Lair of Dreams

Just before Sam left the museum for WGI, a note had been delivered to his door: If you want to know more about that part for your radio, come to the shop tonight. Nine o’clock. He knew Evie would be spitting mad that he’d missed her show. Hell, he couldn’t blame her. But his contact was not a fella who gave second chances. He hoped Evie did.

The Winthrop Hotel’s ballroom was wall-to-wall with swells. Sam worried he wouldn’t find Evie in the crush. But all he had to do was follow the sound of laughter and applause. There was Evie, sitting on the back of a stuffed alligator.

“… He asked me to read his wristwatch, and when I did, I saw him in his altogether… one of those nudists. Well, I couldn’t very well say that on the radio.…”

Sam pushed his way to the front, past the crowd of admirers. Evie looked so beautiful in her marabou feather–trimmed midnight-blue dress, a sparkling band of rhinestones resting across her forehead, that for a moment, it squeezed the breath out of him.

“Well, if it isn’t my beloved,” Evie snarled, eyes flashing, and Sam knew that no tuxedo was magical enough to save him from the rough evening to come.

“Hiya, Lamb Chop. Could I borrow you for a minute?”

Evie gave him a sideways look. “Sorry. I was available at nine.”

“I know. I’d love to tell you all about that.” He glanced meaningfully at the others.

“Do carry on. I won’t be a moment, darlings,” Evie said with a bow to the appreciative audience of swells. “You were supposed to meet me at the show, Sam!” Evie hissed to Sam under her breath while keeping her smile toothpaste-ad bright for the party guests who applauded as she and Sam walked through the crowded ballroom. “I’ve spent the last two hours worried that you were bleeding to death in a ditch,” Evie continued. “Now that I know you’re okay, I just want you to be bleeding to death in a ditch.”

“Aww, Lamb Chop, you missed me.”

“That’s what you just heard?”

“What can I say? I’m an optimist.”

“The world is full of dead optimists. Sam, Sam, Sam!” Evie’s head swished like windshield wipers with each utterance of his name. The drink in her hand was nearly gone.

“That’s me. Say, how much of that coffin varnish have you had, Sheba?”

Evie closed one eye and looked up at the hotel’s coffered ceiling, bright with chandeliers, her lips moving as she counted. “This is three. At four, we can play martini bridge.” She giggled.

“Holy smokes,” Sam whistled.

“Wait a minute: Are you waiting for me to get ossified so you can take liberties with me, Sam Lloyd?”

“No. I like my girls fully conscious when I kiss ’em. I’m funny that way,” Sam said. He grabbed her glass and downed the rest of it, eating the olive.

“Hey! What’s the big idea?” Evie protested.

“I’m saving you from yourself.”

“I don’t need any saving,” Evie grumbled. “What I needed was that drink. You didn’t even save me the olive.”

Sam put up his hands in a gesture of apology. “Okay. That’s fair. Abso-tive-ly fair. Let’s say the tables were turned. If I were about to walk off a cliff, what would you do?”

Evie pursed her lips. “Push?”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You would on the way down. So what was so important that you missed the show? And it had better be good, Sam. Appendectomy-scar good.”

“Not here.”

A party guest set his teacup on a side table and turned to applaud the orchestra. Evie swiped the cup, sniffed it, smiled, downed the secret booze in one gulp, and put the empty cup back. Quickly, she motioned Sam away from the scene of the crime and into a room marked PRIVATE. Inside the small office were a fainting couch and a desk with a telephone and a rolling chair. Evie lay back on the couch, propped her feet up, and rubbed her temples.

“Rough night?” Sam asked, perching on the edge of the desk.

“And how. Some fella brought in his wife’s handkerchief. He said he was worried that she was spending too much money shopping, but he was really worried that she was having an affair. He was right, by the way. The handkerchief came from her lover,” Evie said.

“Gee, what’d you tell him?”

“I told him she was spending a little too much money and that perhaps they should go out for dinner and dancing more often.” Evie let out a long exhale. “You wouldn’t believe the awful stuff I find out about people.”