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“You called,” Stanford Fortner Wells III said, “and I came.”

“So I see,” Louise said, and then ran across the room to him, and threw herself in his arms. “Oh, Daddy!”

When she let him go, she took a handkerchief from her purse and blew her nose loudly in it.

She looked at Peter. “Is my mascara running?”

He shook his head no.

She walked to him, and took the glass from his hand and took a large swallow.

“Peter and I have been having a pleasant chat,” Wells said.

“I’ll bet you have,” Louise said, as she handed the glass back. She pointed to the bowl of ice. “What’s with that?”

“It’s a bowl, with ice in it,” Peter said.

“What do you think that is?” she said, pointing to a large, square heavy crystal bowl on a sideboard.

Both Peter and her father shrugged.

“That’s an ice bowl,” she said. “I paid two hundred dollars for it. Where did you get that one?”

“Under the sink in the kitchen,” her father said.

“That figures,” she said. She went to the crystal bowl, moved it to the coffee table, dumped the ice from the cheap bowl into it, and then carried it into the kitchen. She returned in a moment with a small silver bowl full of cashews and a glass.

“Where were they?” her father asked. “All we could find was the crackers.”

“In the kitchen,” she said. She made herself a drink and then looked at them. “Gentlemen, be seated,” she said.

They sat down, Wells on the couch, Peter Wohl in an armchair.

“Well,” Louise said. “Now that we’re all here, what should we talk about?”

Wohl and her father chuckled.

“I thought the standard scenario in a situation like this was that the father was supposed to thrash the boyfriend within an inch of his life,” Louise said. “What happened, Daddy, did you see his gun?”

“No,” Wells said. “I just decided that a man who takes bubble baths can’t be all bad.”

“Bubble baths?” Louise asked.

“Oh, shit,” Peter said.

“When he answered the door, he had bubbles in his ears, all over his head,” Wells said. “You really don’t want to thrash a man with bubbles on him.”

Peter, grimacing, laughed deep in his throat. Wells grinned at him.

They like each other, Louise realized, and it pleased her.

“Tell me about the champagne in the sink,” Louise said.

Her father threw up his hands, signaling his innocence about that.

“I’m a scotch drinker, myself,” he said.

“Ooooh,” Louise cooed, “champagne for little ol’ me, Peter?”