w about if I let you hear it? I’m afraid if I tell you, it’ll be boring if you have to turn around and hear it all repeated.”
“You couldn’t be boring,” he said, on such an earnest note that she felt in her bones that he meant it.
“Here’s the food!” The swinging door banged open, and Linette entered, carrying a heavy tray from which the fragrances of pastry wafted.
As if she were a magnet, she pulled the rest after her. Within seconds the last holdouts in the two groups had melded into one, talking and laughing as they got coffee, tea, and pastry. The atmosphere began to ease.
Once they all sat down, Linette said, “Who would like to read first—”
Hands went up midway through her question, but Bill cleared his throat loudly, rattled the pages already in his hand, and glared at Linette, whose voice dropped into blandness. “Looks like Bill is ready.”
Jen winced, wishing that Nikos’s first exposure to the group wouldn’t be through Bill.
Wilhelm Stryker lifted his double-action Smith & Wesson Model 29 44-cal Magnum, and sighted down its length. The Russian hit man dropped his wimpy nine mil and threw his hands up, squeaking, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
The little blonde the hit man had taken as hostage fixed pleading eyes on Stryker as she struggled futilely against the ropes, her enormous breasts rising and falling with every panting breath.
In the background, Stryker’s monster of an ex, Cindy, screeched like a banshee. Too bad, you brought this on yourself, hiring incompetent mercs to take me out, Stryker thought as he pistol-whipped the hit man, who dropped unconscious to the ground. Stryker bent over the chesty hostage, who whimpered gratefully . . .
Jen was afraid to look at Nikos. A second later, he touched her hand. When she turned to him, he gave her a wincing smile and wrote on her palm, letter by letter, “A.L.W.A.Y.S. L.I.K.E. T.H.I.S?”
She loved holding his hand. It was well-shaped, callused like hers across the palms. She wondered what it would feel like caressing her body . . .
Suppressing a delicious shiver (when this is over, we’ll get to be alone, she promised herself) she wrote back, “J.U.S.T. B.I.L.L.”
Nikos shot her a tiny smile of relief. She smiled back, feeling like a kid passing notes in school as he wrote, “N.O.T. M.Y. T.H.I.N.G. H.O.P.E. Y.O.U. N.E.X.T.”
He then let go of her hand, though with a glance of regret, and settled into a mask of polite endurance. Jen cast a quick glance around, noting the usual fixed stares of patience from every female there, and more than half the men, though Bill did have a couple of followers. She resorted to her usual way of coping by counting the pages as Bill set them aside, then breathing a quiet sigh of relief when he reached the last page.
People clapped politely. Nikos did too. Whatever he was thinking, he had excellent manners, another wonderful thing she was learning about him.
Jen made a private bet with herself that Linette wanted to move past that disaster, and sure enough, she called on the two best poets in the group. Tomas read an arrestingly beautiful poem about the reflection of the sky in a puddle on a rainy morning. Jen exulted in every well-chosen word, imagining them washing away the toxic residue of Bill’s macho-fest.
The second poet read something she had written in Spanish then translated into English. Jen exulted again, on behalf of the group, when she side-eyed Nikos and saw his expression lighten to interest and appreciation.
The poets got more genuine applause, following which Linette said, “Jen?”
Jen jumped, and almost yelped “Me?”
Linette smiled her way. “You almost never get a chance to be among the first ones, and you’ve brought a guest. How about you go now?”
“Okay.” Jen took out her papers, doing a couple of quiet deep breaths to quiet the thump of her heartbeat. Then, “I read the beginning last time. This continues the same scene. It’s a fantasy, set on another world. The protagonists are in a library, trying to decipher a magical text, and . . . well, let the story speak for itself.”
She began reading, only letting herself glance toward Nikos when she finished the first page. Was it confusing or boring? Did he think fantasy a waste of time? His smile of appreciation reflected in his eyes, and it struck her that he was going to like whatever she read. Not pretend to, which was a different matter. He was going to like it because he liked her.
Her nervousness fell away, and she began the second page with a lot more enthusiasm.
EIGHT
NIKOS
The first reader had filled Nikos with a weird mix of hilarity and dread.
The hilarity was sparked by the impression that this Wilhelm Stryker character was supposed to be the villain—the author piled on so much obnoxiousness that Nikos wondered if the story was aimed at young teenage boys in particular, who were not best known for picking up literary clues. But then the real villain showed up in the story, cowering before the swaggering Stryker, and Niko rapidly lost what little interest he’d had.
This human Wilhelm Stryker in the story seems to want sex, his unicorn commented, but despises the human women he expects to get it from.
Nikos agreed silently. There is more care and interest given to his projectile weapons than to the living objects of his desire.