of pink female underwear that could fairly be called capacious. "I thought I'd give them to
her. As a kind of joke, you understand."
"In a restaurant? Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"Discreetly, you know."
I held up the underpants with outstretched arms. They really were quite arrestingly
jumbo-sized. "If she doesn't like them, you can always use them as a ground sheet. Are
these--I have to ask-- are these this big as part of the joke or--
"Oh, she's a big woman," Katz said, and bounced his eyebrows again happily. He put
the pants neatly, reverently back in the bag. "Big woman."
So I dined alone at a place called the Coffee Mill Restaurant. It felt a little odd to be
without Katz after so many days of constant companionship, but agreeable as well, for the
same reason. I was eating a steak dinner, my book propped against a sugar shaker,
entirely content, when I glanced up to find Katz stalking towards me across the
restaurant, looking alarmed and furtive.
"Thank God I found you," he said, and took a seat opposite me in the booth. He was
sweating freely. "There's some guy looking for me."
"What're you talking about?"
"Beulah's husband."
"Beulah has a husband?"
"I know. It's a miracle. There can't be more than two people on the planet who'd be
willing to sleep with her and here we are both in the same town."
This was all going too fast for me. "I don't understand. What happened?"
"I was standing outside the fire station, you know, like we'd agreed, and a red pickup
truck screeches to a stop and this guy gets out looking real angry and saying he's
Beulah's old man and he wants to talk to me."
"So what did you do?"
"I ran. What do you think?"
"And he didn't catch you?"
"He weighed about 600 pounds. He wasn't exactly the sprinting type. More the shoot-
your-balls-off type. He's been cruising around for a half hour looking for me. I've been
running through backyards and crashing into clotheslines and all kinds of shit. I ended up
with some other guy chasing me because he thought I was a prowler. What the hell am I
supposed to do now, Bryson?"
"OK, first you stop talking to fat ladies in laundromats."
"Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah."
"Then I go out of here, see if the coast is clear, and give you a signal from the
window."
"Yeah? And then?"
"Then you walk very briskly back to the motel, with your hands over your balls, and
hope this guy doesn't spot you."
He was quiet a moment. "That's it? That's your best plan? That's your very best plan?"
"Have you got a better one?"
"No, but I didn't go to college for four years."