Goodnight, Irene by Jan Burke Page B

someday.”
    “Gee, thanks. So he took the bait?”
    “Hook, line, and sinker.”
    “So where’s dinner?” I asked.
    “Café La Fleur, eight o’clock.”
    “How trendy.”
    “That’s our Wrigley.”
    “Are you coming back home first?”
    “Of course; I need to change.”
    This struck a note of panic in me. “Lydia, I haven’t got anything fancy with me.”
    “Fancy? My dear, the look at La Fleur is studied dishabille. Got anything left over from the hippie days with you?”
    “No, gone to Goodwill. But I get the picture.”
    “Anyway, I’ve got stuff you can borrow.”
     
     
    L YDIA GOT HOME about half an hour later and invited me to go for a run. Paranoia about being out in the open almost made me beg off, but I decided I could use the stress relief. It was the perfect time of day to go running — still light and yet cooling off. We took a couple of turns and ended up in a nearby park. There were lots of other joggers and skaters and bike riders, and somehow we avoided being bumped into by all this fitness traffic. Lydia and I took off over the grass to avoid some of the crowd on the pathways.
    We reached that point where all you hear is your own breathing, the air going past your ears, and the rhythm of your feet on the ground. I started feeling all the tension leave me; I was bathed in sweat and happy as a clam. We made a wide turn in the park and headed home. We slowed to a walk without anyone saying a word, just smiling and breathing hard.
    We each showered, and I put on a simple blouse and long cotton skirt, a dark-blue number that showed off my eye color. Barbara has the green-eyed, redhead Irish looks of my mother, while I have the dark brown hair and blue eyes of my father. Unless you saw us with our parents, you wouldn’t know we were related.
    Lydia had a sort of romper on, with a plain blouse underneath and all the buttons but one — the bottom one — open on the romper.
    “You were serious about the dishabille. Shall I tuck my skirt into my panty hose?”
    “Come on, now,” she laughed, “I got this look straight out of the
L.A. Times Magazine
. Don’t tell Wrigley I said so. You know how he is about the T-word.”
    Good Italian that she is, Lydia drove and talked with her hands at the same time, and I was fearing for my life again. I thought that it would be too ironic to die in a traffic accident after everything else that had happened. To my great relief we made it safely to the restaurant.
    I’d never been to Café La Fleur, even though it’s not far from my house. It’s on Allen Street, which was “rediscovered” about five years ago. From dilapidated storefronts, thrift shops, and laundromats, some real estate genius had fashioned a local hot spot, now filled with art galleries, restaurants, and boutiques. Everything is in salmon pink or pistachio ice-cream green, or else it looks like
Casablanca
could be filmed there. La Fleur is in the pistachio mode. Glass bricks line its street-side exterior, 1930s-style.
    We stepped inside. The interior of the restaurant was brightly lit, with large ceiling fans turning lazily above. Everything else was white or salmon pink. I guess they saved the green for outdoors. There were little planters with bromeliads in them between the booths. The tables were tall and circular, with backless white metal stools pulled up to them. This encouraged table-sitters to lean their elbows on the tables, and gave them all the look of being in intimate conversation.
    A blackboard arrayed in colored chalk announced specials of crab soufflé and squid with asparagus pasta. A young anorexic who looked like she was wearing her father’s pajamas greeted us and asked for our names. We told her we were with Mr. Wrigley. She told us her name was Crystal and offered to show us to where he was seated in the bar.
    The lighting in the bar was only slightly more subdued, but the clientele was slightly less so. As we were being seated, I thanked Crystal. “Do you eat