The redhead came up to the table and beamed down at the two of them. “Grace,” he said, and turned to Gaby. “Pardon my manners. Are you two lovers?”
Gaby looked at him, wide-eyed. “Excuse me?”
“Well, you don’t act like lovers. So I wanted to ask if you would join me on the floor.” He gestured toward the dancers with his pipe.
“Oh.” She glanced at Harris a little guiltily. “Well, thanks, but no thanks.”
The redhead spread his hands in a comfortably familiar “can’t hurt to ask” gesture. “Well, then. How about to bed? My flat is close, and I treat the ladies well.”
Gaby gaped at him a long moment and didn’t answer. Finally she managed, “Thank you, but not this morning.”
“Ah, well. Fair morning to you, then.” His step jaunty, the redhead returned to his own table.
Harris tried to unlock his shoulders. His hand didn’t want to let go of the gun. He managed it anyway. “Son of a bitch has a lot of nerve.”
“Maybe. He was very polite, though. I’ve heard lots worse.” She glanced at him, then smiled. “Harris, you’re blushing.”
“No, I’m not.” He found himself annoyed.
“Yes, you are. But never mind.”
Harris was saved from offering a rejoinder by the waitress’ return. His “house special” turned out to be a ball-shaped loaf of fresh, mealy bread, a little bowl of jam, and a crock of potato-and-sausage hash. He tore into it, prepared to devour just about anything to satisfy his hunger, but it turned out to be good—spicy and filling.
Gaby started to sip her drink, then looked at it warily. “Maybe I’d better not.”
“Why?”
“Well, some of my father’s stories . . . you eat their food, you don’t come back.”
“I ate their food. And I came back.” Harris shrugged his unconcern and attacked his hash again.
“True.” Gaby sipped her drink. “Hey, ginger beer!”
“Blech.”
“No, it’s good. Care to try a sip?”
“Thanks anyway. The last time I took a drink, I ended up in Neckerdam.”
That earned him another smile. “Okay.” She watched the crowd, alert, soaking up the local color with her journalist’s eye. “Interesting,” she said after a while.
“What is?”
“Differences. Women with purses, that’s the same. But they leave them unguarded on the tables to go over and dance, and they’re still there when they get back. I saw a guy standing at the edge of the dance floor who seemed to be looking one over, but the other people eating are keeping an eye on him.”
“Canary yellow suit and red tie?”
“That’s him. Then there’s the guy who came in with the rifle.”
Harris looked around, startled. “I didn’t see him. Where?”
“Oh, he doesn’t have it now. He left it with the hat-check girl by the front door.”
“Jesus.”
“Nobody thought anything about it! And then there’s the hookers.”
“Where?”
“Exactly. Where? This isn’t exactly a family restaurant. They’re groping each other to distraction out on the dance floor. When the music suits it, that is. And there’s kind of a meat market attitude to some of them here. But no one I can identify as a hooker. I didn’t see any on the street in the blocks we walked from Doc’s building . . . and this is not the jazziest block we came through.”
“You’re right. Well, it’s going to take a while to figure this place out. We have to live to figure it out, though.”
“We’ll go back as soon as you’re finished eating. Promise.”
Harris’ coin was easily enough to cover the charge; the waitress came back with a handful of coins—big copper ones, small copper ones, small silver ones. He slid one of the silver coins under his plate as a tip and hoped he’d guessed right.
The waitress, hovering, asked Harris, “By your leave—are you two lovers?”
Used to be, yeah. He glanced at Gaby. She wore her uncomfortable look again. “No.”
She smiled. “My duty ends in a chime. Care to come to my flat for lovemaking?”
He forced a smile and hoped that he wasn’t blushing again. “Well, thank you. I’m flattered. But my own, uh, duty calls. Maybe some other time.”
“Well, then. I’m Miarna.” And she was gone.
Harris clutched his heart for comic effect.
Gaby smiled uneasily as she stood. “People aren’t exactly repressed here.”
“Nope. One more difference.” He rose. “If we don’t want those differences to trip us up, I suggest we go and learn what they are.”
Duncan Blackletter and Adonis knelt in the center of Duncan’s ritual circle. This was no improvised thing made of rocks or paint; the inner and outer circles, like the words that lay between them, were of gold laid with an artisan’s skill into the veined green marble floor. Candles rested in notches cut for their presence; the gold incense burner, from which the bitterly strong smell of myrrh exuded, rested on its own upraised marble stand.
He breathed in the incense, focused his mind on the task at hand, and called upon the Crone.
On the grim world, she was so quiet, so deeply asleep, so close to death that it wrenched his heart whenever he invoked her. She was his favorite: the snipper of life-lines, the weaver of epilogues, the spirit of endgames, the weathered grandmother smiling fondly at her descendants while knowing that one day she must take their lives, too.
Perhaps, when all was done, he could speak some word or play some music so loud and glorious that it would awaken her here, too.
His sideline thoughts were drawing him out of his focused state. He put them from his mind and concentrated on finding the spirit of his goddess.
We sit within your sight, he thought. Tiny specks within the great circle of your eye. With all my heart and spirit, I beg of you, open your eye, cast your gaze about, and tell me: Are we the only ones? The last two straying motes left to be swept away?
Again and again, he repeated his prayer, as though with each repetition he could hurl it farther and farther into the depths of the goddess’ sleeping mind. With each completion he felt himself grow farther from his body, from the aches of age and joys of life, and he knew the familiar fear: would this be the time that the goddess just took him, cut him free from his life as easily as cutting a thread with shears?
Are we the only ones?
“Yes.” The word sighed out of Adonis’ gaping mouth, distant and fuzzy and indistinct, as though numberless worms deep in his chest had taken that moment to look upward and issue one word. The interruption jarred Duncan out of his concentration, snapped him back to resentful wakefulness.
“Damn you, Adonis, I have to begin again.” He automatically raised his hand to punish the creature and Adonis shrank away from him.
But Duncan froze, perplexed. Adonis never spoke. It couldn’t; it lacked the equipment.
This was the voice of the sleeping goddess.
Duncan swallowed hard, afraid to speak again. But he had to be sure. “Are we the only ones?” he asked again, aloud.
Again, the word wafted out of Adonis’ mouth: “Yeeessss.” The creature’s lips did not form to shape the word, and its eyes grew round with confusion. Even Adonis did not know how it was speaking.
The candles guttered for a moment, then grew brighter again, and Duncan felt the last of his rapport with the goddess slip away like the last memories of a dream. She was gone.
Duncan took a long moment to slow his racing heart, then forced a smile for his imbecilic companion. “Adonis, we’ve done it. Are you ready to home?”