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THE GREAT KURBAN

All Muslims are mad, of course. Not mad in the sense of angry, though they are certainly that, but daffy mad, glazed-eyed-crazy-stare mad, ipso facto mad. . . .

Slunk down in the back of the cab, rain rapping its knuckles on the roof, Kyle Clayton heard these lines turning over in his head. This was the opening to the novel he was working on, and since he was prone to fits of anxiety over new work, he often found the words brimming at the surface of his subconscious.

Plus, he was fond of them. They had just the snap, crackle, and pop that he liked. The culture had turned into a bum's rush, he'd decided. You had to catch the reader early, kick 'em in the shins, or else they were gone, off to a new thrill. As the downpour beaded the window, he allowed himself a smile as he repeated the words once more, marveling at their reckless audacity, the sheer stupid nerve of them.

All Muslims are mad, of course.

Ridiculous, those words. Mere literary provocation.

Hurrying from the taxi to the shield of the restaurant's canopy, Kyle was greeted by a large man in a long gray coat, shoulders clad in royal epaulets. As Kyle hopped the sluicing moat that ran along the curb, the doorman lowered his umbrella and mutely clapped his gloved hands.

"Mr. Kurban," he bellowed, half surprised. "The Great Kurban!" Syeed Salaam was the doorman's name, and he did not refer to Kyle Clayton as the Great Kurban because he thought the young man anything special - only Allah was truly great - but rather because there are few things in this world more glorious to a Muslim than the presence of a willing convert, and however unlikely, Kyle Clayton was now one such proselyte. This conversion was the cause of no little humor among his friends, since of everyone they knew, no one was quite so Western, so quintessentially American, as Kyle Clayton. Kurban (chosen primarily for alliterative purposes, they'd learned) translated roughly to mean "sacrifice." Funny, they thought, since the Kurban they knew had never engaged in sacrifice of any sort and, conversely, seemed wholly dedicated to the execution of extreme and reckless pleasure. In fact, Kyle Clayton was publicly notorious for being the very opposite of Kurban, and had achieved a modest fame by singularly embodying everything that sacrifice was not.

But Syeed Salaam, who was more popularly known as Rick, did not care for contemporary literary history and its various profligates.

One of the regulars at the restaurant where he worked had embraced the Religion of Truth, and it was a thing to rejoice.

"Assalamu 'alaykum," Rick intoned, kissing Kyle on both cheeks and squeezing him with his powerful arms.

"Wa'alaykum assalam," Kyle answered without a hitch, thereby exhausting his entire catalog of Arabic. Although there was no way for Rick to know it, the conversion of Kurban was not everything he might have hoped for.

"You pray today, brother?" "Twice this morning," Kyle remarked, hating himself for the fib. To the left of the entrance was a shallow doorway used for deliveries.

Rick reached in and removed the clean cardboard sheet he used as a prayer mat. In order to pray five times a day, as was his duty to Allah, he had to get in at least two prayers at work. During the lulls after the lunch and dinner rushes, Rick would run to the alley on the other side of street to fulfill this obligation.

Now, though, he held up the mat as an offering to Kurban.

Kyle shook him off, gesturing to the restaurant. "I'll catch up later. Business, you know."

"The business of living is Allah." "Yes," said Kurban, smiling, "but I understand Allah has a rent-stabilized apartment. I'm not as lucky."

The ridges of Rick's brow contorted. "Mr. Kurban," he scolded, sternly shaking his head.

Please, Kyle thought, Allah was all-powerful but couldn't withstand a bit of ribbing? If Syeed and his Muslim brothers hadn't yet figured out that God didn't always take Himself so seriously, that He in fact had a roaring, knee-slapping sense of humor, what kind of real future could there be for Kyle and his new religion?

After a moment, perhaps remembering that the man was a paying customer, Rick switched his face back to the tepid grin he reserved for ordinary patrons and opened the thick entrance door. Inside boiled a cauldron of activity and appetites.

"Enjoy, brother," said Rick, throwing his arm out across the threshold. Kyle thought he detected a mocking tone to the gesture, as if nothing that lay behind that door should be of interest to the likes of the Great Kurban.

Kyle moved quickly past.

The unprecedented, overwhelming success of City had been a sort of accident, the kind of dumb luck that keeps New York restaurateurs up late at night, giggling to themselves at their extravagant good fortune. Somewhat inexplicably, the confluences of Wall Street, professional athletics, high-stakes publishing, and Hollywood's eastern contingent had all decided that City was the place, the restaurant of the century's end. The causes for such an occurrence might be easily cataloged: a high-profile billionaire owner who courted scandal and curiosity; a clubby masculine decor that went against the grain of effete feminine trends of interior restaurant design (therefore a place where the world's big shots could feel like big shots); a convenient Midtown location. But then one could mention twenty other restaurants with nearly the same virtues, nineteen of which, on this particular afternoon, were barely half-full. City, meanwhile, was bursting at the seams.

Kyle, who was tall and wore his dark hair thicker and wavier than was the current style, used his sinewy build to move through the crowded lobby, easily sidling his way up to the host stand. There he waited while a squat, pinstripe-suited man accosted the hostess in a shouting whisper that was apparently his idea of tact.

"Do you know who you've sat me next to in there?" He jabbed his stubby fingers toward the dining room of burnished rosewood and gold-inlay mirrors. "The CEO of DLJ! I don't want to hear his conversation any more than I want him to hear mine. Don't you understand anything about business?"

The hostess stood stoic in a black dress that fit her like a wet suit. This was her defense, her armor against the squat, pinstripe-suited men of this world.

You'd never have me, you ugly little monster. And you know it.

Ever polite, she asked if he would like to see another table. "What? And have all my guests get up and move? I'd look like an asshole."

The hostess smiled an absolutely winning full-lipped grin that managed to be obsequious and mocking at the same time. As for looking like an asshole, her smile intimated, the matter had been settled long ago.

"What, sir, would you like me to do?" she asked. "I'm trying to find out why this happened, since I come here at least four times a week and. . . Do you even know who I am?"

Kyle stood nearby, twitching nervously. He wondered if he should lend a hand. In the old days this would've been just his sort of gig. Like some debauched urban Robin Hood, he might have come over and stood above the little man for a moment, Kyle being comfortably over six feet, kindly urging him to put his dick away already and return quietly to his table. Please, sir. Thank you. Setting this in motion, he would then immediately parlay this good deed into an intimacy with the hostess (having already broken down the expansive barrier between customer and employee), and barring an engagement ring, or an anomalous sexual preference, be - more oftentimes than not - in like Flynn.

Instead, he decided to hold his tongue and admire the hostess from afar. Had marriage mellowed him? Certainly. Who escaped its mollifying effects? But even if he were making smarter choices now, the driving motivation for Kyle Clayton - what got his rocks off, literarily speaking - was the same as it had ever been: to be scorned.

To be declared persona non grata. If possible, to be despised. In New York, be it in business or in the creative arts, it seemed essential. If you were not hated, then you had not challenged the competitive rhythms of the city. You had not inflamed the jealousies of the successful; you had not highlighted the failures of the left-behind. Here, in Manhattan, this could only mean one thing: you had accomplished nothing.

In being hated, Kyle was almost wholly successful.

He had also earned a grudging respect. If photos of him seemed to project an irritating self-satisfaction; if his work was inconsistent, and public interest in it had grown scattershot; if he had raised public hell, indulged in outlandish and not entirely benign mischief, seemingly in the name of nothing, well, then, he had also written what was arguably the novel of his generation, Charmed Life. Published in the late 1980s, the book was a watershed, a pop novel that was somehow more than pop. Even literary veterans setting out to destroy this obvious new threat found themselves under its spell, forced to agitated silence. It was success both high and low, and so Fame had come calling, followed quickly by its bullyboys Envy, Resentment, and Spite. Almost immediately the media had set about tearing up Kyle Clayton in a way he could have never anticipated; he was shocked and wounded as only great romantics can be and so finally came to a place where he'd found scorn both delicious and irresistible. For as long as anyone could remember (ten years as it turned out), Kyle Clayton had gorged himself on a particular type of New York contempt, had made a meal out of it, and was still, as of this late date, unsated.

He was America's last great Literary Fool, and not a little proud of it.

But to the surprise of almost everyone, he had suddenly got married, to a Turkish woman of enticing red hair, and now here came another flood of bile, another shower of laughter and scorn. Page Six had had a field day. A Muslim? Kyle Clayton? The sneers and taunts were even more cutting, more mean-spirited, than before, though underneath one detected a desperation. Were the dispensers of public ridicule worried that their whipping boy, their great fool, might be tempered by marriage, by faith? Were they getting in their last licks? Yes, Kyle had mellowed. He'd decided he owed his wife a semblance of calm - thought he might even do with a little himself - and so had been truly flying under the radar these days. Not that the conflicts would be completely abandoned, of course; they were too much his sustenance for that. It was just that now they would have to be chosen with greater discernment.

This rude, lumpy moneyman, for example, was something he'd have to overlook. Too easy a target. Utterly forgettable.

The hostess, on the other hand, Catwoman and her slinky walk, would be driven from his mind with somewhat greater difficulty.

She escorted him to his table, a banquette of plush cushions the color formerly known as beige, here called camel, the booths of rosewood halved so all the guests could face the dining room. Unfortunately, the table was also empty. Patience Birquet was late.

He checked his watch: 1:45. In fitting with the new Middle Eastern themes in his life, Kyle amused himself by re-imagining the brightly lit room as a splendorous feast in an ancient Pharaonic temple. The tableau was ripe for such comparisons, he thought. The male customers he cast as the royal court, silk-clad soldiers with tanned, regal foreheads, gazes still intense from the morning's battles. The few women in the room seemed to him like concubines, their often mummified complexions stretched like parchment paper, their necks adorned with gold-leaf collars, feet shod with gilt sandals. Then there were the enslaved servants, smaller, slightly hunched with toil, and, as always, darker. A Nigerian in a Nehru jacket strode by, cutting board held aloft, charred carcass gently smoldering on top: whole leg of lamb with cumin and curry. Kyle swooned as it passed.

And the pharaoh himself? That would be Lonny Tumin, audacious billionaire and owner of City. Word was that he'd bought the place as a lark. He could never find a restaurant to precisely satisfy all his appetites, so he built his own. You would often see him here striding through the dining room, the pockmarked arrogance of his face striking you cold. The Egyptians believed acne was the manifestation of the sins of past lives, though with Tumin it was assumed the sins were more recent - his ethical reputation being dubious, to say the least. Indeed, he carried about him the air of organized crime and had even played up this part of his personality, sporting it as a sort of glamour. He liked to intimidate his diners, Kyle had observed; meeting your gaze, he seemed to take your presence as an affront. Who the hell are you? demanded his eyes. And just where do you get the balls to eat in my restaurant? As if dining at City were a contact sport - though, on reflection, it often was.

Suddenly Patience arrived, wispy thin and not quite five feet tall in her padded shoes. The Puissant Pixie, as the agent had been christened in a famous profile, though others in the business had been known to speak her name with less laudatory adjectives.

Patience shuffled in like a blur, arms stuffed with galley proofs, muttering something about Algerian audio.

"No, I'm not kidding. Seventy-five hundred. Right, what the fuck? That's what I said."

Kyle assumed she was talking to him - naturally, since she was looking right at him - and though he'd never before heard of Algerian audio, doubted that such a thing even existed. He also didn't care (that being Algeria's problem) and so in his mind already had the seventy-five hundred deposited, withdrawn, and spent.

Then he noticed the microthin headset that jettisoned her cheek, and his heart dropped. Now he felt foolish as well as mercenary. It was what you saw everywhere now, on all the streets, especially in places like City - fervent, ambitious types muttering to themselves, barking orders into nearly invisible bars of compound graphite. Madness, Kyle thought suddenly. Madness because Algerian audio existed and was not his.

Patience plopped into the banquette, her pile of books knocking over an empty stem glass with a harmless ping. She removed the headset like a teenager unhooking a retainer.

"You get a load of that hostess?" she asked admiringly. "Boy, I'd like to spread her on a cracker. . . Oh, but that's right, you're married now. Blind to all temptation." The agent was just another of the throngs who saw the Clayton marriage, not to mention his new faith, as distinctly implausible. "So how goes the life of sacrifice, Kurban?"

"Successful, I'm afraid," Kyle answered. "I'm nearly broke." "Unfortunate. There's not much I can do for you till the new book is finished."

"How about Algerian audio?" "That's another client," Patience said, then giggled to herself. "Sorry, can't say who." She shook her tiny head in astonishment of herself. "Algeria," she said. "Am I something, or am I something?" She was something, Kyle agreed, though what that something was it was too early to tell. He had just recently let Patience lure him away from Larry Wabzug, his kindly but ultimately feckless representative of old. It had been a heart-wrenching decision, but in the end Kyle felt that ol' Larry was just a little too out of touch with twenty-first-century publishing. When you got right down to it, Wabzug didn't know an e-book from a butt plug, and thought audio an abomination.

Charmingly old school. Since his marriage, though, Kyle found that there were certain things he could no longer afford to be romantic about.

In Larry's place came Ms. Birquet. To suffer Patience was not easy, especially if you lost sight of the money. She was Napoleonic in demeanor as well as in stature and trembled perceptibly, as if her slight frame could not quite accommodate such a forceful spirit. In a town famous for hard-asses, she was one of the most famous. This was not normally Kyle's style of comradeship, and so he attempted to read charm into her bullying approach. She was playing a riff on the stereotype, he told himself. The gruff agent. Look, there she goes again, he'd tell himself, watching her scream into her cell phone. Ha ha. Very self-referential, very funny. In this way, he'd deconstructed Patience so that he might tolerate her for his growing financial needs.

"Where's our waiter, by the way? I don't have all day." Already she had two fingers out, flicking them like a pointer at anyone who passed, not excluding customers - as if they might recognize her and leap to her aid.

By Kyle's estimation, she'd been in her seat a total of about twelve seconds.

"Oh, yoo-hoo," Patience called out to the space around them. "Anybody."

Ha, Kyle thought, what a character! "I'm WAIT-ING."

A few diners began to look over, and Kyle caught himself unconsciously sliding down the banquette, trying to conceal himself under the table's crisp linens.

Blessedly, a waitress arrived. "Pellegrino," Patience snapped. "Large one. And a Cobb salad for me."

"Would you like to hear the specials?" the waitress asked. "No, in fact. . ." Patience glanced at Kyle, who had yet to look over his menu. "Cobb salad? Yes, make it two," she ordered, before he could answer.

And then the waitress was gone. Kyle sat stricken, reeling with an incredulous shock. City, New York's greatest flesh emporium this side of Scores, and what does he get? Some fall foliage and a glass of evaporating bubbles. Kurban indeed.

"So, the Muslim thing," Patience announced, getting down to business.

The "Muslim thing" was an excerpt from the novel-in-progress. He'd thought the first twenty pages might work well as a short story and had asked Patience to try and shop it as such. It was their first real project together, a kind of test. She had sold the book based on just a few rough chapters. Now was her chance to shine with the short stuff. "Tough sell," she warned now.

Kyle tried not to look glum as the waitress poured out the bottled water.

"Oh?" "Let me show you something." She grabbed at the pile of galleys she'd brought in and scooted along the banquette next to Kyle. "Here's what's going on with some of my younger clients. This is the direction you should be thinking about."

Kyle leaned over as the agent opened a galley to the middle, where he saw a m?lange of fonts, the text laid out spherically along the page like a pinwheel. He took the book from her, trying to turn it in his hands, but it proved floppy and cumbersome. He kept turning but couldn't seem to keep his place in the text.

"How do you read this?" "Publisher recommends a lazy Susan," Patience replied. "You spread it out and spin it. I think there's a tie-in with Pier One. Three hundred and fifty thousand," she added, meaning the advance. Then she reached for another book. "How about this one. This one's a beaut." The book she handed him had no title, just a huge asterisk, *, though the author did deign to state his name underneath it. Opening the book, he discovered that this was a novel told entirely in footnotes, each successive paragraph punctuated by this ubiquitous asterisk. Patience muttered something about metatexts, about the ironies of the Information Age. About $500,000 advances.

She paused, glancing pensively at her watch. "Is it me, or should our salads have been here by now?" She rose slightly in her seat, trying to peer between the heads at the table next to them and into the kitchen. "Jesus, how long does it take to make a salad? Throw some lettuce on a plate and bring me the fucking thing already."

Kyle barely heard her. He was looking off to his left at the server's gueridon. There, a baby pheasant was pouring off a captain's carving knife during a tableside vivisection. Perhaps it was the fat pooling under the succulent wedges, or the fragrance of burning hickory still emanating from the bird's lightly browned (and no doubt crunchy) skin, but some brute, atavistic urge began to boil inside him. What are my chances, Kyle wondered, against the captain and his carving knife? How many paces head start toward the front door would the element of surprise afford me?

Patience and Sacrifice, out to lunch. Kyle forced himself to drag his eyes away from the bird as the agent pulled out a novel that came in a box, each chapter its own little booklet, some of the text readable only with a magnifying glass (included!), until Abu Hussein, the food runner, came over to the table with two Cobb salads.

"Mr. Kurban!" he exclaimed, placing the plates in front of them. Abu patted Kyle warmly on the shoulder, and the writer half stood to embrace him.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Kurban, I see you before. Too busy to say hello. How are you?"

Abu was another of the restaurant's Muslim crew, or Bengali Mafia, as they were affectionately known, since they dominated the food-runner positions at New York restaurants just as the mob did jobs at the Sanitation Department. Abu had heard of Kyle's conversion through Rick the Doorman and was no less excited. Abu Hussein was a happy, round-faced man with a distinct paunch and a wife and two daughters in Astoria, Queens. Kyle had seen these children countless times, the faces flipped without a moment's notice from Abu's wallet, which he carried with him in the dining room. The writer was quite fond of him despite the fact that the last time he was here, Abu had dropped off the food for him and his guests and then suddenly removed from the table Kyle's glass of Ch?teauneuf du Pape - a quite expensive glass of superlative vintage, and from which Kyle had taken just a single, sublime sip.

Didn't Mr. Kurban know that alcohol is forbidden in Islam? Abu had wanted to know. A haraam of the first order? Kyle had been speechless as he watched the man walk off with his wine. Now, again, Abu reached into his pocket for his wallet. "My friend, have I ever shown you my daughters?"

"Many times," said the writer. "Very beautiful." Kyle looked down at Patience, thinking to introduce her, but the agent was already gesturing to her watch, chewing maniacally on her food. Either she wanted Kyle to start eating or was alerting Abu that the desserts she hadn't yet ordered had still not arrived.

"Well, enjoy your lunch," Abu said, getting the hint. "By the way, Mr. Kurban, I did you the favor of removing the pieces of bacon from your salad, along with the dressing - a red-wine vinaigrette. I also take off the chicken, since this is cooked on the same grill as the pork. Pork is veddy bad haraam, my friend. Veddy bad."

Kyle looked down at a plate of dry, spindly flora that reminded him of his wife's garden circa mid-February. Once again, he felt Abu pat his shoulder.

"Your Muslim brothers are looking out for you, Mr. Kurban. Enjoy!"

"What's the matter, Miss Erin?" asked Abu back at the coffee station. Of the entire male staff at City restaurant, only Abu Hussein was not a little bit in love with the waitress, Erin Wyatt. He was married, after all, though the marriage had been arranged and was, secretly, not a very happy one. As for everyone else, this crush was a forgone conclusion. That nearly half of these admirers were men not ordinarily attracted to women did not in any way dispute the fact. On the contrary, if anything, the gay men of the staff seemed to have a leg up in the pursuit of Erin, since only they were allowed to stroke her hair during the preservice meeting, and only they were privy to the whispered confessions about which customers she found "hot" and which ones she didn't.

Erin was tall with auburn hair and a no-bullshit sexiness she managed to project even through the masculine uniform she wore as a City waitress. (Who else could make a Nehru jacket and boxy waiter's pants look so good?) But beauty was cheap in Manhattan, familiar enough to be almost generic, and so it was more her friendliness, her pleasant, easygoing manner that pierced their hearts. She was so nice, in fact, that most of her admirers at City were sure Erin felt the same way about them, so rare was her personality in the Metropolis of Mean.

But Abu felt that this pleasantness had been slipping. He was sure something had happened with Miss Erin recently. She had not been herself.

"These freaks on table fifteen," she said now, pouring herself a cup of coffee. "I'm ready to strangle them." "You don't mean Mr. Kurban?"

Erin looked up at Abu skeptically, then watched him struggle to hold her gaze as she brushed away a piece of hair that had fallen on her brow - Abu, who was by no means in love with Erin Wyatt. "No, I know that guy," she said, somewhat ruefully. "He's a writer, Kyle-"

"Kurban," Abu asserted with zealous fortitude. "He change his name. He's married to a Muslim woman. He's Kurban now!" "Muslim," Erin said, trying not to laugh. Obviously this was some sort of a put-on, she thought, not being a devotee of the New York Post. But Abu was nodding proudly.

Suddenly an angry call from the chef summoned Abu to the kitchen. This left Erin alone to her coffee and one of life's great questions:

Was there anything more painful, was there a worse humiliation in the world, than having to wait on someone you'd slept with? Not that she carried a torch. She hadn't given a thought to Kyle Clayton for years, except as a kind of benchmark for her own life.

When she'd met him she was a single, struggling actress hurtling headlong toward thirty and hating herself a little for it, which was why she'd sought out someone like him in the first place. A kind of suicide mission. They'd hooked up at a party and then spent the next three weeks lying around her apartment having loathsome, drunken sex, stepping over bottles and empty cartons of takeout. It was all fun and games until she found herself getting a little attached, his moderate fame not inhibiting things in the least. Nearly simultaneous to this was Kyle's sudden, and completely thorough, disappearance.

Mission accomplished. Of course, she'd sworn she'd have the last laugh, but then here she was, still taking orders, her acting career moving horizontally at best. Kyle, meantime, seemed more famous than ever. He had published two more books since then (was she counting?) and had even seemed to have smoothed over some of the rougher edges of his reputation. He was married (poor woman!) and probably rich too. Like everyone else, she hated him.

And where am I now? she wanted to know. What had changed for Erin Wyatt? Well, nothing, she had to admit, except that she'd gone right ahead and turned thirty.

It happened just last month. Naturally she hadn't told anybody, but people detected a change. She had turned thirty (or 100 in actress years) and was still a waitress and was fucking miserable about it. Recently, on those sullen uptown subway rides to work - starched white shirts in their sheathed plastic flung over her shoulder - she'd begun to get this feeling in her stomach. A dull, insistent nausea. The truth was that this acting dream she'd been chasing was pretty much over, just about done, and in her guts she knew it.

So Abu's instincts were correct. Not all was right with Miss Erin, and her veneer of good cheer was beginning to crack. Now, to top it off, she had to play servant to Kyle Clayton, who was not only an exlover but a walking rebuke to anyone who had come to New York with a creative fantasy and failed.

"Table fifteen wants the check," a waiter barked, cruising by to pick up a coffeepot for a refill. "And she sounds pissed." "They just got their food," Erin complained, but he shrugged and hurried on.

Gritting her teeth, she printed up the total on the computer screen in front of her and headed out to table fifteen. "Finally!" Patience exclaimed as she approached.

Erin looked down, deciding exactly how she was going to do it, whether to roll up the check and insert it in the woman's ear, say, or tear it up like confetti and rain it down on her shrunken little head. Perhaps a subtler approach was in order, like simply pointing out to her - calm but stern voice rising to crescendo - that she was still-Fucking-Chewing-HER-FOOD! But of course she wouldn't. Like all the other times, Erin would bite her tongue and remind herself that she would get her revenge when she became the famous actress she was going to be, that she would laugh about all this later in the Vanity Fair interview. It was a delusion that was getting harder and harder to believe.

Erin took Patience's credit card and noticed Kyle looking up at her. She surprised even herself then, for instead of sprinting out of there and avoiding her ex-lover, she decided to confront him head-on, to vent some of her exasperation his way.

"Well, if it isn't Kyle Clayton. They let you in these kinda places?" Accustomed to antagonistic comments from strangers, Kyle looked up at her with the wincing incredulousness he reserved for such moments.

"Don't even recognize me, do you?" she asked. Still a little glazed, Kyle shook his head. Nope, apparently it didn't ring a bell. But then, focusing suddenly, looking Erin up and down - and impressed, perhaps, by the way her hair fell around the collar of her Nehru jacket, the finely formed cheekbones - he suddenly sat up and started to look alive.

"Wait, yeah, sure. We met a little while ago. . . at that thing." He was snapping his fingers now. "When was it again?"

"Nice try," she retorted. "No, it was a few years ago actually. We screwed a couple of times."

Patience buried her eyes in the check, trying not to laugh. This was an old joke between them: Kyle had taken great pains to try to dispel his past to his new agent - mere myth and hearsay! he'd claimed - while every time they went out, the truth was reaffirmed. "Is that right?" he asked the waitress.

"Yes, it is." He waited, but Erin didn't budge. She stood there, staring down at him in denunciation.

"Well," he said, shifting a bit in his seat. He tugged at his jacket and looked up at the brunette with a wicked grin. "Memory seems to have failed me, but I'll have to assume it was good."

Among Erin's many talents as an actress was the ability to raise her eyebrows to both dramatic and comic effect. She did this now for Patience, turning to her and, with impeccable timing, sending a finely plucked brow arching skyward.

Then she quietly guffawed and was gone.

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