“With the waitress?”

“With the tax planner.”

“Oh, Alison.”

“The last I heard,” I said, “you were planning a tax together.”

“I’m planning attacks and she’s planning defenses. I went out with her last night. We went over to Jan Wallman’s on Cornelia Street and ate some kind of fish with some kind of sauce on it.”

“It must have been a memorable meal.”

“Well, I’ve got a rotten mind for details. We drank a lot of white wine and listened to Stephen Pender sing one romantic ballad after another, and then we went back to my place and settled in with some Drambuie and WNCN on the radio. She admired my Chagall and petted my cats. One of them, anyway. Archie sat on her lap and purred. Ubi wasn’t having any.

“What went wrong?”

“Well, see, she’s a political and economic lesbian.”

“What’s that?”

“She believes it’s politically essential to avoid sexual relations with men as part of her commitment to feminism, and all her career interaction is with women, but she doesn’t sleep with women because she’s not physically ready for that yet.”

“What does that leave? Chickens?”

“What it leaves is me climbing the walls. I kept plying her with booze and putting the moves on her, and all I got for my trouble was nowhere fast.”

“It’s good she doesn’t go out with men. They’d probably try to exploit her sexually.”

“Yeah, men are rotten that way. She had a bad marriage and she’s pretty steamed at men because of it. And she’s stuck with her ex-husband’s name because she’s established professionally under it, and it’s an easy name, too, Warren. Her own name is Armenian, which would be more useful if she were selling rugs instead of planning taxes. She doesn’t exactly plan taxes, Congress plans taxes. I guess she plans avoiding them.”

“I plan to avoid them myself.”

“Me too. If she weren’t so great looking I’d avoid her and say the hell with it, but I think I’ll give it one more try. Then I’ll say the hell with it.”