“You’re drinking beer?”

“I am,” I said.

“I get so full if I drink enough beer to get tipsy,” she said. The smile continued. “A martini does the job on much less volume.”

“I’m hoping not to get tipsy,” I said.

“What fun is that?” she said.

Gary Eisenhower must have been delighted when he met her. She did everything but hand out business cards to let you know that she fooled around.

“Tell me about Gary,” I said.

“I thought we already did that, in Shaw’s office,” she said.

Her lemon-drop martini arrived. She sampled it with pleasure.

“Smoothes out a day,” she said.

I drank a little beer.

“I was hoping just sort of informally for some reminiscences,” I said. “You know, how did you meet? Where did you go? What did you do?”

“What did we do?”

“Other than that,” I said.

“You got something against ‘that’?” she said.

“No,” I said. “You can tell me about ‘that,’ too, if you like.”

She smiled at me.

“Maybe I will,” she said.

I waited.

“Actually,” she said, and took in some more of her lemon drop, “I met him here.”

She glanced around the room, looking for a waiter, spotted one, and nodded. He smiled and went to the bar.

“I come here quite often,” she said.

“I suspected as much,” I said.

“Often I go to my gym, in the late afternoon, and afterward I shower and change and meet my girlfriends for a cocktail.”

“Replenish those electrolytes,” I said.

“What?” she said.

I shook my head and smiled.

“Just musing out loud,” I said.

“Anyway,” she said. “I’d see him at the bar sometimes, and after two or three times, he’d smile and nod as I came in, and I’d do the same. One day I came in alone and sat at a table, and he was at the bar. I smiled at him and nodded, and he picked up his drink and walked over and asked if he could join me… God, he was handsome.”