"I beg your pardon?"
"I said I know about you and the-young soldier."
Not very much. John is a Marine, not a soldier.
"And I said, 'I beg your pardon?' "
"Honey..."
"Don't you call me 'Honey,' you sonofabitch!"
"Sorry."
He took a swallow of his drink.
"Barbara, you're well known in Philadelphia," he said.
"You must have known that someone would see you, recognize you..."
Great, now I will be known as the Whore of Babylon as well as Poor Barbara, whose husband dumped her for young Cutesy-poo.
"I have no idea what you're talking about. Who saw me? What soldier?"
"The young one," he said. "The one you had dinner with two nights ago in the restaurant in the Warwick."
"God," she heard herself say, "people have such filthy minds!"
"I don't understand that," Howard said.
"I'm guilty, Howard. I did have dinner in the Warwick two nights ago. But he's not a soldier. He's a Marine."
"What's the difference?"
"In this case, the difference is I'm nearly old enough to be his mother."
"You're not that old," he said. "You're thirty-eight."
Thirty-six, Goddamn you!
"I had dinner with Bill Marston's nephew, Johnny Moore. He's a sergeant in the Marines and about to go overseas, since you seem so hungry for the sordid details. And if I had had him when I was eighteen, I would be old enough to be his mother. He's eighteen. Or maybe nineteen."
"How did that come about?"
"I don't even know why I'm discussing this with you," Barbara said. "You have given up any right to question anything I do. I would love to know who carried this obscene gossip to you, though."
"Friends," he said.
"Some friends!"
"The same friends who have been telling me all along that I was making an ass of myself with Louise," Howard said.
She met his eyes.
"Tell me about this... young man, Barbara."
"I'll be damned! What if I said, 'tell me about Louise, Howard'?"
"Then I would say it's all over," he said.
"Since when?"
"Since about nine o'clock this morning," Howard said. "I told her I was going to see you, and she said if I came over here, it was all over between us. And... here I am."
"You've been trying to find me all day?"
He nodded.
After a moment, Barbara asked, "What did you think you were going to do here?"
"I realize that I've hurt you, Barbara..."
"Huh!" she snorted.
"I didn't want you to hurt yourself."
She exhaled audibly.
"With... my young man, you mean?"
He nodded.
"Bill Marston found out that Johnny's father was-I don't know how to put this-fooling around with Johnny's trust fund."
"His father? Who's his father?"
"The Reverend John Wesley Moore," Barbara said. "He's with that Methodist Missions thing. What do they call it? The Harris Methodist Missions to the Unchurched, something like that."
"The missionaries, right? In the Orient someplace?"
"Right."
"What about it?"
"Bill Marston found out that Johnny's father had not turned over a trust fund from his grandparents to the boy. So, since the boy is on his way overseas, he decided he had to tell him. And did."
"The father, the minister, was stealing the kid's money?" Howard asked.