He Was Her Man by Sarah Shankman

ma’am?”
    Sam looked up into the face of a young blond waitress. Another goddam dewy blonde, just like Harry’s, with the kind of flesh, you touch it, it springs right back.
    And the words were right there, on the tip of her tongue: Black Jack on the rocks with a side of water.
    “Check, please,” she said.
    Then she held onto the edge of the curved ebony and shut her eyes tight. She’d been joking with herself, of course. She didn’t really want a drink. So why was she trembling, head to toe?
    She was shaking because she knew that old devil Mr. Booze was always lurking around the corner. He always had been, he always would be. Oh, sure, months passed that she didn’t even get a whiff of him, his breath that at first smelled like perfume. Whispering promises, Oh, Lordy, hon, don’t you know how that drink would feel? Soooo good.
    She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. The lady in blue velvet was watching her, even as she sang. She gave Sam a slow wink. Was the lady a friend of Bill W’s, too, another recovering drunk? Or did she just know a woman in trouble when she saw one? A woman who played piano in public rooms for a living was bound to have seen everything once.
    Sam fiddled with her swizzle stick. She didn’t even smoke anymore, and what she’d give for a cigarette right now. But the nicotine had been even harder to kick than the booze.
    And Harry? How hard was it going to be to kick him?
    Enough. That night was history. She was going to her room. Lights out. But where the hell was her check? She stood. Where was that blonde?
    She searched the room, her gaze sweeping the tables around the dance floor, the bar, then up the curving stairway of gold that rose from the Palace’s lobby to the mezzanine above. At the top of the stairway stood a pretty redhead with a short boyish bob, who not only caught her attention, but wouldn’t let go.
    Now this was a woman who knew how to make an entrance, who paused for a count of 10 on the landing, slowly scanning. For whom? wondered Sam. Or was she just letting the room take her in: the black suede pumps, the simple black velvet dinner suit, the fitted jacket unbuttoned just enough to show her pearls, diamond solitaire ear studs. Sam particularly liked the little black sequined evening cap with the wisp of wide net that touched the tip of her nose.
    Mickey was fond of it, too. The cap was the kind of cute touch that the Professor had loved.
    Sam watched the woman’s trim ankles scissor down the stairs. Then with a slow sashay, but not too much, she crossed the room and headed toward a table for two just to Sam’s right that was emptying even now as she approached.
    The lady had probably had good parking karma, too. Sam, still waiting for that check, watched the redhead place her jet beaded evening bag on the empty chair and order a mineral water in a low pleasant Southern voice. She was polite to her waiter, who had eyes only for her, avoiding Sam’s salute.
    The lady had a pretty smile, too, which she bestowed on the gray-haired cigar-smoking sport who, in half a minute, moseyed his chair right over from his table to hers. He looked like a Texan, or a playlike Texan in an expensive Western-tailored suit and alligator cowboy boots.
    Sam eavesdropped, as any good reporter would—even a former reporter couldn’t resist the old habit—while the man, who introduced himself as Slim, talked of south Texas and goddam, beg your pardon ma’am, spring rains nearly flooding them out, the oil bidness, the godawful silly party downstairs in the ballroom his wife had dragged him to. Sam tipped her glass to that. He spoke of the salutary effects of single malt Scotch following a bath and massage, and wondered what a pretty lady, whose name it turned out was Mickey, might be doing by her lonesome in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
    Sam bristled. Was it against the law for a woman to go out in public alone? Lots of women did it, you know. Some by choice. Some by have to.
    But this