Normalment, I would've been in bed when the Club Dialtone was raided. I played it for all it was worth, taking Sissy past the memorial crater arrondisements, along the echoing locks on the Seine where the sounds of distant small-arms fire ricocheted off the tile and whizzed over your head, past the eternal flame burning in the smashed storefront of the Burger King flagship store, and finally to the Dialtone. Fat Eddie was bouncing that night, and I waggled my eyebrows at him surreptitiously, then at Sissy, and he caught on. Sissy's eyes lit up christmas, and her grip on my elbow tightened. A little poorer with every passing day, a little older, a little uglier.
Life goes on.
Fat Eddie smiled like the Buddha and waved aside my remarks with an expansive sweep of his arm. You merely improve with age, my friend. This is Paree, m'ser, where we venerate our elder statesmen. Sissy Black, Edward Moreno. Sissy is my cousin, here for a visit.