The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [20]
He smiles weakly. “Good thing for the bridge and Buddhism, eh?”
She laughs, and a look of something, understanding or solidarity, passes between them. Ursula is happy for this—she hasn’t had anyone she’s felt she could talk to in a while—but their quiet moment is interrupted by two women in party dresses and teased hair who saunter between them and over to the beer coolers. After a little comparison shopping, they pick out two six-packs of Corona.
Javier leans over and whispers in her ear.
“How about I show you an old trick Chas taught me?” He winks at her, then strides over to the cooler.
“Hey. You guys headed for the party?” he asks, reaching in for a six of Dos Equis. One of the women hesitates, but the other says yes.
“So are we. I’m Javier, and this is Ursula.”
They respond with their names. The one in the skunk-print slip is Bettina. The one with the pointillist landscape dress is Tammy.
“So who do you guys know?” Bettina asks Ursula on their way to the counter.
“We’re part of John’s contingent,” Javier explains.
“John?” Bettina says. “Which John?”
“John Hayden.”
“Oh. I don’t know that John.”
“He’s in sales.”
“We’re in sales,” Tammy says.
“Really? Are we talking the same company?”
“General Foods?” she asks.
“Right. Well, he’s mostly regional nowadays.” He tosses a Payday bar down next to his six-pack on the counter. “You probably wouldn’t see him much. Hey, Santos.”
He shakes hands with the weary Latino man behind the counter and asks him to break a hundred, talking about Middle Eastern counterfeiting rings as Santos holds the bill under an ultraviolet lamp. By the time the group gets out onto the street Javier has already changed the subject a few times over, with a little help from the headlines on the row of newspapers next to the door. Tearing into his candy bar, he brings up a recent murder mystery in Richard W. Held Park, about which the two women profess fear and exhibit excitement. He tries out yesterday’s capture of a guerrilla leader in central Africa, but they aren’t too keen on politics, so he shifts back to the familiar: the British royal family, the latest fun-loving-hitmen buddy movie.
They turn uphill on Singlaub and are met by the full moon, nestled beside a low cloud of crater ash above the volcano’s mouth, its cushiony underside illuminated by the jeweled city lights.
Tammy and Bettina gaze at the tableau.
“Full moon,” Tammy says softly. “Anything could happen tonight.” Bettina nods, her eyes misted, her face newly serene and hopeful. It’s as though the two of them had been sprinkled with pixie dust. Javier gives Ursula a look that says, This Is Significant.
“What’s it mean to you?” Javier asks the two women. “That bright big moon up there?”
Tammy and Bettina give each other an amused, questioning look, silently conferring, probably, on the issue of whether Javier is weirder than he is cute or cuter than weird. They seem, at least provisionally, to settle on the latter, and begin trying to answer his question. Javier keeps eyeing Ursula as the women talk about travel, adventure, romance. He begins to prompt them. Does it mean newness or oldness? They talk about childhood camp-outs under the stars and about ancient mysteries and decide it means both. Does it mean belonging or separation? Again they decide it means both. Wholeness or emptiness? Wholeness, definitely. He asks them if they’re superstitious, and at first they don’t think so, but then Tammy admits that her horoscopes are often quite accurate, and then Bettina talks about her frequent déjà vu experiences and the dream she had about flying, which was a lot like the skydiving scene in the TV movie she saw the next night, and then Tammy relates her recent dream of going to a shoe store and being fitted with a pair so soft she couldn’t even feel the ground. She thinks it might mean something, but she isn’t sure.
To Javier, of course, it means something.
“Superstition is on the rise,” he whispers to Ursula.
They turn up the driveway of a luxury high-rise