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For a moment, Joel couldn’t read her reaction. Suddenly, what he had meant kindly, a truth for her to know about herself, pushed heat at the back of his neck. Her lips parted, then shut, as if she had either not heard him correctly, or did not know what to make of his words.
And it was damn charming.
He had not meant to disarm her. He had not meant to overhaul her question and turn an easy conversation into an uncomfortable pause. Nor did he have the stones to wait for her answer.
He picked up his fork and continued eating.
She might have replied; it was in her nature to clap back. However, another waiter, this time trailing in the ponderous wake of Gerry, approached the table. Filigree cloches did nothing to disguise deep, blue jade bowls, steaming with an unfamiliar aroma. Of course, it was the highlight of the meal and good ol’ G.B. couldn’t wait until dessert to find out how his guests liked the signature dish.
Annalisa did not want to eat it. Neither did he but the photographers, flitting at a distance only a moment ago, closed in around the table.
“I trust everything has been satisfactory, so far?” Boone stated, gregarious as some rich dick in Aruba.
“Stupendous.”
Annalisa played her part of the dazzled naïveté and clasped her hands together. “I think you may have ruined me for rice pilaf from anywhere else, Mr. Boone.”
The owner chuckled. “I won’t say I’m not flattered, Miss Jean. I hope I can be your downfall once more tonight, with the signature dish of Lapis Lazuli.”
Like a wide-eyed virgin, Annalisa shrugged her shoulders, saying she could not possibly guess what that might be, and Boone turned disgustingly benevolent.
“My dear girl, haven’t you heard what set the critics on their ears? Don’t you see the perfect cream avocado green hue of what’s in those bowls?”
He swung a chair from a nearby table to himself and sat.
Joel clenched a fist under the table. He had to do this. The production might flop, and people determined to bring his vision to life needed more than just a “job well done.” They needed to pay their bills. They needed to have eating money, spending money. For their belief, he must offer them a livelihood.
Pops and clicks sounded like dozens of ping pong balls. Both bowls were being set down with church-like reverence as Gerry waxed poetic on his turtle meat soup.
“It’s a taste of the old world. The Orient. A time before politics stopped us from enjoying the pleasures of food as gastronomes. Men drank wine and smoked hashish—”
“Brought from seven virgins in Heaven?” Joel interrupted.
Boone ignored him. “Taste it, Miss Jean. It will awaken your tastebuds.”
Dipping an ornate spoon into the cream base, he cupped his other hand beneath and presented it to her.
How fast Annalisa masked the way her nose crinkled was impressive and an odd mark of a seasoned performer. Roll with it. Did the ball come out of nowhere in left field? Catch it and run. If the music stopped, keep dancing. Break a bone on stage? Never let the audience know. The show must go on.
Except under those circumstances, Joel would not hate himself. Right now, he may be undermining his own principles, but he’d be damned if she was allowed to do the same.
He held up his hand. “No.”
Tension in Annalisa’s shoulders eased.
Boone lifted his recessed eyes to Joel. “Excuse me?”
Casually, as if he took expensive spoons full of green soup out of men’s hands every day, he took the utensil and placed it back in the terrine.
“I apologize, Mr. Boone. During the rehearsal months leading to performance, dancers in my ballet are not permitted to eat animal proteins. It was thoughtless of me not to notify your kitchens beforehand.”
Check and mate. Game. Set. Match. What’s your move, now, Mr. Big? The photographers got the money-shot, you holding the spoon to her. The article can rave over how amazed she was, and I’ll taste your concoction so there can be a quote. She isn’t stuck in my same corner. She’s not doing anything she doesn’t want to do. Fuck you and fuck me, too.
Lapis Lazuli’s owner cleared his throat. “Of course. The body of an artist is a temple and must not be tainted when sacrifices will be made.”
“Thank you so much for understanding, Mr. Boone,” she answered graciously.
“I hope,” Boone began, now pressing an insistent stare at Joel, “Mr. Dvorak will favor us with his impressions of our signature dish.”
Joel inclined his head. “Of course.”
Taking the spoon that had been intended for Annalisa, he consumed the contents as Gerry knew he would because the check had already been written and was set to deposit Monday.
“I see why crowds flock to your tables, Gervais. The taste is one of a kind.”
It wasn’t untrue. Joel enjoyed flavors from Indian and Thai curries and had been visitor to more than one blood sausage in his time. His palette was accepting. The soup had a distinct essence of lemongrass and oregano, bringing balance to a meat that tasted eerily of chicken and yet...not.
Boone folded his hands over his stomach. “I’m delighted to hear it.”
He did not wait for Joel to take another bite. He’d thrown enough of his weight around. Offering Annalisa a gratuitous goodbye, he stated he would let them finish their meal uninterrupted.
Joel waited until after the photographers got their final shots and the restaurateur was out of sight. Then he pushed back the bowls.
“I would’ve taken a bite,” she whispered.
“I know but you didn’t want to.”
“Who wants to eat turtle?”
“I didn’t.”
She wrinkled her nose. “What did it taste like?”
“Kinda like chicken.”
“Only chicken should taste like chicken.”
He reached for a fluted stem glass, filled partway with the house red wine. Quaffing it in one gulp, he nodded and said that at least dessert wasn’t frozen turtle meat ice cream.
Pretending to gag, she shoved at his arm and tried to stifle her laughter. “Stop! I don’t even want to think about it.”
He pointed at her wine glass. “Don’t.”
Lifting it to cheers him, she took a modest swallow. “I’ll think about how my feet are gonna swell later tonight if I finish this.”
“Wine makes your feet swell?”
“Like bloated turtles. I bet that’s something you never expected to learn about me, after all these years.”
He teased back. Inwardly though, he wished he could learn why seeing her smile, seeing the color of her eyes play between green and blue, like a flirt, made him want to put his elbows on the table and lean closer.
***
THEY LEFT THE RESTAURANT unannounced and the drive back to her hotel was pleasantly quiet. At the door of her room, Joel said he hoped she’d use the rest of the night to relax. There was plenty of time, come the start of the performing season, for her to work weekends; she shouldn’t have had to work a Sunday now.
In response, she shook off her heels with a grateful groan.
With that, he should have left. He should have wished her one more “goodnight” and gone back to the car. Already, he knew he intended to drive up-town, park, and walk off the resentment he felt towards himself before returning home.
Instead, though, he looked at her. Elegant stature diminished without the heels, the contrast between her sophisticated dress and her bare feet, misshapen and battered from a life of dance, was infinitely charming.
He knew he grinned like an idiot, and she had every right to know why her boss looked at her like an ape. Luckily, he managed to make a joke out of his answer and that should have been her cue to tell him goodnight and shut the door.
Instead, though, she leaned sideways on the framework. When he stretched out one arm above, leaning onto the entryway, it was from a desire to do something, to break up why he wasn’t shoving his ass down the hall yet. However, the result was that she now stood somewhat under him and was forced to look up.
“Tonight didn’t feel like work,” she said. “I had fun.”
“Me too.”
“Are you gonna go home and rest, too? You should.” A whisper of concern in her eyes made them look like faceted jade from Mexico. “You work really hard, Joel. And I know you hated this.”
“I did,” he admitted, softly.
“Then go rest.”
“I will. I was going to walk off some steam, first.”
“Wanna trash a hotel room?” she joked, gesturing behind herself.
He smiled. “Not knowing you’re the one who sleeps here.”
“It will be a while before I go to sleep.” She paused, looked down, then up from underneath black lashes, thickened with mascara. “Do you want company?”
The answer was no but that’s not what he said. The answer was to shut the door and tell her to be ready for Monday, but Annalisa did not do demure well. With those eyes of an indescribable shade, she had him pinned and disarmed.
The Mr. Dvorak mask should have dropped down. He should have reminded her what time rehearsal started and heaved himself from the small space she had him in. But he was surprised she should care. Pulled to her because she cared. Ashamed he let himself feel her concern.
“Yeah. Get shoes on.”
A nearby pair of sneakers were donned and from a narrow closet by the door, she yanked a tee-shirt and tugged it over her head.
She looked like an elf trying to fit into the human world. Full makeup and styled hair. A large cotton shirt with a stretched collar over a satin dress. There was no question about the attractive lines the tight skirt created over her backside and thighs, but the sneakers hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. She was silk in Styrofoam packaging, caviar on a saltine, Mozart played on a recorder.
She was so damn charming in a disconnected way that his brain disengaged. When she pulled the door closed, he put one arm behind her shoulders and pulled her to his side.
Like that, through a small lobby smelling like stale cigarettes and cheap instant coffee, they walked into the night, the sound of Chicago rising around them.
Quiet hours did not exist in this city.
Early morning had a focused sound. Traffic was in rhythm with the stoplights, a whirring of engines shifting through gears, rushing to the next red light. Pedestrians walked with their heads down, on autopilot, their caffeine of choice not yet kicked in, wishing they had stayed in bed ten more minutes.
Afternoons brought humanity to the soundtrack of Chicago. Traffic did not move in herds and people were on their lunch break, sneaking in a few errands before they had to pick up their child from daycare. Conversations on cell phones were loud and without urgency.
By nightfall, pedestrians dared vehicles to hit them on the crosswalks. Horns expressed expletives from behind the steering wheel. Screeching brakes collided with the lumbering hiss of air lock bus brakes and congenial conversations from earlier were replaced by impatient hollers.
By late evening, traffic moved at a humming ebb and flow, easy to ignore and easy to tune into, the metropolitan ocean waves dictated by neon lights. People out at this hour accepted how soon morning would come and shuffled without hurry or vengeance.
Joel and Annalisa fell into muffled footfall, conversation between them intermittent. He said he knew a small park a few blocks away that a buddy of his used to walk his dog at.
“So, I should watch where I step for fudgy pies?” she asked.
“I got ‘cha. I mean,” he doubled back, “walking in the middle of the path usually avoids dog shit.”
“My hero.”
“Shut up.”
Her grin was wide, and her lips made it shockingly attractive.
“Listen, any man who is willing to watch out for fudgy pies is—”
“Doing the bare minimum. I hope you’ve had better men in your life.”
Full lips closed the smile and Joel could have kicked himself.
He dropped his arm from her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...I shouldn’t have said that. It was over the line.”
As if putting his arm around one of his dancers had not been. But she shook her head.
“No, it’s not. I mean either we call each other Miss Jean and Mr. Dvorak or we’re...friends.”
“I feel like maybe I should ask you which one you prefer.”
“Why?”
“Cuz I can’t assume. Just because we knew each other for so long. I can’t assume I know what you want. I can’t make decisions for you.”
She searched his face. “I don’t know. I think pulling off a ripped toenail from my foot because I was too freaked out to do it myself gives you some perks.”
“But at the time, you didn’t know I was trying not to gag,” he offered, unsettled, and enchanted by the way she looked at him.
Pretending to shiver at the memory, she was about to say something. However, a rolling tread sounded from up ahead and a reflective orb flashed, followed instantly by an “on your left!”
Surprised and with only an instant to move out of the way, she yelped and wavered. Evening time bikers were voracious about their hobby; this person would bicycle straight through her before slowing.
So, Joel grabbed her wrist and pulled her out of the way.
And to himself.
Her free arm went around his neck and, without thinking, his encircled her waist. With a zipping whoosh, the cyclist whizzed by, a blur of neon yellow and reflective tape, leaving them poised in this sudden embrace.
“Thanks friend,” she said, breathy.
It was enough to make him tighten his grip and his vision clouded.
“That’s what friends are for,” he managed.
His insides seethed. This was attraction, unspecific and primal. A man and a woman. The shape of her body fit perfectly to his because it was supposed to. Puzzle pieces. A woman was supposed to lock into a man and make his picture all the clearer.
God may have sneezed out a man, but He crafted a woman. Without effort, her body was a siren melody. Dipping and curving in the most fascinating way that rendered the male brain catatonic. Men followed women to the ends of the earth because they could not get enough of how that body felt. It soothed and aroused. It could focus him into a hero or a monster.
And it had been a damn long time.
Joel felt like a king and a villain. She was a stunning gift to remind him of long forgotten hopes and a temptation to destroy what had taken years to build. All at once, she made him wish he was ten years younger and just some idiot in a random ballet company, free to be enamored. All at once, he wished she had never walked into his office, that they had met some other way so he could enjoy the feel of her in his arms.
Holding the woman, he wished he’d never known the girl.
Her hand slid down his chest. The smooth sensation startled him, and he jumped back.
“There’s fountain over this way, dedicated to Emily Dickison.” He didn’t wait for her to follow. “It’s got her poems etched on the bricks. Kinda pretty. There used to be a school named for her, but it got torn down.”
“Sounds nice.” She sounded several steps behind him. “I used to read her poems all the time. The only good thing about high school English. I always thought they should be ballets.”
I know. You used to talk about it in class. God, I remember.