“What do you mean?” I answered him now, pulling my hands away, reaching for another towel to dry my hair. “Of course it’s what I want. What should I want? They’re my babies. They’re my family. They’re all I have.”

“You need someone to love. Someone to sleep with. You’re a Pisces, Dee. You have to have a lover.”

“Well, it won’t be Malcolm Martin. I’d rather never do it again than get pregnant. That abortion was so wonderful. I’d like to have one every day. I’d get married again if I could marry Dr. Van Zandt.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to set you off. I know you had a bad time. Well, get dressed and meet me in the bar. Let’s have a drink, for God’s sake. Come on, Dee, it’s over now. Let me see you smile.” He tucked his chin and smiled out at me over the steel-rimmed glasses he had procured in England from the National Health Service. I started getting tickled. Also, I started thinking about gin martinis. As always, in his presence my resolve not to drink melted like snow in July.

I went down to the dressing room and put on my clothes and combed my wet chlorinated hair and went upstairs and met him in the bar and we ordered martinis on the rocks. We were sitting side by side on the bar stools way down at the end of the bar by the slot machine. “Irise hit the jackpot the first time she ever put a quarter in it,” Charles William said. “She has never played it since. She wouldn’t even put a quarter back in after she won. She wouldn’t put in the obligatory quarter.”

“My God. That’s perfect. That’s her perfect personality. That’s exactly what she would do.”

“I put it in for her. Sissy was here and May Garth. Twenty people saw it. She stuck one quarter in. The machine had only been out here about a week and she hit the jackpot. Quarters were rolling out everywhere. There was a golf tournament and the bar was packed and everyone was picking them up and handing them to her.”

“How much was it?” The bartender had put the martinis down in front of us. I picked up my olive and ate it. I raised my glass. “To us. For living to be here. Thank God you’re here.” Charles William raised his glass and touched mine with it and we began to drink.

“It was two hundred and seventy-four dollars and fifty cents. She stacked it all up on the bar and left it there for hours. We were having drinks before dinner. She left it there until we got ready to leave. Then she put it in a sack and took it home. I don’t know what she did with it. I never asked her.”