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unnoticeable manner of waiters everywhere. He smiled his lopsided smile and said, “Back soon.”
    And he was. Goya’s kitchen must have cooks falling all over themselves.
    He placed her food on the table and straightened up, dangling the empty tray in his right hand. “We’re neighbors, Allie, so anything you need, you let me know.”
    Oh-oh, where was this going? She gave him her passionless, appraising stare. The same one she’d given the obese man with the sex magazine when their gazes met. Turn it off, buddy, whatever you’re thinking.
    “Not that kind of anything,” he assured her, smiling. He had long, skinny fingers that played nervously with the edge of the round tray. His nails were gnawed to the quick. “Don’t get me wrong.”
    Okay, so he wasn’t interested in her that way. Now she wondered, was he gay? She mentally jabbed herself for being so egotistical and unfair. Any man who wasn’t interested in going to bed with her on first meeting wasn’t necessarily gay. And there was something about this man she instinctively liked, but in the same platonic fashion in which he seemed to see her. “Okay, Graham, thanks for the offer. And if you ever need a thumbtack, knock on my door.”
    “Not many people at the Cody would say that. Most of us don’t even know each other and don’t want to meet.”
    “New York,” Allie said, dousing her French fries with catsup.
New York, like a disease
.
    “Most big cities, I’m afraid.”
    “Maybe, but it’s special here.”
    “Could be it is. Well, I better get moving—orders are piling up. Come in sometime when we’re not busy and we’ll talk.”
    She nodded, holding the catsup bottle still, and watched him smile and back away, moving among the tables toward the serving counter.
    Did he want something? Or was he simply as he’d presented himself? Was she being cynical? Everyone didn’t have an act, an ulterior motive and an angle, even in New York. She had her choice now: she could stop coming into Goya’s, or she could become a friend, or at least an acquaintance, of Graham Knox.
    She sampled the salad with the house dressing, and bit into the double burger. Graham was right, they were both delicious. And among the cheaper items on the menu. She decided what the hell, she could use a casual friend who didn’t clutter up her life with complications. Allie sensed that was all Graham wanted to be to her, someone she could talk to, and someone who’d listen if he felt compelled to talk. She almost laughed out loud at herself, thinking she could trust her instincts about people. She and Lisa.
    Allie wolfed down the rest of the salad and hamburger, then ate what was left of her fries more slowly.
    Afterward she ordered another Diet Pepsi and sat sipping it through a straw while most of the lunchtime crowd drifted outside. A vintage Beatles tune, “Strawberry Fields Forever,” came over the sound system. Softly. People came here to eat, not listen to music. It was one of Allie’s favorite Beatles numbers, so she leaned back, closed her eyes, and let it play over her mind. And she was thinking of Sam, trying not to cry.
    When Stevie Wonder took over, she opened her tear-clouded eyes and saw that Graham was staring curiously at her from the other side of the restaurant, like a confused terrier.
    Allie nodded to him and he looked away. Not ill at ease, but as if he didn’t want to cause her embarrassment.
    She slid her cool glass to the side and examined the classified columns of the newspapers she’d bought, laying each one flat on the table, not caring about the spreading damp spots from puddles left by her glass.
    She decided to call her ad into the
Times
. The other ads in their ‘Apartments to Share’ column seemed respectable enough—not placed by creeps or swingers trying to make contact. Abbreviations abounded in the small print: Single white female was, in the lexicon of the classified columns, ‘SWF.’ Also being sought to share ‘Apt W Pvt