“Unbelievable! I said, "What would I be doing walking the streets at night as a stuffed olive- gate-crashing cocktail parties?”

“When we did eventually get to the party - me walking next to Dad's Volvo driving at five miles an hour - I had a horrible time. Everyone laughed at first but then more or less ignored me. In a mood of defiant stuffed oliveness I did have a dance by myself but things kept crashing to the floor around me. The host asked if I would sit down. I had a go at that but it was useless. In the end I was at the gate for about an hour before Dad arrived.”

“Life's just a cocktail party - on the street.”

“And I. I too.Quite collected at cocktail parties,meanwhile in my headI'm undergoing open-heart surgery.”

“I can't do it," Tatiana said "I can't walk down the streets of our life with you.""I know." They turned back to the reflections in the mirror.”

“so my grandmother was not without humanity. and if she wore cocktail dresses when she labored in the garden, they were cocktail dresses she no longer intended to wear to cocktail parties. even in her rose garden she did not want to appear underdressed. if the dresses got too dirty from gardening, she threw them out. when my mother suggested to her that she might have them cleaned, my grandmother said, "what? and have those people at the cleaners what i was doing in a dress to make it that dirty?"from my grandmother i learned that logic is relative.”