- Spenser: Because you're on the board of the Port City Theater, and because the director thinks he's being stalked, I have to endure two hours of lousy drama?
- Susan Silverman: No. Because Jimmy Christopholous is a friend, because you are my honey, because sleuthing is your business, and because you will enjoy the ultimate theater party for two this evening.
- Susan Silverman: Do you know how much this means to me?
- Spenser: [pause] : Damn!
- Susan Silverman: I'll double your usual fee.
- Spenser: Remind me, what is my usual fee?
- Susan Silverman: Two nights of ecstasy.
- Spenser: So double would be four. Payable in thirty days?
- Susan Silverman: I'll halve the time. Four nights of ecstasy in two weeks. Deal?
- Spenser: Deal.
- Susan Silverman: Sucker.
- Spenser: What, am I charging enough?
- Susan Silverman: You're charging enough... but you'd've gotten it anyway.
- Spenser: I know.
- Spenser: Hey, I'm willing to tell you all I know.
- Chief DeSpain: You haven't told me squat.
- Spenser: True, but it's all I know.
- Chief DeSpain: Well, you learn anything, you dash right on in and tell us about it. 'Cause we're fightin' crime up here, day and night.
- Jocelyn Colby: [meeting Spenser] Way to go, Susan! Hunk city!
- [She leaves.]
- Spenser: You think she has designs on me sexually?
- Susan Silverman: Almost certainly.
- Spenser: Because I'm hunk city?
- Susan Silverman: Because you're male.
- Spenser: So the killing might be connected to the play, so I need someone to... tell me what the play was about.
- Lou Montana: Ahem. Lou Montana. I directed. And, uh, your question is absurd.
- Spenser: No; an actor getting shot on stage wearing tights while singing "Land of Love" is absurd.
- Lou Montana: Ah. And what was your response to the play?
- Spenser: I found it a pretentious mishmash about appearance and reality.
- Lou Montana: Well, art isn't "about"
- [makes air quotes]
- Lou Montana: anything. It *is* movement and speech in space and time.
- Spenser: Thank you!
- Lou Montana: I didn't expect you'd understand.
- Spenser: Me either.
- Spenser: Could you arrange for me to have lunch with her?
- Susan Silverman: I'm not sure she'd be willing to meet with you.
- Spenser: Mention to her about me being hunk city!
- Susan Silverman: That ought to do it.
- Spenser: [narrating] Rikki Wu was sex. She was spoiled, self-centered, shallow, maybe cruel, certainly careless about other people. But she was sex.
- Lonnie Wu: It is unseemly for her to be having lunch with a lo fan.
- Spenser: Is "lo fan" a term of racial endearment?
- Lonnie Wu: It means "barbarian". Someone who is not Chinese.
- Spenser: So you don't fully subscribe to the melting-pot theory?
- Lonnie Wu: I'm not here to make small talk. It would be best if you stayed out of Port City.
- Spenser: Is it okay if I retain my U.S. citizenship?
- Lonnie Wu: What you choose to do outside of Port City is your business. But if you choose to come back, we will make it our business, and I will not be able to protect you.
- Spenser: Protect me from whom?
- Lonnie Wu: From me.