Whistle Past the Graveyard [= Give the Girl a Gun]

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By now I should be used to the attention Fausta Moreni draws in public, for I have squired her across enough night-club floors amid the drooling of every male customer and the homicidal glares of every female. Yet as always when her passage turned every head, none of which so much as flicked a glance at me, I had to suppress an impulse to cross my eyes, put both thumbs in my ears and wiggle the fingers just to test my theory that she made me invisible.

Fausta’s own club, El Patio, was the scene of this gauntlet running, and we were on our way out. On the infrequent occasions we spent an evening together, they always start like that, for the stairs from Fausta’s apartment on the second floor of El Patio lead to a hall at the rear of the club, and in order to get out of the place you have to traverse the whole length of the dining room and one end of the cocktail lounge.

Fausta, also as always, dragged out our exit an unreasonable length of time by playing the hostess clear across the dining room. At every table we passed, she smiled at the customers and. dropped a gracious “Good evening.” When she knew a customer by name, which involved about every third table, she stopped for a moment’s chat. To my past bitter objection that when she took a night off, she ought to take it off completely, she always explained that devoting a few seconds of personal attention to her customers bred good will. But why a supper club which nightly turned away people without reservations required further good will, she has never explained to my satisfaction.

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