You may well ask.

"Out to lunch" is not something anyone wants to be accused of being. Nor do we collectively care to be scorned as "ladies who lunch," as though this is the only thing we are capable of doing.

"Let's have lunch" is the ultimate put-down by a boor who hasn't the least intention of meaning what he says but grandly thinks this is something we are aching to "do."

Nor for a minute are we taken in by the promise of a free lunch (unless we think we will get something out of it -- other, of course, than lunch).

Lunch in a restaurant used to be a place to linger for an hour -- or maybe two. Now, for many, it's just a place where we unwrap something quick to eat before hurrying back to work.

Other restaurants are stages where many scenes are acted out under the cloak of semi-privacy, in public. We often go to restaurants heavily armed with an agenda ... perhaps to break up a current affair with a reasonable certainty there won't be too big a scene and the worst that can happen is you have to finish the coffee by yourself.

Restaurants can be places where angry veins may protrude, but clenched fists seldom pound on tables and noses are rarely bopped. (Alert waiters, armed with experience, can sniff the air, sense an impending crisis, and seat antagonists side by side rather than face to glaring face.)

Got Lunch? Lunch. If it's done right, it's like a mini-vacation. If it's done wrong, it's indistinguishable from the rest of your day. Do it right with this week's Top Picks. And for God's sake, have a picnic before the summer's over!

Lunch in a restaurant is where you go when you are waltzing through the last tango of a negotiation and what you need is not what's on the menu. What you really want is for him to hand over the money. But you smile and nod over a discussion mired in incandescent banality until at the end it is you who are presented with the check. Mate.

Lunch has a lot to do with power. Power is what Truman Capote had when he read ... and read ... and read ... the menu. And then looked up at the waiter, smiled sweetly, and said, "I think I'll have ... a cookie."

Power is having enough self-control to ask for a tossed salad sans dressing right after the other person has ordered the roast chicken with mashed potatoes.

Power resides with the one who sits alone on one side of the table while his guests huddle opposite -- and wait -- as he pulls out his cell phone.

Power flows from the one who reciprocates by taking his guest to lunch -- at his club.

All this fencing and jockeying is a far cry from the good old days, when going out to lunch surely meant three martinis (with olives, if you were really hungry). And when eventually you got around to ordering, you said, "Gimme a steak." And the waiter said, "Yes, sir," without even mentioning his name, and knew what else to bring without bothering you.

Gone now is the time when people went out to lunch and put butter on their bread, sour cream on their baked potato and real sugar in their coffee -- and drank the local tap water without feeling somehow cheap.

Lunch back then was something to look forward to. I thought I was in for just such a good time when I recently received an invitation that perked me up no end. It read, "Lunch will be gin at noon." Unfortunately it turned out to be a typographical error. Pity!