“What’s the matter?” Stacy asked. “You haven’t touched your Rusty Nail. Although it’s beyond me how anyone can smell one, much less drink one.” She tapped her margarita glass. “Take it from me: if you don’t need a blender to make a drink, it ain’t a drink.”

“It’s…work. I apologize.” The Boss forced a smile. “I had been…um…looking forward to this evening. I don’t mean to…uh…what’s the colloquialism? Bring you down?”

“More like harsh my buzz. Don’t worry about it. Hey, if you’re having a bad day, we can bag the date. There’s always the weekend.”

“No, no. I enjoyed our time together last night and wanted to see you again.”

Stacy smiled at that. “Awww. You say the sweetest things. I, too, enjoyed our frantic anonymous sex.”

The Boss laughed out loud. “Stacy, for the love of—”

“Is it something you can tell me about?”

There was a long pause, followed by “It’s Caitlyn.”

The smile dropped away. “Oh. Well, good luck with that.”

“Yes, I imagine you don’t want to get in the middle. Unless…” His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “That’s not why you’re here, is it? To perhaps influence my handling of your friend?”

“Influence your handling? Ewwwww! God, I’m gonna need five more ’ritas just to get that mental picture out of my head.”

The Boss smiled. “I apologize.”

“Seriously, don’t do that! Yech. Besides, I’m here because I’m hoping to get more good lovin’, like last night.”

“Oh.”

“So there it is.”

“All right.”

“Also, I really like your suit. Do you have, like, fifty of them at home?”

“Trade secret.”

“Uh-huh.” She peered at him, then took a bite of her flounder and another sip of her drink. “Frankly, I don’t know what it is. You could not be less my type.”

“Too old?”

“Too white, pal. But there’s something about you…I just like being with you. I mean, the sex was great—”

“It was.”

“—but I liked the talking afterward just as much. And that’s, like, not very common with me.”

“Why is that?”

“Because most men start to snore about ten seconds after they come. So it kind of cuts the conversations down a little.”

“Men your age,” he said.

“Well, yeah.”

“I normally don’t have time for romantic assignations,” he admitted. “So to meet someone I wish to see again is a rare and wonderful thing.”

“What’s an assignation? Because it sounds scarily like assassination.”

“Tryst. Rendezvous.”

“Oh. Well, that’s okay. Maybe we should make a rule. We can talk about work but not about Caitlyn.”

“As you wish.”

“Although I will give you one piece of advice. Try backing off her. It works a lot better than the muscle, believe me.”

“All right.”

“And trust her. She’s really smart. She was the smartest person I ever met, before I met you.”

“Oh? I don’t know whether to be flattered or horrified.”

“Be flattered. But not too flattered. Don’t, like, let it go to your head or anything.”

“No, I won’t do that.” Pause. “She’s always done well with conventional testing.”

“Oh, yeah. Straight A’s in school, without hardly trying. So annoying. And she reads, like, all the time. And she’s, what d’you call it…eclectic! One time she came back from the library—it was so weird, I’ll never forget it—anyway, she had a true crime book, the latest Harry Potter book, something by Shakespeare, and Vogue.”

“That’s eclectic all right.”

“Yeah, anyway. Enough about her. We promised not to talk about her, right? Right. So, you’re just picking at that. I’ve got nachos and a bottle of twenty-year-old Scotch back at my place. Let’s book.”

The Boss laughed and tossed his napkin on the table. “Madam, I am at your disposal.”