the coat rack furs and overcoats. Ginger and Mimi stand smoking in evening gowns, curvy women with hair pulled back, blond and brunette.

"She's dating an artist," Ginger says.

"Is he hung like his paintings?" Mimi asks.

"He lives in a farmhouse and makes his own yoghurt."

"He's the one with the full body wax? Even his head?"

A waiter passes with spritzers, and Mimi plucks a glass from the tray. Ceiling fans stir smoke, dissolving the puffs like Ginger's fleeting desire for a child with Montango, the pediatrician and local theater donor she met in the lobby after her ex-husband's post-modern improvisational dance routine. Ginger feels a flutter in her belly, a daughter for first dances and waxing and company at the beach house.

"He had her smear herself with blue paint," Mimi says. "They did missionary, and he framed the sheets."

"It sounds like a smurf fantasy," Ginger says.

"It's like the South American post-consummation displaying of the marriage linens."

Mimi leaves her cigarette in the ashtray and digs through her purse. Burt and Russell nod from across the bar, and along the back wall, scarves on the coat rack