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fait accompli, Lois’s father stopped taking her telephone calls.
    For about a week.
    Oh, Dad, she groaned long-distance, don’t be such a worrywart. Real people don’t live in hotels.
    Your voice sounds husky—have you been smoking?
    Of course not, she told him, quickly rubbing out a Lucky Strike.
    And I hope to God you haven’t started drinking.
    Nope, she said, popping the p and then leaning over to peer into her cocktail shaker, chagrined to find it empty.
    Lois, is that a jazz record I hear?
    It’s coming from the building across the way, Dad, she said, carefully lifting the phonograph needle off Fletcher Henderson’s version of “Limehouse Blues.” There, she said, I’ve closed the window.
    Now, you have to promise me you won’t let any men into your apartment.
    Never, Lois said, meaning I’d never promise you that, then she pointed sternly at Willi Berg sprawled on the divan in his undershirt and boxer shorts, pointing at him so he wouldn’t dare bellow something like Baby, we’re out of gin.
    I expect you to be a good girl, Lois, and behave yourself, said Captain Lane. I’m counting on that.
    I won’t let you down, Daddy.
    And in her heart of hearts she hadn’t. Maybe she drank a little, sometimes a little more than she ought to, but she could handle it. She never got stewed. Well. Once or twice. But the morning after she always remembered everything she’d done and said. And she smoked cigarettes, yes, but not every single day. Mostly she mooched, so that didn’t count. And she bought records and danced to them, but how was that letting anyone down, even a retired captain in the U.S. Marine Corps? And she never allowed Willi Berg to sleep in her bed. At least not overnight. She was still a good girl. Her conscience was clear. But she was a modern girl too. And she liked being modern, being aware, being curious, unafraid of the new or the exotic (Willi was Jewish!). And one of these days those same qualities would get her what she fully meant to have: her own byline, her own column, in one of the big dailies. If Dorothy Kilgallen, that old sourpuss, could do it, then Lois Lane, pretty and smart and clever and talented, could do it too. Even Willi Berg, who was such a cynic—even he said complimentary things about her news stories, which, okay, were only class assignments, not the real McCoy, but still, good is good, correct? Good is good.
    2
    “You call this good?” Willi is saying now. “What’s with ‘incalculable’? ‘The fire damage is incalculable ’?” He tosses her class assignment down on the kitchen table. “Honey, the fire damage is ten thousand bucks or it’s ten million, but it ain’t never ‘incalculable’!”
    “All right,” says Lois, “point taken. But what do you think of the story overall?”
    “Dull. Dull, sister, dull.”
    “I hate you, you know that?” Does she really need a boyfriend? Does she really need this one?
    “Got any dessert?”
    “There’s still some bread pudding, I think.”
    “From the other night? Don’t you have anything fresh?”
    At the sink counter she’s been drying dinner plates (they had macaroni and cheese, light on the cheese) when a sudden impulse prevails upon Lois to smack Willi in the head with the wet dish towel.
    Now she reaches over and into his shirt pocket, helping herself to his package of Chiclets gum.
    “You could ask,” he says.
    She sticks out her tongue.
    “But speaking of asking,” he says, “I got to ask you a big favor.”
    “Oh, no . . .”
    “I’ll pay you back tomorrow, I swear.”
    “How much?”
    “Thirty.”
    “Rain on that! Where am I supposed to come up with thirty bucks? When I can’t meet the rent, thanks to your flat-leaving old girlfriend.”
    “Skinny Simon is not my old girlfriend, she’s just a friend. Number one. Number two, it was your decision not to find another roommate. And number three, you shouldn’t blame the poor thing for falling in love—I never blamed you.”
    “The