I didn’t know what she expected me to say. “You’ve changed the way you do your hair.” When she said nothing more, I added, “It’s very nice.”

Her face registered disbelief and consternation. It was an expression I’d seen on several women’s faces when I hadn’t understood that I’d done something incredibly wrong.

She gestured to her face and then her dress. “I do all this, make myself look ridiculous, and you still don’t recognize me?”

I was bewildered. She knew she looked dreadful? “Well, you’re, you’re Martha Prentice, of course,” I said.

She looked around the parking lot as if she desperately needed another woman to come and bear witness to my unspeakable stupidity. “No, I mean, from before. Here.”

“Here at the Claremont?” I fumbled. “You mean you saw me on the bandstand before I came to your home, or . . . I’m not sure what you—”

“We were lovers, you crumb,” she said quietly, but making no attempt to hide her bitterness. Her painted lips formed a straight line. “Maybe the word lovers is a little too kind. We did it together.” She nodded toward a parked car. “Where that maroon sedan is parked. In the rumble seat of my girlfriend’s new Ford.” She looked back at me. “It was only the one night. But you might have remembered.”

“I haven’t been at the Claremont in over twenty years, Mrs. Prentice.”

“That was when it was.” She laughed without humor. “And I think under the circumstances, you can call me Martha.” She smoothed out the dress with her hands. “I still fit into this pretty well, don’t I? A little tight in the waist, but even that . . .” She seemed so very hurt.

“I’m terribly sorry,” I said, meaning it. “I don’t remember. I did a lot of ambitious drinking at that time. Prohibition was just around the corner.”

“Yes, you drank a lot. It almost ruined your performance, but you came through in the end. Would that you hadn’t.”

I forced myself to a question for which I didn’t want an answer. “Were you a virgin, Martha?”

“Did you ‘ruin’ me?” Another short, nasty laugh. “No, I had at least five years on you. I suppose I was a virgin sometime in my life, but I certainly wasn’t by then. And you certainly weren’t, you little bastard. You went down the line of my friends like a pail of water in a bucket brigade.”

“Martha, are you sure you don’t have me confused with somebody else?”