I’d never realized until that night what a restricted and completely mousey life I’d led. And I never realized until I got home again how utterly blissful a quiet private meal can be. On the other hand, I never ate better food, or drank better wine, or heard more amusing—and shocking—songs, or saw more diverting and totally cockeyed people, than I did at Reno’s River House. It’s one of the so-called divorce dens, I imagine. It’s certainly a den, with its painted Moorish pillars, and lights so dim and pink that the most ageing customer looks rosy-cheeked and dewy-eyed.
Through all the extraordinary and tragic things that were lying in wait for me, and that broke with the suddenness of a Washoe Zephyr—sardonically so called by the early miners because it sprang up at the drop of a hat and w
