'You are a dope.'
'I don't know. I think I have something.'
He had spent all this money on dinner. Champagne, caviar, foie gras... And she implied that it had been wasteful. Perhaps implying too that the money would have been better spent on a dress for her, maybe shoes. Earrings, perhaps?
'Oh, yeah?' she asks. Not unkindly.
'Recollections...Dreams of good times. Memories.'
'You are a dope,' she says good-naturedly. And punches his upper arm very lightly.
And so he has a pang. He is...panged.
But she is not to know. All it is, he wishes she hadn't said it quite that way. She reminds him of his wife those many years ago, when his wife wasted champagne by the bucket. And then he tipped the taxi driver a tip more than his wife could stand, never mind all the champagne his wife had wasted. And his wife had called him a dope.
Ins and Outs on the Ups and Downs that include some Notes on the Cut, Thrust and Parry that is part of the Great Game--Sexual Politics. And encompassing too Single Men and Women and the Pleasures of Youth.
