Lips Like Sugar, the Sweetness of a Kiss

My driver, Miles, hastened to inform me upon my return to the car that I'd had a smear of blood along my jaw. As usual, one can't get the tiniest of details past dear Miles. He may not be one for the ladies, but he can spot an out-of-place hair, a brooch slightly askew, the faintest of powder residue at the base of the neck. I suppose if one's eyes aren't glued to a broad's gams or her quakers he can find it in him to notice the important things, those things which she's really spent time working to showcase, not cover up. Anyway, I collected my itchy gray suit and swapped it out for the pale rose number I'd left the party in. As we passed over the Seine, I executed a nice flip of the wrist and the cardboard hatbox which contained not a hat at all sailed gently out the window and into the cold, black waters below.

I love arriving and leaving Paris at night. There's nothing like the sight of the Eiffel Tower lit up like a giant rocket. Is there nothing more French than that which is so ostentatious it puts all surrounding structures, grand and regal in their centuries-oldness, to absolute shame? If I were French, I feel I would do that every chance I got.

Walter asked me where I'd run off to the night of the party. "One minute you were there and the next you were gone," he lamented, his shiny, bald head reflecting the lights over the promenade as we walked to our hotel. "It was women's trouble," I told him, once again. I swear, darlings, in my years of training with the Chat Noir--sorry, dears; you can take the girl from France, but...well, you know. The "Black Cats" trained me well. Why, I could kill a man twelve different ways, standing three inches from him and not so much as break a sweat. But put me on the spot; ask me the same question you've asked countless times over the past, and I can't come up with a creative answer to save my life. I suppose I stick with the tried and true because it's the one thing I know Walter will not pursue with the slightest bit of interest. "Woman's trouble." I do declare, the man must think I have the innards of a working clock tower down there, the trouble I seem to constantly have with it.

Speaking of which...we're off to London. Finally, an actual vacation. A simple meeting with my dear Mr. Churchill. I cannot wait; we've not spoken since those weeks underground during the blitz. "Winnie the Church" I call him, but certainly not in public. I do have some class, after all.