Ingrid said, “I’m so glad that we could get together again. It’s been—what?—five, six years?”
“Ten,” Fulmar said.
“Really? No! That long?”
“And some ten thousand letters,” he added with a smile.
She blushed.
She looked down momentarily as she absently ran the long, thin fingers of her left hand through her thick, wavy golden hair.
When she looked back up, she took a puff of the cigarette she held between the tips of her right-hand index and middle fingers, then exhaled as she leaned forward. She rested on her right elbow, her wrist cocked, her thumb angling the cigarette upward.
“If you’re trying to make me feel guilty,” she grinned, “you’re being successful.”
“I apologize.”
“Please don’t. They were very sweet letters, and I should be ashamed for not responding to them.”
“Well, I imagine you get quite a bit of fan mail. You can’t answer every one. And lately you have been writing me back….”
She smiled a smile that said, Thank you for letting me off the hook.
After a moment, she said, “Would you like something to eat or drink?”
He nodded. “Is that coffee?”
“Tea.”
“Actually, I have a weakness for the power of persuasion.”
She cocked her head quizzically.
“How so?”
“That neon sign in the window?”
She looked at it, then back at him.
“What about it?”
“I’m convinced it’s there for me,” he said with a straight face, “and for me alone.”
She laughed. It was a deep and husky laugh—one that had become, in addition to her stunning looks, her signature on screen.
Fulmar waved to get the bartender’s attention.
“A Rheingold, please,” he called.
The bartender nodded.
Fulmar looked at Ingrid, who was pushing aside her cup.
“Make it two,” she said with a smile. “Suddenly, this tea tastes like acid.”
Fulmar turned back toward the bartender, who was drawing Fulmar’s beer from the tap.
“Make it two.”