“Come and take your seat, Lady Dorina.”

“Dorina?" Louis Cesare's voice was loud in my ear. The one I had squeezed against thephone, which was squeezed against my sore shoulder, becuase I was using both hands tokeep Ray's point in his pants."The fey, damm it!" I told him. "They're for the fey!""Which one?" Louis Cesare asked, his voice going velvety soft."All of them- No Ray! Ray, cut it out!""All of them?”

“I’m driving,” Louis-Cesare said, sliding into the low seat as easily as if he’d done it a hundred times. “You’re drunk.”I wished. “I had all of two beers, mostly for the water content.”“If you needed water, why didn’t you drink water?”“I don’t like water.”

“I don’t know. Just pick one.” “Well, there’s a lot of choice. I mean, you got your flavored, your ridged, your pre-lubed, your thin, your super-ultra-thin, your super-ultra-thin-pre-lubed, your…Huh.” “Huh what?” “Would you look at this?” he asked, examining a small box. “It says it glows in the dark.”

“When good Americans die, they go to Paris,' the ghost said, after taking a drag on a small cigarette.But you’re not dead. I suppose the question must be, are you good?”

“I was tops at the Scarlet O'Hara school of emotional distancing. I always thought about the uncomfortable stuff tomorrow, and, as everyone knows, tomorrow never comes.”

“I felt rather than heard someone come up behind me and I didn’t have to wonder who. My vagina had just gotten a heartbeat.”