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think.
    “Somehow you don’t seem the type,” I said.
    “Which type is that?”
    “Bartender type.”
    “Is that it? You don’t trust lady bartenders?”
    “Can you make a gimlet?”
    “Can I make a gimlet? Gin or vodka?”
    “Gin. Make yourself something, too.”
    She went away and made a gin gimlet for me and something for herself and I sat wondering how I could ever have failed to recognize that voice on the phone earlier today. Sometimes the full timbre of a voice is lost over the wires. On the phone hers had seemed pleasant, sultry, but that’s all. Here, now, in person, I was reminded of how haunting that baritone but in no way masculine voice of hers had seemed to me when I was first hearing it, memorizing it, learning to pick it out from the giggly crowd down round the pool at the Beach Shore. It was a voice I should have recognized, even though tonight was my first conversation with her.
    She brought me the gimlet and I sipped it and nodded approval.
    She sipped the Manhattan she’d made herself and said, “I know you from someplace.”
    Well, now.
    “Shouldn’t that be my line?” I said.
    She gave me that earthy smile again, the gums showing, but attractive as hell. “Maybe so. You a regular here?”
    “No. I’m from out of town. Why? Are you new?”
    “New? Not exactly. This is my first night on the job at the Barn, if that’s what you mean. But new I’m definitely not. Hey, I do know you from someplace. Really. “
    “I talked to you on the phone this afternoon.”
    “Oh, yes! I gave you directions.”
    “Pretty damn good ones, too, for a first-nighter.”
    “Well. I just got here this morning myself, came by way of Des Moines like you did, so it was all pretty fresh in my mind.”
    A waitress with short blond hair, an attractive pout, and perky little breasts that poked at her barn red sweater came up alongside me and said to Lucille (as Glenna Cole was calling herself here), “I hate to bust up this budding romance, but I got a couple dozen booze-happy cardplayers who’d be happy to get the couple dozen drinks you’re supposed to be making.”
    “I’ll get right on it,” Lucille said. But those oriental eyes said Go fuck yourself.
    Which didn’t in the least bother the pouty blond waitress, who parked herself on the stool next to me while the drinks were getting made.
    “You got a smoke?” she said.
    “No,” I said.
    “I’ll do you a favor sometime,” she said, and moved over a stool.
    I nursed my gimlet.
    “Hey,” I said, after a while.
    The pouty blonde, not looking, said, “You talking to me?”
    “Yeah. Tell me something.”
    “Such as.”
    “Who’s that big guy that’s been circulating all evening?”
    A guy about fifty, a young-looking and healthy fifty at that, several inches over six foot, shortcropped white hair, modest pot belly, craggy good looks, had been winding through the tables incessantly as long as I’d been there, though he never would butt in, never made conversation unless a player at a table began it, a constant presence in the room without being obnoxious about it. And though he wore a conservative but well-tailored suit with a solid-color blue tie, he had a rugged look that fit right in with the image the Barn sought.
    “Why don’t you take a great big guess and see if you just can’t figure it out yourself?”
    “He runs the place.”
    “He owns it, too.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “Tree.”
    “What?”
    “Tree, I said. Frank Tree.”
    “Is that a real name?”
    “How should I know? Ask Mr. Tree.”
    “You still want a smoke?”
    “Sure.”
    I got a buck out and wadded it up and tossed it down the counter in front of her.
    “Buy yourself a couple packs,” I said.
    She turned her nose up at the wadded-up buck. Then she put it in her denims.
    Meanwhile, Lucille was on her way back with a tray full of drinks. One of the drinks was another gimlet for me; the rest of the tray went with the pouty waitress out into the room of