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Not that there’s any chance of my getting into her pants under any circumstance.

Think changing muddy tank tracks and bogie wheels, Stupid!

“Corn on the cob,” Elsa said. “What’s that?”

“It’s what it says—corn, which comes out of the field, on the cob.”

He mimed eating from a corncob.

“I tried that twice,” she said. “Both times on my honeymoon. First in Vienna and then again in Budapest. It was terrible. Tough.”

“Well, this corn on the cob comes from the States. Frozen. It’s tender and delicious.”

She looked him in the eyes and nodded.

“All right, I’ll trust you,” Elsa said, and took another tiny sip of her Jack Daniel’s.

—

“That’s enormous,” she said, when her medium-rare Porterhouse steak was placed before her.

As hungry as she has to be, it’ll probably be gone in two minutes.

Fifteen minutes later, by which time Cronley had devoured all of the filet mignon, three-quarters of the Kansas City filet, most of the baked potato, two ears of corn on the cob, and enough of his Jack Daniel’s to permit him to raise it over his head as a signal he wanted a refill, Elsa had eaten only a tiny portion of her filet mignon, and maybe two small mouthfuls of kernels from her corncob.

“You don’t like the steak?” he asked. “Or the corn?”

“Oh, it’s wonderful,” she said, and then understood why he had asked.

“Jimmy,” she said, meeting his eyes, “have you ever been hungry, very hungry, for days at a time?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, I haven’t.”

“Well, when that happens, and then you suddenly come upon all the food you want to eat, and you eat your fill, then you suddenly become very ill.”

“I didn’t think about that,” Jimmy said, visibly embarrassed.

“It’s okay. It’s just that what you learn to do when you’ve been very hungry for a week or ten days, and then a feast like this is put before you, is to take tiny bites, and chew them slowly and very well.”

“I guess I’m stupid.”

“Naïve. Not stupid. There’s a big difference.”

The waiter delivered two Jack Daniel’s doubles on the rocks.

He looked at her glass. It wasn’t empty—but close.

She must have been sipping steadily and I didn’t notice.

She looked at the new drinks.

“Well, I guess I better finish the first one, hadn’t I?” Elsa said.

Before he could object, she did so.

“Elsa, watch it. That was a double. It’ll—”

“Thank you. I appreciate your concern.”