Swingin' in the Rain by Eileen Davidson

didn’t want her to know I had been snooping.
      She actually looked a little scared.
      Herbie starting calling for me again, with a more adamant tone in his voice. That was never good.
      “You better go before he has a stroke,” she said as she reached into her purse. “I’ll meet you in front of this address at ten p.m.” She handed me the same napkin I’d seen.
      “That late? I have to work tomorrow. Oh God, and I have a love scene, too.”
      “Believe me,” she said, “where we’re going, that’s not late.”
      Where exactly was that? I looked at the napkin she had given me. It read: Trois ou Plus 710 S. Alameda, Los Angeles.
      She was walking out the door when she suddenly turned around. “Do you have a cowboy hat? And chaps, maybe?”
      “What?”
      “It’s cowboy night at the club. Whatever you can dig up will be fine.” Then she hurried out of my room.
      I turned and looked at myself in the mirror. “Cowboy night?” I said. “Really?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
     
     
      I got home mid afternoon, called Tonja and asked if we could meet at her place and maybe have some coffee. I had an hour before I had to get Sarah and thought we could catch up, but I had an ulterior motive. I needed someone to watch Sarah while I went out “clubbing” with Patti.
      “Would you mind if I came to your place?” she asked. “Mine’s a mess!” I told her I didn’t. It dawned on me after we’d hung up that I’d never actually been to her place since she moved in.
      While waiting for Tonja to arrive, I pulled out the napkin I’d gotten from Patti. It looked like your basic bar napkin, I assumed Trois ou Plus to be a garden variety dance club, so why had Patti said it wasn’t like any club I had ever been to?
      Tonja was due any second so I went to the kitchen and made coffee then went to the cupboard and pulled out a couple of brownies I had gotten at the corner grocery store. The kind of brownies that are iced with butter cream frosting? That damned store had the best bakery. Okay, my name is Alexis Peterson, and I am a chocaholic.  Not good when you have to simulate mad, passionate love the next day. After all, you wanted your body to look good when you were half naked on television. But I decided to throw caution to the wind and I took a bite.
      “Hey, hey,” she called out, coming through the front door I’d left unlocked. 
      “Coffee and brownies?” I asked, coming out of the kitchen with two cups and plates.
      “Oh my God, I hate you! I can’t eat the brownie. I swear I make it my life’s work to still be able to get into my Lakers uniform. I would be just devastated if I couldn’t fit my fanny into those yellow short shorts.”
      She looked at the brownies with so much desire in her eyes I started to feel like I should hide them. Before I could, her hand darted out and grabbed one, the biggest one. “Okay, just one bite.” She tore into that thing like it was her last meal. I always say when you deprive yourself of something it turns you into a binger. Case in point.
      “One won’t hurt me,” she said as she licked her fingers.
      I have to admit I was a little taken aback. I couldn’t help wondering if she was bulimic. I handed her a napkin to wipe the crumbs from her face when she grabbed my wrist to look at it.
      “Wow,” she said. “You surprise me, Alex.”
      “Good brownies, huh? I know. When I’m PMSing I go through. . .”
         “That’s not what I’m talking about. The napkin.” A sly smile crept over her face. “I had no idea you were into . . . that,” she said, waving the napkin in my face. Stupidly, I’d handed her my evidence. I took it back.
      “Dance clubs? I’ve been to a few.”
      She stared at me, the sly smile growing into a wide grin.
      “What?” I asked.
      “Do you really think that’s a dance club?”
      “Well . . . I assumed. What other kind of club could it be?”
      “So . . . you’ve