Kate rubbed her hands together. “I’m ready.”

Elsie caught Dave’s eye. “I’d hate to see her at a racetrack. She’d be running along the rail ahead of the horses.”

At eleven o’clock everyone filed out of the auditorium into the cold night air. Kate took a deep breath and looped her arm through Dave’s. “All right, now what do we do? I won twelve dollars! Let’s blow the whole wad on pizza.”

“Past my bedtime,” Elsie said. “I gotta get my beauty rest, or I won’t be able to make any of them grease burgers tomorrow.”

Dave grinned down at Kate. “We can drop Elsie off and do whatever you want.”

Kate unconsciously hugged against him. “I want a pizza. Double cheese, pepperoni, onions, green pepper, sausage, and mushrooms. And I want to drive,” she said, giving Dave’s arm a squeeze. “I’ve never driven a flashy car like this.”

If she’d asked him for the moon, he’d have tried to get it for her. Tomorrow he’d buy her a Porsche. Hell, he’d buy her three to make sure she got the color she wanted. And if she smiled at him like that one more time, he’d go sailing over Washington like a helium balloon. There was real hope for them. Any woman who could get so excited over winning a bingo game could understand the value of Etch A Sketch… another of his favorite toys. He handed her the keys and walked around to the passenger side, thinking they might name their firstborn B16.

Elsie was waiting for him. “Go ahead and get in,” she said.

He bowed in courtly fashion. “After you.”

“The hell with ‘after you.’ I’m not sitting with that gearshift stuck between my legs. I’m an old lady. I’ve got some dignity.”

Kate was already behind the wheel. She hit the button to go top down and blew the horn. “Come on, you two, stop arguing and get in.”

He was a man who read comic books, and he knew when the Acme safe was about to score a direct hit on Wile E. Coyote. He heard it now, whistling in the air above his head. He’d been had.

Elsie and Kate could have crammed themselves in the little back seat but he sure as heck couldn’t.

He climbed onto the console and tried to stay calm while the engine purred to life. Nothing to worry about, he told himself. It was a short ride. How bad could it get?