Half-Resurrection Blues_ A Bone Street Rumba Novel - Daniel Jose Older Page 0,19
seen. Acknowledged. Finally, the pulsing between us settles into a more manageable kind of awkward, and she takes a sip of her wine and says, “Mmmm, why, thank you, sir.”
I raise an eyebrow in a bid to look dashing and nod. “It is my pleasure.”
I want to tell her everything.
I want to swash it all onto the table and let it do what it does, all the unruly, troubling information, because I can’t bear the thought of holding on to it for another second. But I also can’t bear the thought of this moment right here mutating into some horror show. I can’t. There will be trouble ahead; this is certain. But I want this right now to be what it is: two people find each other in a crowded room, in a crowded world, and connect.
I let the moment pass, allow the confession to die on my tongue, and then I smile at her.
Sasha rests her chin on one hand and says, very slowly, like she’s weighing each word as it comes: “Maybe . . . we should agree . . . not to . . . look too deep . . . for now?”
Yes. I chose correctly. This is not the time. Plus, she clearly has her own secrets to keep, which gives me some sense of balance at least. I nod. “Agreed.”
Another silence follows. It’s one I could just sit and simmer in for days. A warm glow may or may not be emanating from our table, and I wonder if other people will start to notice. She’s wearing a loose red top, one of those amoebaesque female fashion thingies that somehow hangs just right, revealing just enough but never enough. Seems to flow with her movements—a mostly solid, teasing little cloud more than an article of clothing. Her skin is a few shades darker than her brother’s with only the slightest hint of gray. Her mouth starts small, when she’d had it squeezed into the mourning pout, but when she smiles, the damn thing expands all the way across her face and looms large like the moon. Her black hair is pulled back beneath a headband and then explodes out and down to her bare shoulders in twirly strands. A blue necklace wraps around her slender neck and dangles between her breasts. Her breasts. The top slopes peek out from behind her swirling shirt, and I imagine them bouncing in front of my face while she rides me.
“Are you looking at my breasts, sir?”
I look up at her. She’s smiling. “I was, yeah. Were you looking at mine?”
“No!”
“Because you can if you want to.” She laughs and swats me off. It’s stupid, really, and I’m pretty terrible at flirting, but somehow, it doesn’t matter. We’re flowing along like two leaves in a river. It’s a corny river, but I don’t care. I’m just happy to be here and that she’s my other leaf. The twisted universe has conspired to give me this moment and this night and those eyes looking back at mine, all amid the hurricane of infestations and betrayals and possibly imminent doom, and I will take what’s mine. I’ll be Baba Eddie and this’ll be my death stick, and I’ll milk it for every sweet, lethal drag.
Sasha’s looking at me more seriously now. “How did you find me?” I open my mouth, but she throws up a single finger and stops me. “No. Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”
I make a fair-enough face and wait because she looks like she has more to say.
Sasha sips at the wine again, looking like she’s enjoying making me wait. “Let’s instead talk about something utterly mundane and ridiculous, shall we?”
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all night.”
“Let’s pretend, for a moment, that we are just two normal people who met in a bar.”
“Do we like each other or are we just passing time?”
“That remains to be seen, I suppose.”
“I see. Well, fancy meeting you here.”
“Ugh!” she moans with an exaggerated eye roll. “You’re terrible at this!”
“All right, all right. Give me a chance to get the hang of it, jeez! What do you do . . . for a living?”
She puts her serious face back on. “I am a contract . . . negotiator.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know! I just made something up. Stop! Let me try again.” I nod at her to go ahead. “I am a construction worker.”