In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

"Time for some oysters and champagne?"
"You know I can't drink on these petit mal pills!"
"You can have the non-alcoholic champagne, it is not so bad."
They walked along the black and white checkered floor she had
passed by on her way in and out of the hotel every day and into the
mirror lined dining hall with its marble walls and clusters of heavy
chandeliers, that were lit even during the day.
The tables were covered with blue cloths that went to the floor
and over which were starched linen restaurant cloths, but today there
were extra candelabra, as if those obscene chandeliers reflected ad
infinitum in the mirrors didn't furnish sufficient illumination. Plus, the
people there tonight were on the other side of middle age and could
definitely have used more subdued lighting, although Penny thought
maybe when people got older they ignored mirrors and only looked at
the shiny things around them like the bubbles in their champagne or
the diamonds on their gnarled fingers and around their sagging necks.
But they didn't even look at each other any more, these couples, they
just sat there with tight scared smiles waiting for their boiled lobster
and yet another twenty years.
The first thing Sandro did was have the candelabrum taken
away. Then he spoke to the waiter about the bubbly.
"We have champagne, kid's stuff. I drink adult stuff at the ball,"
he confided to her, gallantly.
"That's fine, I'm still officially a kid, anyway."
He unfolded his napkin, face flushed, looking around to see if
anyone had caught that, the fact that he was partying the night away
with half naked jail-bait.
The waiter popped the champagne. They started with a
selection of oysters from Brittany, then had to wait for the grisly deed
to be accomplished on the lobster, and another dozen oysters slid
down their throats.
"Oysters are supposed to be aphrodisiac aren't they? Heard that
somewhere. Some o' these couples look like they sure could use some
of that, huh? I think it's all bull, of course, because of how they look, all
squishy and slurpy, but, I mean there's no scientific basis to that, is
there? They don't, like, do experiments on Bonobos, feeding them
oysters and monitoring how horny they get, huh?"
Penny slurped them down one after another as she babbled.
At first he scowled at her to shut up and keep it down, but then
as more people looked their way, mesmerized by the little mermaid in
199