“Long story,” she said. “Can we go?”

On Lexington Avenue, people were gliding through the warm, windy evening, rushing to go home or out for a night on the town.

Glenna said, “Let’s eat at the Fickle Fox, East. It’s on Twenty-Third. A friend owns it. Roland.”

“Roland?” I echoed, wishing she’d said Suzy or Jane.

As I hailed a cab, Glenna unbuttoned her pink cardigan. She was wearing a lilac tube top underneath, and her midriff was still as sleek as a stripper’s.

“The taxi,” she said, grinning. “You can look later.” Mercifully she added, “Roland’s not what you think.”

In the cab, Glenna told me that the Fickle Fox, East, was named after a popular hangout in San Francisco, which meant nothing to me until we entered the restaurant with its baroque wine-and-gold floral carpet and drapes, gilt-edged mirrors, and a mural of a bedroom-eyed Oscar Wilde standing in a fur-collared overcoat and holding out a pearl-handled walking stick as if he were about to part the Red Sea. At the tables, nattily dressed older men were sampling food from each other’s plate and toasting friends as though they were at the nightly feeding of a fraternity.

“Glenna, what’s this?”

“A wrinkle restaurant.”

“A wrinkle restaurant?”

“An eating establishment for aging homosexuals,” she said just as a slim young man, with a frothy copper shag and an armful of menu boards, hurried toward us.

“Glenna! Oh, Glenna!” he called. “You’re here!”

“Roland!” Glenna said. “The restaurant is incredible!”

He bussed her like a Frenchman. “Everyone loves the Wilde,” he said, leading us between the tables. “I was in the gallery to see Hildegard about another mural, but she’s such a queen bitch about money. Glenna, you must speak with her.”

The booth was in a secluded corner, and I guessed that this was where Roland hid the heterosexuals. He handed us menus. “All right, children, what would we like to drink?”

“To Hell with Swords and Garter,” said Glenna.

“What’s that?” I asked, irritated that she hadn’t requested her standard gin and tonic.

Roland replied, “It’s her usual: scotch, vermouth, and pineapple juice. Care to try one?”

“I’ll pass,” I said, reluctant to sample a drink that sounded like a line from the Prince Valiant comic strip. I was also put out that Roland knew something of Glenna I didn’t and annoyed at myself for being so childish. I asked for a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks, and as Roland took off, he said, “Don’t forget, Glenna. You speak to Hildegard.”

“Hildegard?” I said.

“Hildi’s my roommate and owns the gallery where I work. She’s from Switzerland.”

“You work in an art gallery?” I asked, stunned, recalling how driven Glenna had been in med school. “You’re not a doctor?”

“Technically, I am,” she said, poring over her menu as if attempting to decipher Sanskrit. “I graduated P and S in May while you were at that fort.”

Roland brought the drinks. “Decided yet, children?”

I smiled. There was one thing he didn’t know about Glenna: he hadn’t given her an hour to make up her mind. Flustered, she thrust the menu at Roland. “You choose.”