He spoke without thinking, “Well, since we’ve got the fancy décor, shall we enjoy what we paid for and have a nightcap?”
Her gaze shifted around, then she looked up at him, and there was another flicker of the old smile. “Sure.”
They met in the bar, which was decorated on a New York theme. They ordered, and as she looked around slowly, he was very aware of a silence building. “Ever been to New York?” he asked, figuring that was innocuous enough.
She switched those luminous, expressive eyes to him, then said, “Nope. Had a couple invites, but they always seemed to come with interrogations attached.”
“Interrogations?” he repeated.
“Interviews. Which are really polite interrogations,” she said. “Nobody needs to know anything about my past to read my books, so I always turned ‘em down flat. G.T. Hidalgo has a nice biography, carefully crafted to be totally generic. Extra boring. I didn’t want anyone getting the urge to dig further.”
“I can understand that,” he said, as their drinks arrived.
She took an appreciate sip of her White Russian, then said, “Candy in a glass. But I can never drink more than half of one of these things.”
“No surprise,” he said. “What’s it got, vodka and Kahlua? That’s a pretty stiff drink.”
She took another sip, then said, “Truth is, I can’t stand most of the rest of it. I don’t care how much it costs, it all tastes like a terrible mix of medicine and battery acid. Though maybe my attitude was shaped by the smell of hard liquor when my pa went on the rampage.”
“Yep,” he said. “I drank gin because it got the job done fastest, but ever since you made me swear off it, I can’t tolerate even a sip of it. This whiskey . . . it tastes like smoke to the one in here.” He tapped his chest, and she gave a quick smile. She knew he meant his basilisk. “Which might not be all that much of a recommendation.”
“I can just see the commercial,” Godiva said, her small hands moving high, to shape a billboard. “Drink Smokey Joe’s Whiskey, and satisfy your armor-plated, bat-winged, laser-eyed secret self! Do you think that would sell?”
“I think every kid under sixteen would think that the coolest thing ever,” he joked. “But sadly, they are not exactly the intended market.”
They continued to banter like that until the drinks were down to clattering ice cubes, then she set aside her glass, and her smile vanished. “We’ll get there tomorrow, won’t we?”
“That’s the plan,” he said.
She let out a slow sigh. “It’ll be good to know.”
He decided against asking ‘know what’—what she was expecting to find. Or rather, what inner decisions hinged on what they found. He would wait until she was ready to tell him.
They parted then, wishing each other a good night, and next morning he rose before the sun came up to take a flight in expectation of another long day confined to the car, sitting next to her without being able to touch her.
The lush green land lay dim in the weak starlight. The sky had begun to blue in the east as he completed his circle. In the houses below, windows began to glow golden one by one as inhabitants wakened to a new day, without any idea that a basilisk flew silently overhead.
When he returned, he found Godiva already up and ready to go.
They had a quick breakfast and then hit the road. As the day progressed, and they got caught in summer traffic, he became aware of tension in her hands, in her frequent checks of her phone for the time.
They left the highway early that evening, Godiva having turned down stopping for dinner. “We’re close,” she said. “Let’s check, then
plan.”
He felt her attempt to lighten the tension she was fighting as she said, “Wow. As I’ve said every time I come back, things sure have built up around here. Not surprising. Cities seem to spread and gobble up towns everywhere. Certainly did in Los Angeles.”
“Do you recognize anything?” he asked.
She pointed out landmarks and familiar street names, her eye sweeping constantly back and forth as they drew ever nearer. The post office she’d used had been the township’s only facility back when she’d lived here. Now there were more post offices, but hers had not moved. It was located in what had become the older part of town, the buildings showing their age.
They pulled into the parking lot as the sun was dropping toward twilight. The post office itself was closed up tight, but the lobby was open.
“It used to close right at nine,” she said tersely as they walked in. “Opened at five in the morning. I could check before breakfast shifts at the restaurant I worked at. Now, it looks like it’s open 24/7.” Her gaze darted around. “Still combination locks, of course. They would have sent a key wouldn’t they, if they’d upgraded? That combination is etched into my brain . . .”
As she spoke, she moved straight toward a post box. Three practiced flicks of the dial, and she pulled the door open. Nothing was inside, but she put her hand in to check all four sides, and then peered in.
“Well, there was a Sunday in between our leaving and our arrival,” she muttered. “It will surely get here by tomorrow.”