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?”