A blond in a red dress can do without introductions -- but not without a bodyguard.

A blond in a red dress can do without introductions --but not without a bodyguard.

She had a collection of matchbooks from extravagant places, dropped here and there on tables in the dingy apartment she still shared with Gregg. They made it look as if she lived a gay, mad life. What a typical picture for anyone from out of New York: career girl's apartment, stockings drying over the shower rod, clothes flung helter-skelter in the rush to get to the office on time, to a date on time, a bottle of wine there too, wads of dust lying under the studio couch because you couldn't clean except weekends and sometimes not even then, and all those brightly colored matchbooks with names of well-known eating places, so that even if one managed only two good and sufficient meals a week one could still light one's cigarettes for the rest of the week with the memory.

Reading it was unbearable, as it reminded me how close we'd been.

She dressed as a goth, wore dark eye make-up and a long black coat, but was a neat, clean girl.

Pick your enemies carefully or you'll never make it in Los Angeles.