She came back swaying, partly to shift through the crowd, partly a hip swing that fit the beat from the band, her legs strong and toned and two more drinks in her hand. “Here you are, Mr. Cappello. Tom.”
He laughed, said, “Thank you, Allison.”
They were on a couch nestled in a corner, and she dropped beside him. She smelled very good. From behind her ear she pulled a neatly rolled joint, then leaned forward and lit it off the candle on the table. “Ahh. Wyoming Sunset.”
“The bar doesn’t care?”
“The county can’t make it legal, so there’s a twenty-dollar fine. Which you pay upfront when you buy one at the bar.” She took another drag, leaned back into the seat. “You were married, right?”
“Yes.” He had a flash of Natalie that last night he’d seen her, standing under the tree at the house where they’d once lived together. “Seven years, divorced for four.”
“You got married young, then.”
“We were twenty.”
“Gifted?”
“No.”
“Was that the problem?” She offered him the joint.
He started to pass, then figured what the hell. Took a gentle puff, then a deeper one. Felt an immediate rush, a tingle in his toes and fingers that flowed inward. “I haven’t been stoned since I was seventeen.”
“Go easy, then. We grow it strong out here.”
He took another hit, passed it back. For a moment they just sat together, shoulders almost touching. He could feel the warmth of her, and a glow through his whole body.
“Yes,” he said. “That was the problem.”
“Was she jealous?”
“No, nothing like that. Part of the reason we got married was that I was gifted. Her parents didn’t like us dating, and she hated that in them. Used to joke that we were an interracial couple. Then she got pregnant, and that pretty much settled things.”
“Were you happy?”
“Very, for a while. Then less.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, just—life.” He held one hand up, stared at it, taking in the texture of his skin, the flex of the muscles as he wiggled his fingers. “You can’t turn it off, you know? What we do. It wore her down. My fault, a lot of it. I was impatient, always finishing her sentences. The thousand weird ways our differences played out, like the fact that she loved surprises but could never plan one for me. I had her patterned too thoroughly. And when things got tense, I’d respond to her anger before she said a word, and that would piss her off more. The end…it came slowly, then all at once.”
“That’s Hemingway,” she said.
He turned to look at her, the wide dark eyes and heavy lashes. Her face swimming a little in his inebriation. “Yeah.”
On the stage, the violinist went into a ragged solo, the notes jarring and alien, and yet not quite wrong, and more vivid with the impact of the drug. It sounded like an insomniac Saturday night spent staring out the window and not seeing.
“I was engaged once,” she said.
“Really?”
“Christ, Cooper, you don’t have to sound so surprised.”
He laughed. “Tell me about him.”
“Her.”
“Really?” He straightened. “But you’re not gay.”
“How would you know?”
“Pattern recognition, remember? I’ve got spectacular gaydar.”
It was her turn to laugh. “I’m not, really. These days, with everything going on, it just doesn’t seem to make as much difference. I mean, maybe if the gifted hadn’t happened it would be a whole issue, maybe people would care about sexual orientation, but we’ve got much bigger reasons to hate each other.”
“So what happened?”
She shrugged. “Like you said. I’m not gay.”
“You loved her, though.”
“Yeah.” She paused, took another puff of the joint. “I don’t know. It was a lot of things. My gift was part of it, too. It’s hard. Loving someone, but not being able to share the way you see the world. Like trying to explain color to someone who’s blind. They’ll never really get it.”
Part of him wanted to argue with her, but it was more from habit than anything else. An attitude he’d had as an abnorm in a normal world. A twist who hunted other twists.