Mrs. Pechter looked up at me through her bifocals and shook her head, pityingly.

“Was that your boyfriend? The one with the cockroach?”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“So what were you doing having dinner with him?”

Would this nightmare never end?

“Oh, look, there’s my cab!” I lied. “Gotta run. See you in class.”

I hurried outside, where the fog had now turned to an ugly drizzle. The cab, of course, was nowhere in sight.

The valet parkers whispered among themselves; obviously they’d heard about L’Affaire Cockroach. I guess they must have felt sorry for me, because one of them asked me if I’d like some coffee while I waited for my cab. I nodded gratefully, and minutes later, he came out with a styrofoam cup of coffee.

And as I stood there, huddled in the doorway, a well-heeled couple came walking by. The next thing I knew the man took out a ten-dollar bill and dropped it in my coffee cup.

Dear Lord. He thought I was a panhandler.

“Go get yourself a hot meal, honey,” he said. “There’s an Arby’s down the street.”

A perfect ending to a perfect night.

Chapter Twelve

I drove over to the Marina to meet Kandi for brunch the next morning, still fuming over my date with Tommy the Termite. Flashbacks from the evening kept playing in my brain like a trailer for a low-budget horror movie. I saw Ted chewing with his mouth full. I saw him snapping his fingers and calling the busboy “muchacho.” I saw the cockroach lying belly up in the crème brûlée. And, most humiliating, I saw Mrs. Pechter’s gorgeous grandson looking at me like I was something the cat burglar dragged in.

And to think, I had to pay two hundred dollars for all that fun.

Kandi was waiting for me on the patio of Tony P’s, a casual dockside restaurant, where she’d managed to nab a table with a spectacular view of the Marina. Last night’s fog had burned away and now the sun was shining on the million-dollar yachts, turning the scene into a picture postcard suitable for framing.

A storm cloud, however, was about to erupt on the horizon. Namely, me.

I stomped over to the table where Kandi sat, perky and carefree, sipping a Bloody Mary.

“Hi, honey,” she beamed, her eyes bright with excitement. “I ordered you a drink.”

I plopped into a chair, and glugged down some of the Bloody Mary waiting for me on my place-mat.

“So how’d it go last night?” she said, oblivious to my simmering rage. “I want to hear every detail.”

“No, you don’t,” I said, through gritted teeth.

“It wasn’t good?”

I laughed, a bitter laugh.

“I would’ve killed for merely ‘not good.’”

“What happened?”

“Let’s put it this way: Ted Lawson made The Blob look like George Clooney, Prince William and Denzel Washington rolled into one.”

“You poor thing.” She tsk-tsked sympathetically. “Tell Kandi all about it.”

And I did. I filled her in on every excruciating moment, from soup to nuts. The “nuts” being Ted.