One of those tables became free and Anatoly and his shipmates herded their prize female across the room in a proprietary manner that made Kate feel like the single houri in a harem otherwise filled with very needy sheiks.

A chair was produced and she got to sit in it for all of thirty seconds before Anatoly had her out on the dance floor. He was promptly cut in on by one of his friends, and he by a third, and so on. They rotated her through the entire crew several times and what had to have been most of the jukebox's repertoire before Kate, flushed and laughing, protested. Anatoly, her current partner, became all concern and ushered her solicitously back to her chair, its current occupant removed by the scruff of his neck. Anatoly rattled off something to his shipmates and there was a concerted rush to the bar. Almost instantaneously on the table before her appeared a Michelob, a Rainier, an Olympia, three shot glasses brimming with a clear liquid and one mixed drink with a slice of pineapple hooked over one side of the glass and a tiny pink paper parasol draped over the other.

Kate looked from the drinks to her escorts. "Thank you, but-"

Anatoly said firmly, "Spasiba.

"I beg your pardon."

" 'Dank you,' nyet, " he said. "Spasiba.

"Oh. I see." Kate waved a hand over the table and said, "Spasiba, then, spasiba very much, but I don't drink." She pointed at the assorted glasses and bottles and back to herself, all the while shaking her head from side to side. "I don't drink." She couldn't help laughing at their crestfallen faces. With a firm hand she moved each drink to a place more or less in front of one of them and before any of them could beat her to it rose to her feet in search of something tall, cold and nonalcoholic.

"Hi, honey," some jerk at the next table smirked. He patted his lap suggestively. "Have a seat." She ignored him, and someone jerkier seated next to him growled,