Blitzed(87)

Jordan started strumming, and with the way she was stroking all the strings at once, I thought she would do a traditional folk song or something like that. Instead, she shifted to a finger pick style quickly, grinning as she heard the sound. I nodded in appreciation.

"Hello darkness, my old friend . . .” I started, Jordan's head jerking up as she heard me sing along. She stumbled over a chord before she smiled and found where she was, the two of us harmonizing for the rest of the song.

When the last note floated away into the quiet air of the cabin, she set the guitar aside and clapped softly. "You said you knew the violin. I didn't know you were such a good singer too."

I felt heat creep up my neck and I shook my head. "I'm not that good. I just know some of the folk-rock songs from the sixties and seventies. My father, he was into that sort of music, so I grew up listening to it often. What about you, do you sing?"

"Not unless I've got three beers in me, which I never do," Jordan said with a laugh. "There's a reason I'm a guitar player and not a singer."

"I think you have a lovely speaking voice," I said, making her turn to blush. It raised an appealing pink to her skin, and in my mind, I could see my lips tracing that blush to see how far it went. She was distracting, that was for sure.

"You Frenchmen," she finally said, dismissing my compliment with a wave of her hand. "Come on, let me play some more before my hand gets too cold. It'll help me pass the time."

For the next hour, on and off, we entertained ourselves. I was surprised at the breadth and depth of her knowledge, as she strayed from rock and roll to some light country and even traditional spiritual music. I countered with songs that were not only in English, but French, Spanish and Russian as well. "How'd you learn so many languages?"

I shook my head, smiling. "I don't know nearly as many as it seems. I merely learned the music itself. I only speak English, French, Rom and my country's native language. The rest of it I fake reasonably well when I sing. After all, Spanish is very closely related to French, and there are many words in Russian that sound similar to Rom."

Jordan set her guitar aside and looked at me, her eyes assessing me levelly. "Tell me, Felix. You seem like an intelligent man. You're multilingual while I struggle with English it sometimes seems, you obviously know a lot about art, technology, and things like that for your work. You're a talented singer, and from the way your hands are built, I can assume a decent violinist. You could make a good living doing regular work. Why do what you do? Why do you steal?"

Her words stung, and I stood up, going to the indoor sink and poured a cup of water. I'd asked myself the same questions many times, and to have this woman, who was already distracting me so much, to put a voice to the nagging doubts in my head shook me. "Despite what you may think, I'm not a stereotypical Gypsy, Jordan."

I swallowed the cup of water bitterly, dropping the cup in the sink. I don't know if she heard my next words, but they were for my benefit anyway. "Even if I am a thief."





Chapter 7





Jordan





When Francois came back a couple hours later, he looked from Felix to me in a bit of confusion. When he'd left, his brother and I were, at least, polite to each other. Now, the only reason I stayed in the room was that it was warmer than the bedroom I had as my other option. "Is everything all right?"

"Everything is fine," I said. We'd just met, and there should have been no reason that I should feel bad about an arrogant, snippy comment from someone who was nearly a total stranger. "By the way, I used your guitar. I needed something to pass the time."

Francois smiled, cutting through my hurt feelings like a ray of sunshine through the clouds. “You play the guitar too? I have to hear that sometime. Want to help me unpack? I got a couple things that should help you not be so cold too.”

What he’d gotten was just from some big box retailer, but I was hardly one to complain. I immediately took off Francois baggy sweatshirt to pull on the acrylic sweater he'd gotten me, leaving the cheap hunting jacket to the side. "You’ll probably want it later, but it’s heavy," he warned me as he hung it over the chair next to the small table. "Best of all, look in the bag on the floor."

I picked up the bag, already guessing by the heavy weight what was inside. A pair of boots peeked out, lined with what was most likely fake wool — they looked much warmer than my tennis shoes. "Wow. Thank you."

"Oh, don't thank me yet, you're going to be earning those boots," Francois said. He looked over at Felix, who was watching the whole thing with a sort of disinterested curiosity, like the only reason he was watching was because there weren't any squirrels outside that were more entertaining. "Felix, when we set up this cabin, we expected the two of us to be here for no more than two or three days. While I was out, I talked with our friends. They said that it will be a minimum of a week before they can arrange a new extraction. So unless you want to try and smuggle seven Japanese national treasures over the border by ourselves, we're stuck here for a week at least.”

Felix muttered a few obvious curses under his breath in what I thought was French, then looked up. "I guess that explains your largess with the food. But it raises another issue."