Brazil

Monday evening, on the sidewalk in front of the Town Hall theater, I turned and pulled out my smokes. An elegant young woman standing on the theater steps, dressed lightly this warm evening in a leopard print cocktail dress and strappy, open-toed pumps, extracted a Du Maurier from her small purse and motioned to me, asking for a light.

The first thin waves of exiting concert goers were filtering by us as I lit her cigarette, and the band, back in the hall, launched into the first of two or three encore numbers.

Dad and Julie had stayed behind in the theater to listen to the encore, while I dashed out in accord with our standard end-of-show tactic of getting a jump start on the exiting throng. Suppose I should have guessed usual habits wouldn’t apply to a Pink Martini performance.