Free The Girl From Nowhere by Christopher Finch

that’s born of a raised consciousness, then looked back at Sandy again in disbelief. With a big smile, she introduced herself to everybody, offering her hand—which was duly clasped, if mostly rather limply. Everyone muttered “Hi” and Sandy responded with “Pleased to meet you.”
    I wanted to grab a table near the bar, but Sandy asked if we could sit in the one booth that was vacant. It would be much too close to Janice’s table for my comfort, but there was no way out of it. The Blue Mill was the kind of place where you could hear people’s conversations halfway across the room, but Janice’s coven had been stunned into silence—either that or they were all ears and hoping to snag juicy tidbits. Doubtless Sandy had been a fruitful topic of discussion at their meeting. The only saving grace in the situation was that they had been divvying up the tab when we arrived, so presumably were on their way out.
    “I love this place,” said Sandy.
    “It’s an old favorite,” I replied.
    “Did you used to come here with Janice?” she asked.
    I nodded.
    “That’s so sweet,” she said. “So this is almost a kind of a reunion. I really love this place. It has atmosphere. It reminds me of my favorite Paris restaurant—La Tourelle. Do you know it?”
    The only time I’d been to Paris was on my honeymoon. A disaster. Janice and I had a flaming fight on the terrace of Les Deux Magots, where she had insisted on going because she was expecting to clap eyes on Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and possibly bum a light from the Great Man’s Gauloise . I don’t recall what the fight was about, but it was loud. An elderly Yankee lady with jeweled glasses dangling around her neck on a gold chain had sashayed over to our table, slapped me across the face with the international edition of The Herald Tribune , and drawled through her dentures, “It’s gutter scum like you who give America a bad name.”
    “Sorry,” I told Sandy, “I’m not familiar with La Tourelle.”
    “Maybe I’ll take you there someday,” said Sandy.
    I seriously hoped nobody had overheard that. I couldn’t quite believe that I had heard it. What came next was worse. I changed the subject to movies, since that was part of my plan for the evening. Almost Sandy’s first utterance on the subject was, “I love The Sound of Music .I’ve seen it twenty-seven times, sixteen times in French.”
    Luckily, we were interrupted by the waiter. The Blue Mill had old-fashioned waiters in vests and aprons who might have stepped out of a painting by Degas. Sandy liked that.
    “You look so French,” she said.
    “I am French,” said the waiter, though the accent said Flatbush.
    Sandy ordered a vodka sour and I ordered a Scotch and soda. As the waiter headed for the bar, the woman in the tinted glasses, whose name I had learned was Eva, began talking to Victoria Schlesinger in French. My heart sank into the sewers and I begged the alligators down there to put me out of my misery. The women’s group had heard everything. Victoria laughed at whatever it was that Eva had said, then glanced over at Sandy. I saw the smile disappear rather briskly from Sandy’s lips, and her eyes turned to frost. She got up from the booth, walked over to the women’s table, leaned in toward Eva, and snarled in a voice that would have stripped the paint from a crosstown bus, “Salope!” Then she turned to face Victoria and spat out another single word, “Chienne!” After which she turned to Janice and said very daintily, “I’m disappointed. I thought you’d have nicer friends.”
    This was boss stuff. It compensated for the twenty-seven visits to The Sound of Music ,and made me pray that those lies Sandy had been telling me were of the little white variety . A couple of epithets were hurled her way, but only after the women had belatedly recovered from their initial shock, making their remarks toothless. By then Sandy was headed back to the booth with a fierce grin