"When I finally got your number, and your service said you were in Detroit…"

"Couldn't believe it, could you?"

She said, "You know, you haven't changed much at all."

Skip said, "I may be a half a step slower, but I still have my hair. I lift weights when I'm home and I think of it."

"I like your beard."

"I've had it off and on. I first grew it when I was over in Spain.

That's where I went soon as I got my release.

Started as an extra in the picture business and worked my way into special effects and stunt work. This guy Sidney Aaronson was doing a big epic called The Sack of Rome. But what it was, it was a sack of shit. You know how many times I got killed in that fucking picture?"

Robin watched him reach out to stop their waiter going by with a tray of dinners. Skip ordered another drink and a bottle of Valpolicella.

The little fifty-year-old waiter said with an accent, "Just a minute, just a minute, please," and hurried on.

Skip winked at her.

"Time him. He gets one minute."

"You haven't changed at all," Robin said.

Skip Gibbs smiled, a thirty-eight-year-old kid: dull blond streaked hair tied back with a rubber band in a short ponytail, bread crumbs in the beard that grew up into his cheeks; Skip the Wolfman wearing a black satiny athletic jacket that bore the word Speedball across the back in a racy red script: the title of a film he'd worked on handling special effects, blowing black-powder charges and squib bing gunshots.

He said to Robin, "You still look like you can hit and run"-crinkling his light-blue eyes at her.

"Man, there's something about a thin girl with big tits." Staring at her beige cotton sweater, three wooden buttons undone at the neck.

"I notice they're still in the right place."

"You put on Jane Fonda 's Workout, " Robin said, "all you have to do is sit and watch it, you stay in shape."