short, mousy-colored hair was rigorously parted, and slicked back with water like some hick from the sticks. Topping off—or is it bottoming—her ensemble was a breast-pocket hankie, carefully arranged to come to three points, a fake boutonniere, a huge man’s wristwatch, and a cheap-looking tie clip shaped like a horseshoe.
    “What?” I exclaimed as soon as I caught sight of her sprawled in an ungainly position on Evonne’s couch. “No whangee cane? No treasured old briar? No terbaccy pouch?”
    “Oh, leave her alone, Victor,” Evonne said, giving a final primp to her hair in front of the hall mirror. “I think she looks terrific.”
    “Me too,” Sara said.
    “Well, two out of three ain’t bad,” I said.
    “You should talk,” Sara said. “What are you dressed up for, anyway, some kinda cowboy’s Halloween?”
    I looked down complacently at my gorgeous fringed suede cowboy shirt, string tie, and the clean chinos tucked into the high-heeled, hand-tooled Mexican boots that I could almost walk in without wincing.
    “Sir,” I said, “I’m dressed to go shit-kickin’, so anytime you’re ready is jake with me.”
    Shit-kickin’ we went, to a huge barn of a place just this side of Glendale called the Bar-Bee-Q. In no time at all we were ensconced at a beer-soaked table near the small stage in the merry company of Tom, Jerry, Cherry, wife of