“Okay, good,” he said, not really sounding pleased. “She must have liked you.”

“I guess so.”

It was about two months back. He’d just wrapped production on a movie and was chillin’ in town. He’d met me at the Sony on Sixty-eighth Street with Medina, aka Beatrice. She was petite, with skin the color of a ripe tangerine. She wore outrageously high black platform boots—the kind Japanese tourists usually sport—and a flimsy beige dress under a snazzy leather coat. In her hair were two decorative beige barrettes. Her eyes were slanted and framed with dark eyeliner. Her lips, moistened by red lipstick, seemed to go on forever. Though probably twenty-six, she radiated a baby-doll sexiness I liked. That night she eyed me carefully, pulling me in with her gaze. Desire me, her eyes ordered, and I obeyed.

Somehow Beatrice ended up sitting between Walter and me. The protocol for your man and his date is that he sits in the middle. At first that didn’t seem important. Not until Walter got a page on his two-way and left to make a call in the lobby. Nothing should have happened. I was attracted to her, but I wasn’t gonna kick it to my man’s date. All I did was lean over and say something innocuous to her about “too many commercials and not enough trailers.” She responded by brushing my knee with her hand and then letting it rest there. I covered it with mine and then, impulsively, brought them to my lips and kissed her fingers. She took her hand out of mine and, using both hands, held my face.

Wordlessly, we tongued each other as images of coming blockbusters flicked across our faces. I hadn’t known this girl more than ten minutes, and we’d made this quick, curious connection. Maybe it was because we both knew that Walter had a high-profile girlfriend. Maybe we just felt like being naughty. I wondered what the people behind us were thinking.

By the time Walter came back with his arms full of bottled water and a huge bag of buttered popcorn, our lips had parted. But despite Walter’s presence in the darkened theater, I still let a hand rest on her thigh, and she’d brush it even as Walter chuckled at Eddie Murphy’s latest. When he went to the restroom, about halfway through the movie, Beatrice whispered her real name to me along with her number, but alas, all I could recall later was her warm breath on my ear.

After the movie Walter, not an unperceptive man, gave me a hug and then whisked her away in a taxi while I went home with a very hard dick.

“So, you’re meeting her, huh?” I said, feeling jealous. “Sounds like fun to me.”

“Oh, Dwayne, that’s not all. She’s bringing her lover to meet me.”

“Who, based on your grin, is a female.”