Twilight Girl. Della Martin

is all right? My going to this place the way I look?”

      “That’s the nice thing about the twenny-eight. Anything goes. Rags, she’s this girl that owns the place, her an’ her girlfriend t’gether, she sometimes don’t dress. Other times, wow, she wears these real crazy clothes, like she has this p’ticular beatnik outfit. Black suede pants an’ shirt, kid—talk about crazy! She can afford clothes, the dough she makes. Half a buck fer Coke, same as beer—how ‘about that? But I don’ hold it against her. I seen her wear jeans plenny times. Not stuck-up or anything, kid. An’ hell! It’s about the on’y place around here the girls c’n dance.”

      The questions were stacked in layers at the back of Lon’s mind, but now there was time for only one. “Why do they call it that? 28%. That can’t be the address.”

      “Jest t’ show you how cute this Rags is. She read this book by some doctor, he took like a survey an’ in this book he claims twenny-eight per cent of women had somethin’ t’ do with some other woman sometime or other. So that’s the whole idea behind why Rags named the club that. Cute?”

      The question left Lon as confused as before—repelled by her own raw ignorance yet fascinated by the need for answers. She drove the remaining blocks with the self-assured recklessness peculiar to drivers who can take their car apart and put it back together again. She drove harshly, yet floated on with the promised delights of the club named to honor a statistic. And breathed the delicate air of Parma violets.