“We like to stay and watch the credits.”

“She’s a real beauty, Bern. And the way she was holding your arm, and the looks she was giving you. Forget Humphrey Bogart. I figured you were in like Flynn.”

“How long were you spying on us, anyway?”

“I don’t see why you have to call it spying,” she said. “I was just acting on some perfectly justifiable friendly concern. You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t dare,” I said. “If I lurked around a dyke bar like that I’d get arrested.”

“Not true, Bern. Beat up, maybe, but not arrested. Anyway, I didn’t lurk for very long. As soon as the two of you went across the street for coffee I went home.”

“And read the new Sue Grafton.”

She shook her head. “I’m saving it until my tooth is filled. I lost the filling toward the end of the cheeseburger. I think I must have swallowed it. It won’t poison me, will it?”

“It’s probably better for you than the cheeseburger.”

“That’s what I figured. I read the blurbs on the new book, and I think it’s going to be great, but I’ll wait and read it over the weekend. In the meantime I’m rereading one of her early books. I’m about halfway through it. It’s the one with the horticultural background.”

“I don’t think I read it.”

“Really? I thought you read them all. This one’s about the Chinese landscape architect who gets strangled with his own pigtail.”

“I’d remember that. I must have missed it. What’s the title?”

“‘Q’ Is for Gardens. I’ll lend it to you when I’m done with it. I gotta run, I got a springer spaniel coming any minute for a wash and set. Did she cook you breakfast or did you take her out?”

“I didn’t stay over.”

“Probably a good move. You know me, one flop in the feathers and I want us to go pick out drapes together. You called her, though, right?”

“No answer. I don’t think she spends much time around the apartment. If you were ever there you’d know why.”