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Show 15. The bar at the Deauville Hotel on Miami Beach was not known as a pickup bar. In those places some of the girls even had book made on them, with the odds, and suddenly on this night the whole game of scoring but not touching had revolted me. Probably only my puritan past. So when two girls did come in and take a table, I let my two friends hustle them without contesting it. I stayed at the bar. I looked into my drink so as not to face the mirror; I felt as if I'd looked into too many mirrors lately. I'd heard that Kate Cannon had married again and was living in Seattle, a guy she'd met there, and I wondered about that last night after her dinner. Why did she always seem so much older than I? I had turned nineteen two days after that night, the same age as she. But she'd lost a mother and was losing her father, she'd been married and had lost her baby, she had been getting a divorce. She had had the kind of experience which put her beyond me, now probably forever. And Liz Brown-the beautiful, angelic Elizabeth Brown had joined the Army as a WAC private, a common WAC. I was shocked. When I looked up a girl had taken the stool next to me and our eyes met in the mirror. Somehow we both turned to see the real face at the same time, then smiled together at the coincidence. "Hi. You surprised me." "You looked so deep in thought. Is this somebody's seat?" "It's all yours." "Good. It's the only one left." "Buy you a drink?" |
