Angel Falling Softly - By Eugene Woodbury Page 0,34
and they fluttered off, wings and egos bruised.
Milada slid onto the barstool next to her. “Hi,” she said, her arm brushing the girl’s. “Is this place taken?”
The girl beamed at her. “Not anymore.” She tossed her golden locks.
“I just thought—that last boy looked interested in you.”
“He might have been. But I wasn’t.”
“I’m glad you weren’t,” said Milada.
In her rush, Milada had left her driver’s license behind. The bartender wasn’t the same one from earlier that evening. To make matters worse, she couldn’t remember how old she was supposed to be. She was supposed to start out at twenty-one in each rotation. Or was it every other? What a monstrous annoyance the whole routine was.
“Perrier,” she said.
The bartender harrumphed to himself. Yeah, he had her pegged right.
“I’ll have another beer,” said the girl. She said to Milada, “I’m Teresa.”
“Milada.”
“Interesting name.”
“It’s Czech.”
“Really? Is that where you’re from? Your accent is so cool.”
“I call New York home these days.”
“New York City? Wow. This is really pathetic, but Salt Lake is the farthest east I’ve ever been.”
“Where is home for you?”
“Reno.”
The bartender placed two glasses on the counter along with a bottle of Perrier and a bottle of Coors. Teresa took a drink from the Coors. Milada watched her carefully. She guessed the girl had deliberately drunk enough to shut down her superego and relieve herself of any personal culpability should her choices tonight lead her afoul of her desired expectations. This was what college girls called being “liberated.”
Teresa said, “You going to school here?”
Milada shook her head.
The girl looked at her sweatshirt. “You a BYU student?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t think.”
“I don’t think so either. I got it from a friend.”
The girl giggled. “Not a bad idea. Kind of a turn-on, especially around here.”
“Is there some sport in doing a BYU coed?”
“Next best thing to beating ’em at football, from what I hear.”
Two boys came up to the bar, one to the left of Milada, one to the right of Teresa. “Hi,” said the boy at Teresa’s shoulder. Teresa coolly ignored him. Milada might have enjoyed flirting with them, but she couldn’t be distracted now. She scanned the room and picked out a pair of wallflowers next to the jukebox. The boy’s hand rested on the bar next to hers. She touched his hand and said, sotto voce, “Those two over there are pretty cute.”
The boy picked them out at once. “Hey, Ross, check out those two.” He set off across the floor, the other boy on his heels.
“Pricks,” said Teresa.
“Not all of them.”
“Yeah, I suppose. If you want it, you always know where to get it.”
Milada laughed. “Demand always exceeds supply.” She took a drink of the Perrier. “Do you live around here?”
“A couple of blocks.” Teresa finished her beer. “How about we get out of here?”
They drove north and then east in Teresa’s Honda Acura, her daddy’s old car. Daddy’s generosity, Teresa admitted, was his excuse to get an Infiniti M45. She turned past a lighted sign announcing the campus of the University of Utah. They passed a darkened tennis court, continued down the shaded street. Along the sidewalks the canopy of the trees shadowed the street lamps. Blue moonlight marbled the asphalt.
“What about your roommates?” Milada asked.
“School doesn’t start for a couple more days. They’re still out of town.”
Milada ran her fingers through her short-cropped hair. She flashed a smile at the girl and moistened her lips with her tongue.
Teresa parked in the driveway of a white clapboard bungalow hidden behind a copse of overgrown spruce. Higher up on the university grounds, the rhythmic swish, swish, swish of the sprinklers syncopated with the drone of cicadas and Mormon crickets.
Teresa unlocked the door. “Come in,” she said.
Milada stepped across the threshold. The interior of the house had been converted to a rabbit hutch of student apartments, killing any charm the early twentieth-century architecture promised from the outside. But it was safe here, shielded by thick plaster walls. And empty—except for them.
Teresa shut the door. Before Milada could turn around, the girl had wrapped her arms around her waist and kissed her sloppily on the back of the neck. Milada relaxed into the embrace, her hands resting on Teresa’s before she turned and kissed her back, tasting the alcohol on her breath.
Their lips parted. Teresa cast her eyes toward the bedroom. “You know how to whistle, don’t you?” she whispered, her hot tongue touching Milada’s earlobe.
“Put your lips together and blow.”
The girl giggled. She was not devoid of wit. Or maybe it