Here's Dorrie in her Saturday morning come-for-bagels dress. Cute, isn't she?
Mama and I love Dorrie very much...she is funny and generous, but this morning, she is circling me, appraising me from all angles, like a person about to buy a used car or purchase a horse. "Put your eyes back in your head!" Mama warns. "Why are you looking at my daughter like she was on today's menu?" Dorrie purses her lips, "Flo...you've got to help me out. These guys from Chicago are flying in tonight to meet me at a restaurant in New York, my girlfriend Lorraine got sick and I can't get someone else on such short notice to be a date for Camille." "Camille?" Mama echoes. "What kind of name is that for a grown
man? Is he one of your gangster friends? And what has my baby got to do with this?" "It's just one night, Flo....one dinner out at a posh Italian supper club. Do you think I would let anything happen to her? Don't I love her, too?" "You are welcome, always, in my home, Dorrie, but this is crazy. My little girl will not go double dating with you and your racketeer boyfriends. Over my dead body!!!" "Italian restaurant?" I piped up. "Do they serve Veal Parmigiana there?" Mama sensed her case was lost.
Mama's depiction of what Camille will look like. hahaha!
Dorrie goes home and comes back about 3 p.m. with her "date kit". She plops me into the bathtub filled with bubbles, dumps in a half-bottle of Shalimar, then proceeds to dress me. "Why are you giving her black lace underwear?" Mama asks menacingly. "Who's gonna see it?" "No one, Flo. It just makes you feel better wearing pretty undergarments." My hair is combed into an upsweep, a black shift dress is slipped over me, black stockings and very high heeled pumps, a size too large and a size too wide, so I wobble precariously. And now, an ample supply of make-up, which I never wear, foundation, mascara, blush, eyeliner, two shades of lipstick and another dose of Shalimar. A pair of long black silk gloves is pulled over my arms.
She takes me to a long mirror, and I glance back at my mama, who looks like she is about to faint. 
At 5 p.m. that night, the black limousine parks at the curb in front of 4219-18th Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, and two men alight, one short and scruffy, wearing a French Navy tee shirt with horizontal stripes (dressed as if for a picnic at Prospect Park), and the other a colossal giant of a man called "The Tank" garbed in a black suit and hat, chomping on a cigar. "Which one is Camille?" I moan to Dorrie, either choice being unacceptable. "Silly girl!" she laughs. "Frank and Camille will meet us at La Scala Restaurant in Manhattan. These are just the pick-up and delivery guys!" "What!" yells Mama from the kitchen. "The U.P.S. of the crime world? What am I letting you do?"
Dorrie and I go downstairs and sashay past the neighbor- women who are watching the scene with controlled hysteria. They are holding up the building with their folding wooden chairs...and their mouths form little O's in their bird beaks, as they view, with horror, their "very bad girl" get into the limo with "that woman" and the two "hoods".
Soon, the limo is barrelling across the Brooklyn Bridge, and I am struck, once more, as the sun pours its molten gold beauty into the East River, of how splendid it is to live in this city. We are crossing the bridge, but I am aware it is not just a bridge but a rite of passage, that somehow I am leaving my childhood behind in Brooklyn, my innocence, perhaps, and forging into untested waters. I clutch Dorrie's hand, and we laugh with the frivolity of our years and dispositions. "Hello....New York!" I shout out, "I'm coming to claim you!"
"Say hi to The Tank!"
Hey, stay tuned. In a month or two, you'll soon be meeting Camille....and all that ensues!
