“Short for . . . ? Oh. Yes.”
“So your mother just liked the name?” Most people would open up at talking about something as simple as their name, but he seemed ill at ease. Maybe he was named after someone he didn’t like. I touched his forearm. “Not trying to pry, sorry. Names are just my thing. Salvatoré means ‘savior’. Rescuer. It’s a good name.”
He looked down at my hand and I pulled back. So much for helping him feel comfortable.
“Sal! Your turn, man.” Apparently Phil had sunk the combo. He gave me a look that said “What’s his problem?” and I shrugged.
While Sal considered whether to go for an even more complicated double-combo to sink the 3-ball—Men! Always one-upping each other—Adam came over and took his place beside me.
“So what does my name mean?”
I’d gotten used to the angels traveling between us, but with him so close it was like being bathed in starlight. I looked away to gather my thoughts and saw Sal frowning at me. Had I really irked him that much by asking about his name?
“If you don’t know . . . ”
“Sorry! Spaced out for a sec,” I grinned. “It’s past my bedtime.” The wash of angels surging over us was so thick that I could actually feel individual kisses of energy. “Most people interpret it to mean ‘earth’ or just ‘man’. But I read one interpretation that included ‘to make’—like ‘earth to make man’ or ‘man made of earth’.”
“So . . . if I was a superhero I’d be Dirt Man?”
His joke caught me off guard and I laughed. But not like a normal person. It was the trilling warble I never-ever use in public—not since the sixth grade, when I’d disrupted a school play, and everyone in the auditorium and on stage had turned and looked at me.
“Is that you, Lila?” Maureen was in the archway, one hand on Cara’s elbow and the other wrapped around a wine glass.
“Afraid so.” I rolled my eyes, but was glad to see Cara smiling. She’d survived the girl-to-girl chat fest. “Y’all have officially been introduced to my Mogwai laugh.”
“Mogwai?” Cara came over, and Adam jumped up to help her settle onto one of the leather sofas, propping two throw pillows around her for comfort. They were so sweet. And now I could see that Cara had brilliant little white angels, too. Not as many as Adam, but they were there—minuscule bursts of light in the air over her head and shoulders.
“Whoa, Cara. Seriously. How young are you?” Phil was always ready to tease, but Maureen protested.
“Hey, now. I don’t know either.”
“Mogwai were the benevolent fictional creatures portrayed in the film Gremlins. If they consumed food after midnight, they would retreat into visually and tactilely unappealing cocoons, and—after a subsequent transformative period—emerge as mischievous, murderous creatures called ‘gremlins’. Hence the title of the film.”
By the time Sal finished speaking, we were all gawking. His longest string of words the whole night was about a campy old horror flick?
“So . . . you’re a film buff?” I tried to position an encouraging smile on my face, but—as was quickly becoming the norm whenever I asked him a question—he seemed perplexed.
“I thought the scene involving the kitchen appliances was . . . amusing.”
That did it for me. Out came another stupid Mogwai laugh, and then we were all laughing—even Mr. Olympian. His great shoulders shook, and he seemed to need the pool stick for support as his entire body rippled with laughter. Phil finally clapped him on the back in mock concern, and Sal bent back to the game, one last chuckle rumbling out across the table.
Unfortunately, the casual normalcy we’d finally achieved couldn’t last. At least not for Cara. While Sal now seemed at ease and was smoothly knocking in every shot he lined up, she’d retreated into a wan stillness far more notable than Sal’s inner pool shark. And whether he reminded her of an ex, or she was just in awe of his physique, she couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off him—until he glanced her way, that is, then her gaze shifted to her knees.
When a new game began, I passed my stick to Maureen. Sal might be eye candy, and Cara might just be tired, but something felt wrong. Perching on a stool near the couch, I tried to engage her, but even speaking seemed to exact too great a physical toll, and her mouth opened and closed without breaths deep enough to make her voice heard. Maureen called out for us to watch Sal attempt a behind-the-back bank shot, but my inner focus stayed on Cara.
The stool was hard, and my jeans were tight around my crossed legs, but my awareness spread outward, past such minor discomforts, and through the air around me. Sal missed his first shot of the night and looked at me in comical surprise, but the sensation on my right held my attention. Cara’s energy prickled like static-electricity on a wool blanket, and I shifted my vision, twisting my torso just enough to watch her without being too obvious.
A light sheen of sweat highlighted her features now, and her stomach barely moved as she breathed. Adam came over and asked if she was feeling well, but at her small smile and nod, he returned to the game. Why wouldn’t he? He couldn’t see what I did.
As soon as I’d opened myself up, the spaces between her angels filled with black specks—or rather, dissolved into tiny blotches of nothingness. I’d never seen anything like it before. They weren’t simply black angels; I had no sense of sparking or vibration. Nor did they seem substantive. The only description my brain could assign was a notion of what the absence of everything might look like.
Was it a type of negative energy? Her shyness had struck me when we first met. Was this self-defensive somehow, because she was overwhelmed? Or was it making her sick? Maybe I
