So, seeing how clean things were and how people expected to live, she didn't much blame Jason, if it had been Jason who had complained, although Jason had been a little quick on the trigger. Africa had had standards, crowded as they had been, and if she'd gotten some skuz neo moved in next to her who broke the sanitation regs, she'd have bitched too.
Life had just made her a little more willing to give a body room, that was what she detected in herself.
So she was pleasant to Jason, walked around the privacy screen, and said; "Sorry about last night. No excuses; but it's not habitual."
Jason looked around from her sewing, bit off a thread, nodded then, once and definitely. That was all the comment Jason was going to make, Jason didn't even ask what she was talking about, and that was all the answer she wanted out of Jason right now. She figured time would kill or cure, and she went on down to supper.
NG was there. NG gave her hardly more than a look, and she didn't walk past empty spots to sit with him, considering he'd warned her keep clear of him in public, for what might be good reasons of not wanting a ruckus. So she just sat down at the first convenient vacant place on the bench and paid all her attention to her food. He left. She didn't know where.
But afterward, when a lot of the crew gathered back in the darkened quarters to watch a very tired pre-War vid, a man came up close beside her at the back of the crowd, while she was standing with her arms folded and thinking she'd seen this one twenty times at least.
The man touched her shoulder, made a nod toward the door, and said: "Yeager?"
Not NG. She'd thought that it was at first.
But it was an approach, she knew the dance. His name was Gabe, he said, he wanted to buy her a beer, he was polite and interested, and he wanted to sit and talk a while, with intentions for the rest of the night by no means hard to figure.
She wasn't altogether enthusiastic about the invitation, she'd been looking for NG with the hope of straightening some signals out with him, but if NG had been in the quarters she couldn't spot him and if he'd gone off somewhere else he damn well hadn't signaled her a come-ahead. So she found no immediate excuse, she had the beer, she had two, and Gabe—the name on his pocket was McKenzie—asked her questions she told the usual lies to: merchanter swept up in the Pan-paris route, dumped at Thule, desperate—what about himself?
McKenzie was sympathetic. McKenzie said he was ten years on Loki, McKenzie was clearly more interested in making his move than in answering detailed questions. Then another couple of crew came wandering up from down-ring, both male, friends of McKenzie's, just to look over the neo, do a little safe shopping and neo-baiting—get her rattled if they could, have a little fun if they couldn't. An all-right couple of guys, she decided: Park and Figi. They didn't sit down, they just hovered, asking how was it going, checking out her disposition toward McKenzie with an eye to a more personal check-out later if she was amenable.
—McKenzie, Park, Figi, obviously a buddy-system, all three of them scan-techs, McKenzie the good-looking one, Park and Figi a little shyer, a little less comfortable with a stranger, under the smartass facade.
You could bet who ran that trio, she thought, and she laughed at their fun-poking. It was kind of cute, actually, that McKenzie actually blushed—they nailed him with a tag about getting wrong bunks in the dark and he told them go away.
But McKenzie was just trying to get friendly again when another couple of male crew showed up in the rec area, and they had to walk over and introduce themselves—Rossi and Wilson, by the tags, Dan and Meech, by name; not bad, either, certainly Rossi wasn't, but you didn't get picky when you were new: not good business, and you didn't start with one man and go off with another either, not unless you wanted a rep as a trouble-maker. "Hey," McKenzie said, finally, slipping a protective arm around her, "it's my beer. Get out of here.—Kate, get these guys."—to a woman getting herself a beer.
"Do I get a favor-point?" Kate yelled back, which got a friendly rec-riot started, just comfortable stuff over at the counter between Kate and Rossi and Wilson: McKenzie took his chance to get familiar, a little squeeze. "Don't take 'em serious. How're you doing? Quarters is pretty private right now, everybody's watching the vid. I got a private bottle. What do you think?"
"Fine," she said.
Except when she got up to go with McKenzie, she saw NG over against the wall by the quarters, just standing there looking at them.
Her gut tightened up. She remembered about that rec-time promise she'd tossed off to him this afternoon, and he'd tossed it off the other way, a kind of a don't-bother she'd decided was his opinion on the matter.
But that look he was giving her didn't say don't-bother. Her heart started pounding and she didn't want eye-contact with him, but it happened, once, fast, direct, while she was walking toward the door.
Then he turned his face the other direction, just leaned there with his hands in his pockets while she walked through the door and into the quarters with McKenzie.
McKenzie had a downside bunk, back in the far end from where the vid was still going on. They weren't the only couple back in the dark end, very likely not everybody in their proper bunks this evening, because of the vid occupying the other end of the quarters. McKenzie got out a bottle and took a drink and passed it to her while he was undressing. She took a couple or three big ones, then passed the bottle back and stripped down. They got in bed, got under the sheet, while the end of the room erupted in a cheer for that damned tired vid, about the time the good guys' ship showed; she remembered the plot. But the cold air got her, or the straight vodka did, and she tucked down against McKenzie, her teeth all but chattering.
"What's the matter?" he asked, rubbing her shoulders, and was real careful with her, real concerned about her maybe being scared of him. "Just a little cold out there," she said. "I'm fine."
So they had another couple of swallows off the bottle. Hell, she thought, there was nothing wrong with Gabe McKenzie. He was polite, he was sane, he was worried about her, he did everything right and he appreciated her the same—but it was like her skin was dead all of a sudden, the way it had been with Ritterman—like she was just too tired or the hormones weren't working or something.
It scared her, and then she flashed just for a second on NG and his hand on her arm and it tingled, it tingled just thinking about that, all the while nothing that McKenzie did was even getting past the surface.
That's crazy, she thought, and thought suddenly about NG out there in the rec area, NG knowing what was going on right about now, and probably mad and upset about her skipping out on him—
No, dammit, she hadn't skipped out, he hadn't taken up on her, he'd put her off this afternoon when she flatly propositioned him, he'd had a chance at dinner to at least look her direction and cue her.
She wished to God he wasn't a crazy man, wished he wasn't out there right now being a damn lunatic, hanging around like that. She wanted to kick him down the corridor.
She wanted—
Damn, she wanted him touching her instead of McKenzie, so she kept flashing deliberately to him last night in the rec area and back to what McKenzie was doing, trying to get some kind of feeling back—damn, dammitall! She reckoned what kind of a buzz she was getting off NG Ramey, and when somebody ever got to doing that… anytime you ever got to confusing sex with risking your neck, you had a problem. She'd seen that kind in the Fleet—seen them take a few bystanders with them, too, when they screwed up for the last time. Damn stupid, that was what it was…