pal, we need this.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. Besides, if I find out you can’t dance, I want to be able to dump you now and save time.” She just laughed when he twisted her ear. “And you owe me.”
“Why is that?”
She flipped down the visor and gave what she could see of her face a quick check in the mirror. On impulse she pulled out a lipstick and painted her mouth a vivid red. “Because if I hadn’t been so quick with the excuses you’d be eating dinner at my parents’.”
“I liked your parents.”
Touched, she leaned over to kiss his cheek. Seeing she’d left the imprint of her lips there, she rubbed at it with her thumb.
“Damn it.”
“Hold still a minute,” she complained when he backed away. “I’ve just about got it.” Satisfied, she dropped the tube of lipstick back in her bag. “I know you like my parents. So do I. But you’d never have gotten nachos and margaritas at Will and Caro’s.” She lowered her voice. “My mother cooks.”
Taking no chances, he rubbed at his cheek himself. “Is that a crime in this state?”
“She cooks things like alfalfa fondue.”
“Oh.” Once he’d managed to imagine it he’d decided he much preferred the spicy Mexican meal they had shared a short time before. “I guess I do owe you.”
“Your very life,” she agreed. Opening her door, she squeezed herself through the narrow opening between it and the neighboring car. The flashing lights danced over her, making her look exactly as she was—exciting and exotic. “And after a couple of weeks in nature’s bosom I figure we could both use some live music—the louder the better—a rowdy crowd and some air clogged with cigarette smoke.”
“Sounds like paradise.” He managed, with some effort, to push himself out the other door. “Sunny, I don’t feel right about you exchanging all your currency.”
She lifted both brows, half-amused, half-puzzled, by his phrasing. “You exchange currency when you go into a foreign country. What I’ve been doing is called spending money.”
“Whatever. I don’t have any with me to spend.”
She thought it was a pity that a man so obviously intelligent and dedicated should earn a small salary. “Don’t worry about it.” She’d only started counting pennies herself since she’d become self-supporting. So far, she hadn’t shown much of a knack for it. “If I get to Philadelphia, you can pick up the tab.”
“We’ll talk about it later.” He needed to change the subject, and he found the answer close at hand. “I wanted to ask you what you call that outfit you’re wearing.”
“This?” She glanced down at the snug, short and strapless red leather dress under her winter coat. “Sexy,” she decided, running a tongue over her teeth. “What do you call it?”
“We’ll talk about that later, too.”
With her arm through his, she crossed the broken sidewalk. The swatch of formfitting leather didn’t provide much protection against the wind, but it felt good to wear something other than jeans. It felt even better to note how often Jacob’s gaze skimmed over her legs.
The cold was forgotten when she opened the door to a blast of heat and music.
“Ah . . . civilization.”
He saw only a dim room dazzled by intermittent flashes of light. The music was every bit as loud as she’d promised, pulsing with bass, blaring with horns. He could smell smoke and liquor, sweat and perfume. Through it all was the constant din of voices and laughter.
While he took it in, she passed their coats to the checker on duty and slipped the stub in her bag.
She was right. He’d needed it—not just the sensory stimulation, not just the anonymous crowd, but also the firsthand look at twentieth-century socializing.
Overall there was very little difference from what he might have found in his own time. People, then and then, tended to gather together for their entertainment. They wanted music and company, food and drink. Times might change, but people’s needs were basically the same.
“Come on.” She was dragging him through the crowd to where tables were crammed together on two levels. On the first was a long bar. There was a man rather than a synthetic behind it, serving drink and setting out bowls filled with some kind of finger food. People crowded there, hip to hip.
On the second level was a half circle of stage where the musicians performed. Jacob counted eight of them, in various kinds of dress, holding instruments that pitched a wall of sound that roared out of tall boxes on either corner of the stage.
In front of them, on a small square of floor, tangles of arms and legs and bodies twisted in various ways to the beat. He noted the costumes they chose and saw that there was no standard. Snug pants and baggy ones, long skirts and brief ones, vivid colors and unrelieved black. Women wore shoes flat to the floor or, like Sunny, shoes with slender spikes at the back.
He imagined this meant those particular women wanted to be taller. But it had the side effect of making it very pleasant to look at their legs.
He appreciated the style of nonconformity, the healthy expression of individual tastes. He knew there had been a space of time between this and his own when society in general had accepted a uniform. A brief period, Jacob mused, but it must have been a miserably dull one.
As he stood and observed, waitresses in short skirts bustled on both levels, balancing trays and scribbling the orders shouted at them.
Inefficient, he thought, but interesting. It was simpler to press a button on an order box and receive your requirements from a speedy droid. But it was a bit friendlier this way.
With her hand in his, Sunny led him up a short flight of curving stairs and began to scout around for an empty table. “I forgot it was Saturday night,” she shouted at him. “It’s always a madhouse on Saturdays.”
“Why?”
“Date night, pal,” she said, and laughed. “Don’t worry, we’ll squeeze in somewhere.” But she abandoned her search to smile at him. “What do you think?”
He lifted a hand to toy with the trio of balls that hung from slender chains at her ears. “I like it.”
“The Marauders are good. The band.” She gestured as the sax player went into a screaming solo. “They’re very hot out here.”
“In here,” he corrected. “It’s hot in here.”
“No, I mean . . . Never mind.” Someone bumped her from behind. Taking it in stride, she wound her arms around Jacob’s neck. “I guess this is our first date.”
He ignored the crowd and kissed her. “How’s it going so far?”
“Just dandy.”
Taking that to mean “good,” he kissed her again. Her satisfied sigh set off a chain reaction inside him. “We could always just stand here,” he said, directly in her ear. “I don’t think anyone would notice.”
“You were right,” she said on another sigh. “It is hot in here. Maybe we should just—”
“Sunny!” Someone caught her by the waist, spun her around and, ending on a dip, pressed a hard, wet kiss to her mouth. “Baby, you’re back.”
“Marco.”
“What’s left of me. I’ve been pining away for weeks.” He slung a friendly arm around her shoulders. “Where’d you disappear to?”
“The mountains.” She smiled, pleased to see him. He was skinny, unpretentious and harmless. Despite the dramatic kiss, they had decided years before not to complicate their friendship with romance. “How’s the real world?”
“Dog-eat-dog, love. Thank God.” He glanced over her shoulder and found himself being burned alive by a pair of direct green eyes. “Ah . . . who’s your friend?”
“J.T.” She laid a hand on Jacob’s arm. “This is Marco, an old poker buddy. You don’t want to play with J.T., Marco. He’s murder.”
Marco didn’t have to be told twice. “How ya doing?” He didn’t offer his hand, because he wanted to keep it.
