I idled the ice cubes, around and around, clinkety clink. There was a slice of lime that kept getting crushed almost to death, before it popped right back to the surface, bright and green. I kind of appreciated its fortitude. “Jack, my darling,” I said, “you first of all have to understand how friendship works between women. It’s perfectly possible for me to see the duchess daily, to chin chin by day and chacha by evening, if you know what I mean, and not to know the least intimate thing about her.”

“Aw, now, you can’t fool me, Mrs. Randolph. I hear you two sit down nose to nose on the sofa all the time, trading all your secrets—”

“Nope.”

“I stand by my sources.”

“Oh, we cozy up and chatter, believe me. But you can talk for hours and hours to certain women, and never know them at all.” I tilted my glass toward him to illustrate my point. “And we’re both of us that kind of woman.”

Jack reached behind his own back and—without even looking—picked up the next glass in the row and began to wipe, just Jack standing there wiping behind his counter, while I drank my gin and tonic and collected perspiration in the crease of my legs.

I tried another tack. “It’s just business. Just business, between the duchess and me.”

“Just business between her and anybody, I hear.”

“You hear. You hear from whom?”

“From a lot of people.”

“You do a lot of listening, don’t you, Jack?”

He shrugged and replaced the glass. “That’s my job, Mrs. Randolph. I listen to people. Pour ’em a drink or two, maybe, but mostly listen.”

By now, I had sucked away most of what was useful in my glass. Only the ice remained, melting fast, and that poor, limp, defeated slice of lime. I nudged it with my finger, just an inch or two, and Jack—professional that he was—took the hint. Fresh ice, fresh lime, fresh gin, fresh tonic. The sides of the glass ran with condensation from the wet air.

“So tell me something I don’t know,” I said.

“See, that’s exactly nothing, Mrs. Randolph. You know almost as much as I do, these days.”

“I’m a gossip columnist. It’s my job.” I lift my finger to my lips. “Shhh.”

“Well, now.” He screwed up one eye and peered at the ceiling. “Say. Did you hear the one about the heiress who got herself hitched to a French count a couple weeks ago? Two days after her eighteenth birthday, yet.”