Call Me a Cab

31

“We’re the Chasens,” she said, half-turning in her seat so she could smile back at us as the Rolls rolled forward. “I’m Laura and this grim person at the wheel is Boyd.”

“Delighted, I’m sure,” said Boyd. In the rearview mirror his eyes seemed cheerful, not at all grim, behind round wire-framed glasses. As for what else I could see of him, his head was covered with a close-cropped layer of gray-white fuzz, his right shoulder was clad in pepper-and-salt tweed and his right ear was very clean. The car itself was lumpy and surprisingly small inside but comfortable, and smelled of oil and old leather.

“I’m Tom Fletcher,” I said, to Laura’s smiling face and Boyd’s clean ear, “and this is Katharine Scott.”

“There,” Laura Chasen said, nodding at her husband. “Didn’t I tell you, Boyd?”

“You certainly did, my dear.” Boyd seemed perpetually amused by his wife’s utterances.

Turning back to us, Laura said, “I knew you two weren’t married, by the way you were arguing.”

“We weren’t arguing,” I said.

“We were going for a walk,” Katharine explained. “In fact, I’m not even sure why we got into this car.”

“It’s my wife’s personality,” Boyd assured her, complacently. “People simply do whatever she tells them, and then afterwards wonder how they got into such godawful jams.”

“Now, don’t turn these sweet people against me, darling,” she said, in an offhand way, and leaned forward to take something out of the glove compartment, which she then extended over the back seat toward us. It was a smallish very attractive silver flask. “Care for a noggin?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

She turned her bright smile on Katharine. “It’s a martini,” she said. “Excellent, excellent martini. Of course, you have to imagine the onion.”

“Or the olive,” offered Boyd.

“Exactly.” Pleased, Laura patted Boyd’s pepper-and-salt shoulder, while saying to Katharine, “That’s the great advantage, you see, you can imagine it any way you want.”

“Even lemon peel,” suggested Boyd.

Laura made a face. “Absolutely not,” she said. “Boyd, I forbid you to imagine lemon peel.”

“Perhaps,” Boyd said, his eyes crinkling with pleasure in the rearview mirror, “I’ll imagine a big dollop of Rose’s Lime Juice.”

“Beastly man,” Laura said, and held out the flask to Katharine. “Pay no attention to the Neanderthal, my dear. Just imagine a perfect tiny white cocktail onion, and have a little sip of this.”

“It’s a bit early in the day for me,” Katharine said, hesitantly. I’d never seen her this tentative before. “I don’t think I’m ready to drink just yet,” she explained.

“Well,” Boyd said, “you’d better be ready when we get there.” Meantime, his wife was unscrewing the top from the flask.

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“Max’s,” he said.

Laura took a ladylike sip, and a faint, sweet not unpleasant aroma of gin floated in the air. I could smell no vermouth at all. Recapping the flask, she explained, “It’s a speak. Our favorite place in all the world.”

“A speak?” I didn’t get it. “You mean a speakeasy?”

“Let me warn you,” Boyd said, “nothing pleases my wife more than the debauchery of the young.”

I said, “I thought alcohol was legal in Colorado.”

“Oh, it is,” Laura said. “Max’s is across the state line, in Kansas.”

“There are still some counties in Kansas, I’m happy to say,” Boyd told us, “that keep the banner of Prohibition flying.”

“After all,” Laura said, “what’s the fun in drinking if it’s legal?” Showing me the flask again, she said, “Sure you won’t change your mind?”

When in Rome. “Well, maybe just a sip,” I said.

“Mind you don’t imagine lemon peel,” she said, handing me the flask. It was very cold to the touch.

“You go ahead, Tom,” Boyd said. “Your mind’s your own, you can imagine whatever you want.”

I imagined the vermouth.