"I'm delighted to hear Blake Madison has returned. This burg was getting to be really Dullsfville without him stirring up trouble, ya know?"

The long-legged redhead with the high-strung garters and the low-slung cleavage leaned over the bar to light a menthol Eve cigarette on the candle burning by the tip jar.

"I'm not saying he isn't trouble, mind you. Sure he's trouble. But...well, he's fun trouble, if ya get my drift.

"Besides, he and I have some unfinished business, I guess....".

She tossed her long locks back over her shoulder and settled her finely formed bottom on one of the tall, leather-topped stools that lined the broad mahogany bar in Chez Frog's skylight lounge, and looked across the dining area through the plate glass windows across the rolling vista of LA's fog, smog and skyscrapers. Up here on the 25th floor, everything always seemed normal and safely out of reach. Hell, life seemed normal and out of reach. Maybe that's why her heart started pittering and pattering at the thought of the shabby PI in the old trenchcoat. Not the coat, which was shabby, not the old car or the worn-out Italian loafers... something in his eyes and the curl of his smile when he heard something interesting.

Blake Madison was no winner, maybe. But...well, he was alive, and she needed that more than anything.

"HEY! Gina!!!" The yell from the maitre d's stand out by the elevators snapped her into the present. "Finish those setups!! Your cocktail crowd is gonna start showin;' up in less than an hour!!". Fat, oily features glowered at her from under a combed-back thinning head of once-black hair gone salty. Arrogant, overweight and saggy-jowled Caprio "Froggi" di Mancini turned back to a discussion he was having with his operations chief and maitre d', Ralph Piccolini. They were both sneering.

Embarrassed and angry, she put down the bar coaster she had been doodling on, and started back to her afternoon preparations for the fast-laners who showed up around four. She caught herself at the last minute, remembering to scoop up the disfigured coaster with "Chez Frog" printed on it in gold letters. She paused and reflected on what she had scribbled...a circle in a circle, a wavy line, and a small block of perfectly formed script, feminine and neatly contained, reading, "Where Did the Fun Go?"