Just then the operator came on the line and told me to deposit more coins and Mr. Tartikoff said, “Don, are you calling from a pay phone?”

I confessed that I was and he asked if there was some way we might talk in person, so I gave him the address and shortly thereafter a big limo pulled up and Mr. Tartikoff entered and put his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Is there a Don Singleton here?” and I said, “Yes, that’s me.”

We shook hands and he looked around and he said, “Say, Don, this place is really damp. What do you say we go some-place else?”

He said he’d been invited to a big celebrity party and asked would I like to come along and I thought about it for about, ha ha, two seconds and said sure. Then his driver opened the door and we got into the limousine and on the way to the party Mr. Tartikoff, Brandon, asked me questions about my life.

He poured us each a glass of scotch from the bar and studied me and said, “What are you, Don — about thirty-five years old?”

“Thirty-six.”

“Have you ever worked?”

I told him I’d worked almost four years as a dishwasher at the K&W Cafeteria. I worked there from the age of seventeen until I was twenty-one, when I got fired for spitting in the food.

“They fired you for that?” Brandon said. “That’s crazy. Why, everyone I know spits in things all the time.” He spit into his glass and drank it. “That’s no reason to fire anyone for God’s sake.”

Then I spit on my fingers and leaned over and rubbed it into the driver’s neck.

Brandon looked at me then and said, “I’ve got a feeling about you, Don — a good one,” and we chinked our glasses in a toast.

At about this time, the limousine turned off the road and we headed up a long tree-lined driveway, up to a big mansion with white columns and stained-glass windows and a shallow moat filled with swans and turtles and someone came and opened the limo door and I looked up and saw Barbara Streisand and she was wearing . . . well, the exact same thing she’s wearing tonight as a matter of fact. She and Brandon embraced and then she turned to me and raised her eyebrows like, “Who the heck is this?” Brandon told Barbara Streisand that my name was Don and that I used to wash dishes at K&W Cafeteria and, ha ha, I tell you, Barbara Streisand just couldn’t ask enough questions.