Swin walked out of the room chuckling to herself and almost immediately ran into Ruth, who was apparently trying to get to the bathroom. "I wouldn't do that," she warned the center. "Diana saw Sue in the sexy jeans. After a whole lot of pointless conversation, they went into the bathroom, where I'm pretty sure by now that Diana is seeing Sue out of the sexy jeans."

"Ah. Okay. No, I don't think walking in on Sue and Diana would be a good idea. I'd blush too much, and it's too hot for that. Think I can escape out the back and use the one in our room?"

"You can't, but we can. I'm not letting you wander off alone. Some passing power forward might make a grab for you."

"You should talk, with the way you described Birdy." Ruth paused. "Sexy jeans or no sexy jeans, would you take her over me?"

"A puny thing like her? Forget it! I'd be worried I'd break something. She's so short! I'd take you in a second, sexy jeans or no sexy jeans. You're my big bad girl, and I wouldn't have you any other way." Swin looked both ways to make sure that no one was watching, then squeezed Ruth's biceps. Ruth flexed and bared her teeth in a mock-growl. "I thought I told you to save the sleeveless tops for me, though. Don't want everyone knowing about your muscles, right?"

Ruth shrugged. "They see 'em when I'm wearing my jersey, don't they?" But she let Swin press closer to her protectively. When no one was looking, they went up the elevator back to their hotel room. In the hallway, they passed Deanna, who had an unusually wide smile on her face. "Hey, Tweety!"

"Yo! We gettin' together after the game or what? Stacey wants to know how much time she's got on the slots."

Swin shot Ruth a look. Ruth explained, "We were talking about it before- you must have been catching up with Sue and Diana. After the game, I thought we'd find a somewhat quiet corner and go out for drinks. Maybe at that pizza place? It looks like the kind of place a couple of All-Stars could-"

"Didn't Coach say that was where one of the message boards was hosting its get-together?" Swin reminded her.

"Shit, that's right!" Deanna exclaimed. "That's out then, ain't no way you two should walk into a room full of crazy fans. Think of all the hearts you'd break."

"Hey, why don't we see if Sue and D have plans? If you guys don't mind. I don't get to see them often anymore, and I kind of miss them."

"Sure," Ruth agreed, and Deanna nodded. "But where are we going?"

"Isn't there a down-home soul food restaurant somewhere in this place? I could go for that. And the look on Tweety's face is outvoting you, Ruthie." Swin smiled sweetly at Ruth, who merely rolled her eyes in response, kissed Swin on the cheek, and departed to use the facilities. Swin took out her cell phone and punched in a couple of numbers. "Hey, sorry if I'm interrupting anything, but I was wondering if you guys wanted to meet up after the game for drinks and maybe dinner if it isn't too late?"

"Just you?" Sue asked, still slightly breathless from her encounter in the bathroom.

"Me and Ruth, and Tweety and Stacey."

"Sure. Just remember to kick Diana if her hands start straying." The last word came on a high-pitched note, from which Swin deduced that Diana's hands had in fact started straying. This conclusion became even more obvious when Sue's end of the line went mostly dead, with only a couple of squeals before the connection terminated. Swin shook her head ruefully and went to stand outside the door of the hotel room she shared with Ruth, and indirectly with Deanna, Cheryl, and Stacey.

A few moments later, Ruth returned. She cocked an eyebrow at Swin, who nodded. "Did you make the reservation?"

"No."

"Figures. I love you, but you really are a space cadet sometimes."

"What?"

Ruth sighed. "Let's go back downstairs. Cheryl is probably wondering why we all left suddenly." She took Swin's arm in a grand gesture and led her back down the hallway to the elevator. Since the elevator was empty, they took full advantage and engaged in what Ruth later figured out was their fourth-most intense makeout session ever. But by the time the doors opened, they were back to the full appearance of propriety, neither of them letting on to what they'd been doing.

Sue and Diana had no such scruples and met them halfway across the room. Swin saw an opportunity for mischief. "Sue, zip your fly. You don't want the entire casino to wonder why you're wearing an orange and yellow thong."

"Can I kill her? Huh? Can I kill her, please?" Diana was bouncing up and down on her toes, looking for all the world like a schoolkid who had just figured out the right answer to the teacher's extra credit question on the chalkboard.

"No, Diana, that is not how we win All-Star games." Sue made a small hand gesture familiar to all of them except Ruth; immediately, Diana stepped in front of Sue to set a screen for her while she fixed her zipper. Once that was done, Diana came to stand next to her. The whole thing had taken less than ten seconds. "We kick their asses on the court, not off it. Besides, Swinny's a gimp."

"But so are you!" Diana protested, looking at the mask that stuck out of Sue's handbag; Coach Donovan had suggested in the strongest possible terms that Sue bring the mask with her at all times, in case of emergency. Since Coach Donovan's strongest possible terms involved using her substantial height to intimidate the guards and forwards, as well as a icy glare that Michelle Snow had referred to as "the blue ray of death" (and since she had played under Pat Summitt, it was generally concluded that she knew about death rays), Sue had brought the mask without protest.

"If I'm going to tangle with Swin, that leaves you with Ruth, and she's above your weight class. Milton's one thing, but I think Ruth might give you a busted beak to match mine if you got her mad."

"Agreed!" Tamika chipped in, passing by quickly with a smile on her face and a drink in each hand.

"That was an accident!" Ruth protested. She chased the Fever forward, either to defend her honor or liberate one of the drinks.

"So imagine what she could do to you if she really meant to kick your ass," Swin said casually to Diana. Diana could imagine. Diana did not like what she was imagining, so she clung to Sue. That having been settled, the three of them talked about nothing in particular, catching up on old gossip and exchanging new. It was events like these that made the UConn alumnae network so dangerous; Huskies kept no secrets from one another, no matter what they swore to their current teammates, so league-wide get-togethers were the perfect opportunity for those secrets to make the franchise-to-franchise jumps that were so dangerous. By now, it was common knowledge in the league that if one UConn girl knew something, all of them knew it.

Eventually, Swin noticed that Ruth hadn't come back. "I'm missing a girlfriend. Where did she go?"

Sue looked around. "Oh, no. She got sucked into Lauren's orbit. She must have gotten caught when Catch did. I'd've told her to choose a different route if I knew she was going that way. Lauren believes that all drinks belong to her by right, and God help anyone who comes within five feet of her with a drink. I'll go save the lot of them, even though I really shouldn't." She detangled herself from Diana and followed in Ruth's footsteps. Swin and Diana exchanged a 'girls- what are you gonna do with them?' look before Diana decided to stare at Sue's butt instead.

After a minute or so of quiet conversation, Tamika was seen departing the scene with a relieved smile, albeit without the drinks she'd been carrying. Sue and Ruth came back to the group, each of of them clutching a drink. "Sue, why does your starting power forward have a tilt?" Swin asked with a wry smile.

Sue turned around, unsurprised to see Lauren behind her and equally unsurprised to see that Lauren was, if not all three sheets to the wind, at least one sheet to the wind. "Hi, Lauren. Nice to see you again."

"You heading out later?"

"Seems like a shame to waste a great place for a party," Sue agreed. "We're going with Swin and some of her teammates."

"Oh. Can me and Sheri come?"

"I didn't even know Sheri was here," Ruth said, looking around the room as if she expected Sheri's frosted locks to suddenly cut through the crowd like a Rasta shark fin. "It's not like her to not say hi when an old teammate comes by, and even if she wanted to pretend I didn't exist, Debbie's been around."

Lauren snorted. "She followed me to bloody Athens, y'think she wouldn't come to Connecticut? I've been keeping her too busy for you lot. She can say hi to you tonight."

"Sure, why not? She's cool enough." Sue glanced around the circle and saw that Diana and Swin weren't objecting. "So we're up to eight now, right? The five of us, Tweety, Stacey, and Sheri, yeah?"

"That restaurant isn't going to know what hit it," Diana said with a big grin. She sat Sue down on her lap suddenly, knocking the breath out of the slighter woman.

"Guess you two made up. Good. It was bloody obvious you two wanted to fuck each other's brains out on the blackjack table. Wouldn't blame you if you did. I'd do it in a sec with either of you."

"Lauren? Remember those lessons I was giving you on tact? Apply them now. Besides, Sheri would kill you if you tried to screw either of us."

"What're you on about? She'd fight to be the next on line." Lauren shrugged and regarded her empty glass with the sort of mournful expression usually associated with small children with dead pets. "Shite. My beer's gone. I'll go find it, then. See you later." She ambled off towards the bar. No one wanted to be the first to laugh, so all four of them were surprised when the eruption of laughter came out at the same time from them.

"How do you keep a straight face with her around?" Ruth asked.

"Nothin' 'bout Suzie's ever been straight," Diana interrupted, reaching around for a feel; absently, Sue caught her hand before Diana could reach her destination and started massaging her fingers. Diana let out a small sigh of pleasure.

"Tell me again why you broke up?" Swin inquired.

"I forget. I think we're over it now." Sue sneaked a glance back at Diana, whose eyes were closed as she concentrated on the touch of Sue's hand on hers. "Yeah. We're better now. Sometimes you have to get worse before you can get good."

"I've noticed," Swin said, looking at her knee brace. Ruth caught that look, took Swin's face in her hands, and planted a deep kiss on her to distract her from the traumatic memories. Since Ruth was usually reticent about public displays of affection, and usually too shy to initiate anything at all, this meant more than any mere words ever could. Sue was surprised to find that she didn't feel awkward around them now; before she and Diana had made up, she had always gotten the sense that she didn't belong around happy couples like Swin and Ruth. Maybe there was more to having a steady girlfriend than a ready supply of easily accessible sex after all. Maybe there was such a thing as love.

But the more she thought about it, the more she concluded that it was the previous lack of that easily accessible sex that was making her think this way. She was sure that once she and Diana were back on a full-time girlfriend basis, stupid and sentimental thoughts would flee her mind.

A cell phone rang, cutting short Sue's train of thought, the kiss that had led to it, and Diana's blissful oblivion. Swin, Ruth, and Sue all looked to their belts, but it was Sue who cursed and said, "If she weren't so talented, I would kill her." She picked up the phone. "I told you before, if you called me one more time to drunkenly serenade me, I'd get that restraining order against you, and you'd have to be the one to explain to Coach why we can't play on the same end of the floor."

"I stole Loz's phone off her belt while she was gettin' carded," Sheri said. "But thanks for tellin' me that she likes to sing to you while she's drunk. I thought it was just me, but now I know she'll do it to anyone."

"If you're here to tell me she's arrested, hold off as long as you can, or find someone else to be the bearer of bad tidings. I don't think AD likes me enough to not vent her wrath on me if I'm the one who has to explain things."

"Naw, she's fine. Gettin' drunk off her ass, which is no bad thing. I was just wondering 'bout something... she mentioned this get-together thing you guys are havin' after the game, and I was curious if maybe one of my teammates could come, since she happens to be in town."

"Depends on who it is. Some people wouldn't like the kind of get-together we have in mind."

"You know Tangie, right?"

"Ooooooh, yeah. She wants in? She can come all she wants, as long as she's doing her best fashion model impression." Sue muted the phone for a moment to explain the situation, and was met with two whistles and one jealous sulk, the latter from Swin. "Well, Swin doesn't like the idea of anyone who might look better than she does, but the rest of us like the idea of having another babe to stare at. So that's nine-"

"Ten. She wants to bring Tamika."

"Which one? There are about half a dozen of them, and I only know of two that she can't be dating."

"Los Angeles. Not Dixon, the girl outta Memphis, what's her name."

Sue burst out laughing. "Talk about beauty and the beast! They're as mismatched a pair as they come! Sure, Tamika can come too. Maybe she can give us tips on the care and feeding of total babes- and how to trap them. I'll make a reservation for ten of us, in that case. Unless more people show up. You never know with something like this. Seven good for you and anyone else who isn't in the game?"

"Sure, rub it in just a little more," Sheri grumbled.

"See, I'd have control over how your team was doing if you hadn't thought that Charlotte was going places this year. But you decided to leave. Lauren called me and cried for a good five minutes before she got over you leaving, and you know how often she cries, right?"

"Bite me, Birdy."

"I leave that up to Lauren." Sue hung up with a smile. Seeing three pairs of eyes turned on her, she widened the grin. Ruth nodded knowingly, familiar with Sheri's humor from her days in Miami. Swin, in full diva mode, shuddered and clung close to Ruth. Ruth flexed her muscles, staring down the world with bared teeth and cold gray eyes. It was a routine they had down pat, one that got them a lot of laughs in the locker room, because Ruth could never keep the pose up for more than fifteen seconds before collapsing in a fit of laughter, with Swin's hysterical giggles soon to follow. It worked here, too, which meant that it had just passed muster.

Just when they were back to chatty conversation and the acknowledgement of some of the other All-Stars, Sue's phone rang again. The caller ID told her that it was Lauren's phone again. She picked up. "Are you still Sheri, or are you Lauren again?"

"I'm Miko, actually."

"Lauren is going to kick your ass if she finds out that her phone's being whored out. All right, Sparky, what do you want?"

"Well, first off I wanted to say thanks for lettin' me an' Tan come to this lil shindig y'all are havin', 'cause I do appreciate bein' invited to a great party. But one of my teammates heard me talkin' to Tan 'bout it, an' now she want to come too, her an' her gal. She says she's gonna have her gal kick my ass if I can't get her in, so..."

"You're part of a conference rival. What makes you think I wouldn't want your ass to get kicked every which way from Sunday? It does all of us good."

"'Cause I told her where it was gonna be, so after she gets done kickin' my ass, she gonna come by and whup all y'all. Y'all wouldn't want that, right?" Tamika's voice carried a very self-satisfied note, the kind of attitude that Sue would ordinarily slap off someone's face, except that Tamika was bigger and meaner than she was.

"Protection scams are not the way to get invited to the good parties. I'd think four years in New York and two years in LA would have taught you that. Your teammate and her girl can come, that's fine, but you didn't need to bring that thuggish attitude to the table. It's at seven- now, do you mind telling me who you invited? I'd like to know."

"Aw, sure. Sorry 'bout that. Slipped my mind. Y'all know Doneeka an' D-Train, right? Them two."

"Oh, okay. Yeah, I met Doneeka during the Final Four last year. I think D actually took a shine to her."

"Did not!" Diana yelled into the speaker. "Ignore her! She's spreading lies about me! I'm not dumb enough to mess with someone whose girlfriend can tie me into a pretzel, and Doneeka's girlfriend was *at* that Final Four game!"

Tamika chuckled. "Years may pass and the hair color may change, but a Long Island Sue is a Long Island Sue, even a Mississippi gal can tell that. A'right, y'all, I'll be seein' y'all at seven, or close enough as it makes no difference. Tan an' me'll just look for the party, right?"

"Right," Sue agreed weakly. She was thrilled when Tamika ended the call. "What the hell does a total babe like Tangie see in that- that- in Tamika Whitmore? And why is Sheri never satisfied with the one hot girl she's got? Why is she a sucker for a pretty face and something that might be a sob story?"

"In this case? Because Lisa told Dawn about what happened with Swoopes and Lauren at the West practice, and Dawn can't keep her mouth shut about anything, so the second she saw Sheri, she blabbed it loud enough for the entire casino to hear," Swin replied.

Ruth laughed. "Honey? Pot. Kettle. Black."

"But you love my motormouth. You told me so. You did."

Sue's face took on a contorted expression of utter dismay. "Great. If Lauren and Sheri are fighting, that means Lauren's going to spend more nights than she should at the pub, which means more nights that I have to drive her home so she doesn't get herself killed, which means more drunken serenading, whining, complaining, hangovers, bad play, and nightmares for the entire city. Oooooh, I could kill Sheryl Swoopes right now!"

"Save it for after the game, Suzie, she's on our team, remember?" Diana punctuated the comment with a salacious wink. Sue did not find the situation half as amusing as Diana did, and the narrowing of her hazel eyes boded no good for Sheryl if she happened to pass by there in the next few minutes.

Fortunately for Sheryl, someone else got in Sue's line of sight before she did. Becky swerved over from whatever destination she had originally had in mind and said, "You're throwing a party?"

"Why don't scientists stop trying to measure the speed of light and start measuring the speed of gossip?" Sue groaned. "It would be more useful and faster. Yes, Becky, I'm throwing a party. You wanna come?"

"Don't take that huffy tone with me, Bird. Besides the fact that you were yelling at close to the top of your lungs to get that gossip out, Miko called me the second she got off the phone with you. She thought I might be interested, and I think she was also trying to use me as a bribe for you to stop talking trash to her. I could have told her that wouldn't work. New Yorkers are a lot stubborner than folks like her give you credit for."

"Oh, man, a singleton? That destroys the beautiful symmetry and perfection of this. We'll have to throw it out and try again," Swin contributed from the position she had taken up on Ruth's lap, her leg wrapped around Ruth's, her knee bent in a way that would have given the Shock trainer a fit of apoplexy.

"I have a girlfriend," Becky said with deceptive mildness. "She's just not anyone you know. Not all of us are into the office romance thing. Some of us like to meet women in other places. Some of us have long since figured out that fucking your teammates isn't worth the momentary pleasure."

All four of them bristled at that. Stung by the remark, Ruth snapped, "If you come, you come alone. We want people looking in from the outside to think that this is just a social gathering of WNBA players who don't get to hang out at any other time. If you bring a non-league girlfriend, that blows our cover sky-high." She hugged Swin close to her as tightly as she could, daring Becky to take exception to the Shock romance.

But the bleach-blonde merely shrugged. Taking a cell phone out of its holster at her belt, and making sure that everyone noticed just how comfortable she was taking something out of a belt holster, she poked one of the buttons and said, "Hey, hon. Change our plans back. No, they don't want you at this party, and I wouldn't go without you. Tell Spoon I'm not going to disappoint her after all. Uh-huh. Yeah. I love you too." She started walking away in the middle of the conversation, and by the time she hung up, she was long gone.

"So should we make the reservation before anything goes wrong? It's up to an even dozen now, and that seems like a good number to me. Tweety should still be somewhere around here, we should really tell her that this thing's grown into a party." Ruth made as if to get up, but Swin pressed down a little harder, and she found that the choice was between keeping Swin safe and dropping Swin on the floor.

"Uh, sure," Sue said absently. She started looking around the room, but before she could find Deanna, her phone rang yet again. "I'm gonna flush this thing down a toilet if it doesn't stop ringing. Hello, who is it this time?"

"What the hell you say to Becky? She just come chargin' through the casino like she gonna kill somethin'. I ain't seen her that mad since Crystal pantsed her rookie year." Tamika's slow, deep Southern drawl made the incident seem like nothing to worry about.

"She wanted to bring her girlfriend to the party and I told her no. So she stormed off in a huff, because she's Becky Hammon, so she's supposed to get what she wants all the damn time."

"Aw, shit, someone's gonna die now. DeTrina just come and hide behind me 'cause she don't want Becky mad at her. Think she an' Doneeka are gonna miss your party, and so're me an' Tan. I don't want Becks pissed at me neither; we still got one more game 'gainst them to go."

"Whatever. Say hi to Spoon for me." Sue hung up, turned to her friends, and announced, "We're down to eight. The Sparkies and Tangie got scared of the wrath of Becky."

"Man, a little thing like her, I'm surprised everyone's scared of her," Diana scoffed. "I could beat the living shit out of her if I wanted to. She just ain't worth the trouble, you know? I got better things to do." She kissed Sue in demonstration of what those better things to do were.

It was Swin's turn to take out a phone. "I think it's time to make the reservation. Eight for seven, right? Or is it seven for eight? I can never get the order right."

Before Swin could even realize that she didn't have the number for Fidelia's, Deanna came over and said, "Look, guys, I dunno what the hell y'all been doing over here, but cut it out. LJ's on her way to drinking up the entire bar, and I don't think it's just 'cause Sheri cussed her ass out. Bird, she's your teammate- you go save some booze for the rest of us, and maybe I'll let you get a drive."

Sue heaved a long-suffering sigh, ruffled Diana's hair, and swore, "I'll be back." She headed over to the bar, but stopped several feet away, in awe of the number of bottles and glasses piled up around Lauren, who was slumped over yet another glass. "Lauren, stop that. Save some for the rest of us."

Lauren attempted to look up. It was not particularly successful; her eyes were so bleary and unfocused that it would have been nigh on impossible to look at anything specific, and she seemed far more inclined to make love to her drink than to give anyone the time of day. "Siddown, would youse?" she demanded, voice slurring as she gestured just to Sue's left at a line of stools.

Sue sat down. "What's the matter, Lauren?"

"Ree haaaaaaaaaaaates me! Heard 'bout- 'bout- wossname, tha' sheila who plopped herself on me. She haaaaaaaates me, she haaaaaaaates me, she doesn't loooooove me, no more sweet lovin', no more-"

Before Lauren could go any further, Sue- having correctly identified the song cue- clapped a hand over her mouth. "No singing. No more drinking for tonight. You need to be sober and not hungover for the game, because Coach will kill both of us if you are. I don't want Coach angry at me. Do you want Coach to be angry?"

Lauren had to give the matter some thought, which was another sign that she was deep in her cups. After a long pause, she said, "Noooooo, that's bad, right? Coach scary."

"Right. Coach very scary. So why don't you get up and away from the beer-" As soon as Sue heard herself say that, she knew it had been a mistake. Lauren flinched away from her, which was actually rather impressive, given that Lauren was seeing multiple images of her at the moment. "Okay. You can take the beer with you. The beer is okay. But you should get away from the bar. The bar is very bad for you."

"'M not a kid. I can handle it." Lauren tried to point at Sue. Her finger went a bit awry, and she stared at it in surprise. "I liiiiike this bar. It likes me too. I wanna stay. You can't make me leave, no matter how many of you there are." She turned away from Sue and resumed drinking. Sue had to resist the urge to bang her head against the bartop repeatedly, since she didn't know what had been on it. She did, however, come very close to doing so, and perhaps the violent motion caused some neurons to fire off emergency ideas.

The first thing she did was wave over the bartender and tell the young black woman, "How much bribery would it take for you guys to switch her to water for the rest of the night, and stick to it no matter what she says? I can pay, I assure you."

"Don't worry about that. If she ordered anything in a glass in the last half hour, she's gotten water. Tim over there's been trying to find a way to serve her water in a beer bottle. We know that she's hit her limit and then some."

"Thanks. You guys are great." Sue left a fifty on the bar, then proceeded to put idea number two into action. This was going to involve a little luck on her part, even if most of it was based on her ability to spin a convincing story. She dialed Lauren's cell phone, gambling that Tamika and Tangela had returned it to Sheri by now. "Are you Sheri this time?"

"Yeah. You got lucky, Birdy. Five more minutes, and I'd have already tossed this under one of those Chinese buses that come through here. What do you want?"

"I know you heard about what happened with Sheryl and Lauren at the open practice. Swin told me that she overheard Dawn telling everyone what she heard from Lisa. But listen up. I was there, too, remember? I *am* in the Western Conference, and what Lisa told Dawn isn't even close to being the whole truth. Yeah, Sheryl plopped herself down on Lauren's lap and wouldn't leave. But you should have seen the look on Lauren's face when she did. If looks could kill, we'd be short a starter. Lauren was miserable and furious, and you know how bad a combination that is with her." Sue lowered her voice and slipped to a quieter corner of the party. "And this you have to swear stays between us. Lisa had no way of hearing this, because Lauren whispered it to me in the locker room, but Lauren said to me, 'Why did it have to be the wrong SS on my lap in front of the world? I'd rather have been showing off Sheri, but that silly bint just wouldn't leave.' Well, there were a few more colorful adjectives in there, but I can't remember where she said fucking and where she said bloody. She misses you, Sheri. She loves you, and she doesn't want anyone else. Right now, she's getting stone drunk because you told her off. I've never ever seen her this bad."

"Really?" There was a thoughtful tone in Sheri's question, and Sue sent a silent prayer of thanks to the gods of sport that Sheri had bought her little white lie. She knew that if Sheri were to bring it up to Lauren now, Lauren wouldn't be stupid enough to deny something that sappy and romantic.

"Would I lie to you just to cover Lauren's ass?"

"No, I don't think you would. Thank you kindly for the heads-up. It's just like Lisa to stir up shit, ain't it?"

"That it is."

"We're still gonna have to miss the party, though. Tangie's goin' to Spoon's afterparty, and that seems to be where the action is. 'Sides, dependin' on how the game goes, I might owe Loz a little somethin-somethin', if you follow what I mean."

"Don't worry. It stopped being a party a while ago. It's down to six people now, so I guess I should go tell Swin before she books out the entire restaurant. She's out of it enough that she really would do something that silly. Take care, okay? I'll see you around." Before Sheri could get the laugh at Swin's expense, Sue hung up and returned to the group, only to discover that Diana was gone. "Uh, guys? What the hell?"

"D got bored waiting for you, and she went up to her hotel room. I think she said something about being naked." Ruth sounded like she hadn't been paying attention, and with Swin on her lap, Sue really couldn't blame her.

"Naked? Hot damn!" Sue was out of the restaurant in a flash. Swin and Ruth looked at each other and broke up laughing.

"That looks like a good idea. Let's blow this popsicle stand." Swin got up to leave, which in turn allowed Ruth to get up.

"That wasn't what I was thinking of blowing, but okay."

Needless to say, the reservations were never made.