Two-Dollar Bill [antikvár]

ELAINE'S, LATE. For some reason no one could remember, Thursday nights were always the busiest at Elaine's. Stone Barrington reflected that it may have had something to do with the old custom of Thursday being Writer's Night, an informal designation that began to repeat itself when a lot of the writers who were regular customers gathered on Thursdays at the big table, number four, to bitch about their publishers, their agents, the size of their printings and promotion budgets, their wives, ex-wives, children, ex-children, dogs and ex-dogs. The custom had withered with the imposition of smoking rules, when Elaine figured that number four needed to be in the smoking section, and since the new, no-smoking-at-all law came into effect, Writer's Night had never been revived. Anjrway, Stone figured, every night was Writer's Night at Elaine's, and that was all right with him. On this particular night, every table in the main dining room was jammed, and the overflow of tourists and nonregulars had filled most of the tables in Deepest Siberia, which was the other dining room. The only times Stone had ever sat in that room were either when Elaine had sold the main dining room for a private party, or when he was in deep shit with Elaine, something he tried to avoid.