Monday evening at the Yale Club, former Eli drama school classmates (and, more to the point, current husband and wife) Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance were feted with a party celebrating the publication of their joint memoir, Friends: A Love Story. For a reading, the two actors offered a whirlwind tour of their courtship (after years of knowing each other through school and work) in the style of Love Letters, starting with their first serious date, at a Los Angeles driving range (Bassett, coyly: "I ain't never hit no golf ball before"; Vance, on getting up close to show her the proper swing: "I wasn't trying to do nothing fresh"). Before the performance, Vance joked that they had originally conceived of the project, written in collaboration with Hilary Beard, as "a little celebrity book" of maybe 100 pages, but that plan fell by the wayside. "The queen doesn't like to speak," he said, referring affectionately to his wife, "but she likes to talk." 400 pages of transcripts later...anyway, if you can sneak out for a long lunch tomorrow, they'll be at the Columbus Circle Borders, where they might put on some of the same routine. (They really should flesh it out to about 90 minutes and take it on the road; it's that good.)