After all the whirling forward-thinking of New Canaan, the café seemed downright nostalgic. It wasn’t, of course—he hadn’t yet seen one art deco sign here, one ironic T-shirt—but the place was simple and straightforward, with curved plastic booths and mediocre coffee in stained cups. The change was welcome.
“Are you serious?” He took a swig of the coffee. “Your boyfriend really said that?”
“Cross my heart,” Shannon said. “He said my gift was clearly a sign of insecurity.”
“You may be many things, but insecure ain’t one of them.”
“Yeah, well, thank you, but I spent the next three weeks in my bathrobe, crying and watching soap operas. And then I heard he was dating this stripper chick with huge—” She held her hands out in front of her chest. “I mean, like, water-melons. And it occurred to me, maybe the problem was that he didn’t want to be with a woman who could manage to not be noticed. If his new girlfriend rubbed two brain cells together, she didn’t have a third to catch fire, but she sure got noticed.” She paused. “Of course, that was probably because she was always toppling over.”
He’d been sipping the coffee, and the laughter made him choke and sputter. The waiter arrived and set their orders down, a hamburger for her, a BLT for him, the bacon brown and crisp. He snapped an end off, crunched it happily. In the background, some young pop group sang young pop songs, all heartbreak and wonder you could dance to.
Cooper took a bite of his sandwich and wiped his mouth. Leaned back in the booth, feeling strangely good. His life had always had a surreal quality to it, but that had only grown stronger in the last months, and even more so in the last days. Not two hours ago he’d been in the glowing heart of a temple of sorts, watching the world’s richest man swim currents of data.
The thought brought him back to the briefcase on the floor. He slipped his foot sideways, touched it again. Still there.
Shannon had cut her burger in half and then into quarters, but instead of eating one of them she was picking at her fries.
“What’s on your mind?”
She smiled. “I know that bugged your wife, but I think she was looking at it the wrong way.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. Instead of having to sit here for five minutes trying to think of a way to broach the subject, I can just look distracted until you ask me about it.”
He smiled. “So you gonna tell me what’s on your mind?”
“You,” she said. She leaned back, put one arm across the back of the booth, and hit him with a level gaze.
“Ah. My favorite subject.”
“We’re done, right? We’re square?”
“Square? Are we in a gangster film?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re square.”
“So we don’t owe each other anything anymore.”
“What are you really asking, Shannon?”
She looked away, not so much to dodge his eyes, he could tell, as to stare into some middle distance. “It’s weird, don’t you think? Our lives. There aren’t that many tier-one gifted, and of those, there are fewer who can do the kinds of things we can do.”
He took a noncommittal bite, let her talk.
“And, I don’t know, I guess I’ve just found it nice to be able to know someone like you. Someone who gets what I do, who can do things I get.”
“Not just gifts,” he said.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
He smiled, chewed, swallowed. “It’s not just the gifts. It’s our lives, too. Not many people get the way we live.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, this is sudden, but I accept.”
“What?”
“Oh,” he said, faking dejection. “I thought you were asking to marry me.”
She laughed. “What the hell. Why not. Vegas isn’t far.”
“No, but it’s pretty dull these days.” He set down his sandwich. “Jokes aside, I know what you mean. It’s been good, Azzi.”
“Yeah,” she said.
Their eyes met. A moment before, her eyes had just been her eyes, but now there was more. A weird sort of recognition. A yielding in both of them, an acknowledgement, and, yeah, a hunger, too. They held the look for a long time, long enough that when she finally broke it with a throaty chuckle, it felt like something he’d been leaning against had vanished.