more precious and beautiful with age. One that deserved treatment more royal than royalty.
Unfortunately, the establishment was not cooperating. No maitre d' appeared nor was there any sign of a waiter. Lilah finally dragged him over to a corner table. "Here," she decided for them. "It's not too close to the piano. So we can talk."
He gulped. Now came the real test. What would they talk about?
That part turned out to be easy. Once a tubby waiter appeared and their drink orders had been taken, Lilah was sufficiently composed to want to talk about murder.
"Auntie Lil will not rest until an answer is found," she warned T.S. "You and I have both seen her this way before." Lilah had a habit of lacing her long, elegant fingers together and resting them on the table while she talked. It made her look a bit like an obedient child. T.S. thought it was a very charming gesture. Of course, Lilah could have whipped off her bra and whirled it above her head while she danced on the bar, and T.S. would have thought that was a charming gesture, too.
"No, she won't give up," T.S. agreed. "I'm not even going to try to stop her."
"Will you help her?" Lilah asked huskily, leaning forward and searching his face in the candlelight. T.S. half expected the piano player to break into "As Time Goes By."
"Someone has to keep her out of trouble," he agreed gallantly, any thought of deserting Auntie Lil now fleeing at the sight of Lilah's expectant face. Their drinks arrived and the woman at the piano began a new tune, filling the bar with another melancholy melody. T.S. took a sip. The Scotch burned a tidy path down his throat and he sighed. Someone dimmed the lights in the bar and he became more aware of the candle flickering between them and the way Lilah's face grew even more radiant in the flattering light. The room's atmosphere thickened with unspoken sentiments as the music wove an air of unexpected intimacy about them. Even the dark oak of the restaurant's wainscoting seemed to deepen with the mood. Other diners around them also grew quiet, drawing their heads together to whisper.
Was this what it was like, T.S. wondered. Was this what he had been missing all those years that he'd buried himself in his books and in his career?
Lilah suddenly stared over his shoulder toward the bar, breaking the mood. "The bartender just made the funniest face."
T.S. turned in time to see the front door bang open with an intrusive thud. An extremely tall woman, lanky and awkward with drink or drugs, tottered in on high spike heels. She was squeezed into a long-sleeved spandex tube dress sprinkled with cheap silver spangles that sparkled against her cocoa-colored skin. A wide run in her silver hose snaked down the length of her long legs like a jagged scar. Dark hair was swirled in a tall pile atop her head in a style reminiscent of Motown in the mid-1960s. Garish earrings dangled from extremely prominent ears. She had a tiny round head that topped a long, skinny neck and her pinched face was covered with a heavy coating of cheap makeup. When she blinked her eyes sleepily, her small head arched forward like a turtle's. Her lipstick was a garish silvery pink that glittered in the reflected candlelight. But her fingernails were long and elegantly manicured into blood-red tapers.
The bartender's scowl deepened when the woman approached the bar, waving a dollar bill at him. "Change, sweetie?" she asked the bartender in a throaty whisper.
"Beat it, Leteisha. I told you. You've been eighty-sixed from here. Get lost." A man of few but pointed words, the bartender crossed his beefy arms and nodded grimly toward the door. The woman's expression did not change as she smoothly turned on her high heels and slunk as sulkily out the door as she'd entered.
"Just in case you'd forgotten where we were," T.S. noted.
"Now, now, Theodore. Don't be a snob." Lilah's rebuke was real. She was so thoroughly insulated from the crasser elements of society that she did not even understand the concept of being a snob and hated people that were, especially when they fawned all over her trying to sniff out the source of her money.
"I know." T.S. shook his head guiltily. "I've been awful about everything. About coming back to this neighborhood. About helping Aunt Lil in the soup kitchen. I've only been there two days, you know. I'm