And guarantee she thinks we’re a creeper, Joey retorted. Humans do not sniff each other when they’ve just met!
A jingling and clacking indicated someone approaching. The noise turned out to belong to a small woman with a cloud of blond frizz whose neck and arms were invisible beneath an enormous number of bracelets. “Hel-lo. I’m Cassandra—one of the old stalwarts. Are you new to the workshop?”
He put on his university professor smile as the woman approached. “I am.”
Mikhail and Bird came up hand in hand. “Joey,” Bird exclaimed with pleasure. “What a wonderful surprise.”
Cassandra’s tinkly voice sharpened to one of those humorless giggles that in some people were a nervous habit, and in others were a social weapon. “Oh, Bird! You know our newcomer?”
“Yes,” Bird said. “Joey is a friend of Mikhail’s from the university . . .”
Joey didn’t hear what she said next—his awareness was bent on that far room. Doris was there! He could feel her presence like sunrise just beyond the rim of the world. Forcing himself not to go search for her, he politely stood aside so the others could go in first.
Once they were all in, Bird turned his way. “Joey, you remember Godiva, Jen, and Doris?”
Joey let the smile come at last. He turned, and there she was!
“We meet again,” he managed, knowing it sounded like a clumsy pickup line. But it was better than blurting what he wanted to, which was I’m yours. Come and live with me forever!
He was aware of Godiva and Jen saying something, but he didn’t get the sense of it: his attention was solely on Doris.
She gave him a polite smile, her gaze sliding away as she said, “Very nice to see you again.” But her neutral tone was belied by the pulse ticking in the soft curve of her throat.
She is pushing us away, the fox yapped, Go to her!
Inside Joey, his fox leaped in a frantic circle, stopping only to make inviting play-bows, all nine tails flourishing in the air. Feeling a little dizzy from the intensity, Joey dropped into a random chair.
Godiva was addressing him. “ . . . good to see more male types turning up. What kind of things do you write?”
Joey’s throat had gone dry. He used all his self-control not to turn Doris’s way as he said, “I’m more of an oral storyteller. But a number of the students I counsel are creative people of one sort or another. I thought I’d check this workshop out, as an alternative to all-student groups at the university.”
Cassandra walked between them, bracelets clicking. “Oh, you’ve come to the right place! Those of us with experience do love to mentor our younger writers—”
“Specifically the professionals among us,” cut in a newcomer.
The women fell silent at the heavy tread of a paunchy blond man wearing a fedora. He bellied into their personal space, swinging a briefcase in a wide circle, forcing a thin college-aged fellow to duck.
“Careful with that thing, Bill,” Godiva said sharply. “You nearly decapitated Tomas.”
The student dropped into a chair as if to hide, beaded dreadlocks curtaining his face.
“Ha, ha.” Bill also wielded the humorless laugh as a social weapon.
He made a business of selecting a chair, then plunked down the briefcase and began rooting noisily in it. His parade of importance smothered the sounds Joey was far more interested in. His fox’s ear had pricked up as Doris spoke to the aproned woman setting out baked goods and coffee.
“Hi, Linette,” Doris said. “Can I help you with that?”
Linette’s answer was lost beneath what Joey recognized as a Nuclear Holocaust ringtone that he didn’t think anyone over nineteen used.
Bill yanked out his cellphone and barked into it, “I’m at my meeting, Mindy! Your little plumbing problems in a house I no lo
nger live in can damn well wait. I have obligations here.”
Bill chucked the phone into his briefcase and addressed the room. “You’re lucky. None of you are forced to deal with selfish, grasping ex-wives like Mindy! Well. Shall we get started?”
Bird had told him that Doris was the group’s current moderator.
Doris opened her mouth, but Cassandra forestalled her with one of those machine-gun giggles. “I’d just like to remind everybody that it has been a year. It’s time to pick a new moderator, though Doris has been wonderful—”