Seated at a diner, a woman lifted a coffee mug to her lips and then glanced through a front window and down a street packed with silhouetted arm-and-arm couples and model t-fords at a club which marquee lights snapped out. Amid the couples, one who wore a brown suit and dress ambled past the diner window, and moment later, the gentleman led the lady back past the window and then through the diner door, ringing a bell.
The woman glimpsed at the couple, meeting the gentleman’s eyes, and then rolled her eyes, set the coffee mug down, and dug through a purse until she pulled out a cigarette pack.
“Frank, it’s only a twenty-minute drive,” the lady said to the gentleman as he walked her to a booth beside the woman . “I think I can manage.”
Frank jabbed a finger toward the window. “Twenty-minutes?! With all that traffic?!” He shook his head. “We’re looking at forty-five, at least, and there’s no way I’d keep you in discomfort that long; especially with all those martinis you’ve had.”
The lady giggled.
Frank peered over a bar and a lengthy aisle lined with booths at a doorway. “Now, the little girls’ room is over there. Go on, and I’ll be sat here waiting with your coffee with cream.”
“Two creams,” the lady said, smiled, and strolled away, and the gentleman paused but then, when the lady walked through the doorway, stepped beside the woman’s table and grinned.
The woman heaved a drag on the cigarette and shook her head. “Two creams, detective,” she said. “Is that too much to remember?”
“When filed away with twenty years-worth of other must-remembers she considers equally important—yes, at times, it can feel like too much.”
“Well, I thought you were separated.”
“We’re working things out.”
“Thus, the date night.”
The man glanced at the doorway, and the woman followed his eyes, watched him sit across her table, and snickered.
“Tell me,” the woman said and hit the cigarette. “Does your wife know she’s not on a date? Does she know her ‘date’ was only a ploy for her husband to tail an innocent lounge singer?”
Frank leaned across the table.
“Nadine, you know I’m close.”
“No, I don’t know that.”
He nodded. “Yes, you do. Same way you know I know you followed a Courtis brother into his car where you were handy with a knife and followed the other brother into his apartment building where he—somehow—threw himself down a staircase and combed my
wife’s place for the necklace she believed she’d misplaced but then found once I’d seen you wear it at a show.”
Nadine chuckled. “And now I’ve lost it—the world’s bursting with coincidences!”