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bar, waiting for the maître d’ to find them tables. My mood was good to begin with, but the head turns and near leers from tanned guys in summer blazers as I cut through the crowd to the maître d’ made it soar.
    “I’m with the Fong party,” I announced. For the rest of my life: The Fong party. Debby Fong .
    “Ah, yes, the others are waiting for you,” the maître d’ said with a perfunctory dip from the waist, and led me to a table for four. See how they scrape!
    Frankie was in one of the two chairs that faced the wall. He was leaning forward, elbows on the tablecloth, listening to a young and very sexy Asian woman with long-lashed eyes and long black hair tell what must have been a joke. If this was Baby, then Baby was aptly named. She had a high, melodious voice, and she was saying, in an accent that sounded very much like Frankie’s had when he’d called me that first night from Kuala Lumpur or wherever, “There was a talking bird in a golden cage stranded with a deaf-and-dumb chap on a desert island …” I stopped behind Frankie’s chair, wanting to shout at Miss Asian Knockout: Hey, you can’t call a person dumb . Not in Saratoga. I confidently waited for Frankie to feel my presence before I spoke up, but he just hung on her every word, looking down her dress.
    “Hi!” I announced myself while the maître d’ hovered.
    Frankie scraped his chair back, and half rose to greet me, while the woman made a gesture with her hand that could have meant “Hello” or “Go away, don’t bother us.” The hand she waved was elegant: beautiful skin and delicate bones, set off by two large rings, one a huge black pearl and the other a heart-shaped sapphire. Asians must make the best “hands” models.
    Another Asian woman, shorter and older, and dressed in a Chanel suit, joined us. She held her hand out straight, each finger stiff with rings. “Ah, you must have walked in while I was in the loo!” She had a pale oval face powdered paler, and vigilant eyes under green-shadowed lids. Her scalp showed through her thin hair, but what hair there was was dyed a dead black. “That’s the trouble with middle age,” she rattled on in her loud, good-humored voice. “Bladder ruins welcomes you’ve planned to the last detail. Oh, you wouldn’t know, but you will. Where’s that darn gift? Frankie’s sung your praises, Miss DiMartino, hasn’t he, Ovidia? We have a present for you. But first I have to scoot around Frankie and find it in one of the shopping bags behind my chair. I know you must be in a rush to get away from the boss, Frankie’s such a slave driver, but it won’t take me a mo. Frankie, do they have that first-class champagne I like? Have you asked the waiter?”
    Ovidia stooped to rummage through the shopping bags at her feet. Frankie’s eyes followed. I caught Ovidia’s smile as she became aware of Frankie’s interest.
    “Look in the Harrods sack, dear,” Mrs. Fong encouraged.
    “That’s a pretty necklace,” Frankie muttered, his eyes on the pendant of pearls hanging from a gold chain just above Ovidia’s modest cleavage.
    “I’ll tell you what we brought you, Miss Di. You don’t mind if I shorten your name to Miss Di, names are so difficult. Anyway, if you’re like Cynthia, that wonderful girl Frankie’s got in KL, you probably hate surprises. Am I right?”
    “Frankie?” Let my mean fears be unjustified, I prayed.
    Ovidia straightened up just then. She held a prettily wrapped medium-sized box out to Baby, for Baby to hand in turn to me I guessed, but it was Frankie, and only Frankie, she was looking at.
    “Not that one,” Baby said.
    “Frankie?” I tried again.
    He smiled at Ovidia for a very long moment, then turned away, picked up the wine list. It hit me, like a mugger’s truncheon from behind on prime-time TV police shows: Frankie’d presented me to First Class Fong as a simple Saratoga secretary.
    “A handbag,” Baby stage-whispered, “because nobody doesn’t not