"'The Scarlet Bitch?'" He just smiled at that. While she was speaking and Eddie was listening, he reached out to take hold of the bottle of wine and pull it back to him. Eddie removed the foil and then grabbed the wine opener he'd brought, beginning to screw into the cork with an ease and secondhand nature that made it easy for him to listen to her at the same time, and then to speak.

"There's nothing wrong with talking about the work you put into looking good if you do it in the right way. It's the reveal of the anxiety you want to avoid. Telling a man you spent an hour or two looking good for him shows interest and it will excite him. Telling him you were so nervous it took you an hour to decide what to wear? I guess it could depend on how you play it. A lot of guys find clumsiness and that kind of passivity attractive, but I get the impression that's not really the kind of guy you want. If you really want someone to see you on equal footing, you just need to hide that a little bit."

There was a loud 'pop' and Eddie set the corkscrew, with cork attached, down onto the blanket. Then he lifted the two glasses with his other hand, stems between his fingers, and poured them each a half a glass.

"That's really good that you got a warden you like and can trust. I think that's important. Has he been treating you well?"