“No, Raymond Michael Sherwood, out to the West Coast for the first time in your life, hottest young saxophone player in town. The joke about you back then was that a long line of women were waiting for your services, but at least the line moved fast. You drank like there was no tomorrow, and talked about how you couldn’t wait to go back to New York to enter some fancy music school.” She stared at me, stunned by my lack of recall. “You still don’t remember me? You showed me one of your most cherished possessions, or did you do that with every girl? I had the idea you didn’t.”

I ventured cautiously, “What was it?”

“A broken clarinet reed. Autographed by someone named Sid something or other. I’d never heard of him, but you seemed pretty impressed about who he was. I hadn’t ever seen a clarinet reed up close. The maker was something like Van Dyck. Their name was in blue ink. The signature was in a darker shade of blue from a fountain pen. Sid something.”

“Sidney Bechet,” I said soberly.

I removed my wallet from my hip pocket, opened it, and withdrew a small pharmacy envelope that was hidden away between the billfold and my driver’s license. From the envelope, I extracted a number three Van Doren reed, its tip broken like the jagged outline of a mountain range. On the back of the reed was written, in fountain pen, Sidney Bechet, and below that 1917. “I was fifteen when he gave it to me back in New York. Talked my way into the Savannah Club in Harlem to hear him play.”

I openly studied her face, seeing her in a new light even as the sky grew ominously dark. Take twenty years from her, fill her with giggle water until she’s juiced, let an honest smile cross her features, and yes, she might have been one of my conquests back then.

“I understand that you might dislike me,” I said.

“Oh, you’re much too kind to yourself,” she said, taking a Pall Mall from the clutch bag she carried.

I was sure I hadn’t forced her to do anything; I at least knew that about myself, no matter how much I’d had to drink. We had both been young and wild. There really was a limit to how many pounds of flesh she should be entitled to extract from me.

“Is this why you stuck that carving fork into me at dinner the other night?” I said coolly. “To get back at me?”

She laughed the first honest laugh I’d heard from her lips. “No, you dimwit. I did it to get your blood. And I got plenty, on your shirt, on the napkin I held against you, off the fork when I cleaned it.”