Thank You for Listening(16)

Before she could reiterate her question, the sommelier arrived with a bottle of wine. He poured a splash into a large Bordeaux glass and nudged it to Nick, who passed it to Sewanee, wordlessly correcting the somm’s gendered assumptions about who was making the decisions tonight. She thrilled at the simple gesture and said to the sommelier, “Can he have some, too?”

“Certainly!”

Once Nick was holding a glass, they tipped them toward each other, gave a delicate swirl, breathed in the aroma, and took a sip. There was a pause as they chewed the wine. They swallowed in sync, the way two people would reach for the other’s hand simultaneously.

They said, at the same time, “Wow.” They laughed. Then repeated, louder, “Wow,” and laughed again.

Sewanee looked back to the sommelier. “Amazing. Thank you. Would you decant it, please?”

“Of course. Right away.” He left them.

Sewanee finished her taster and sighed happily, giving silent thanks to Adaku.

Nick watched her. “Decant it, eh?” He took the rest of the wine into his mouth.

“It’s a bit tight. It needs to open.” She watched him swallow. “So what is it you do?”

“Why are Americans always asking, ‘what do you do?’”

Sewanee grabbed some bread out of the basket and slathered it with what the waiter had described as “malted ghee.” She suspected it was just honey butter. “It fills the gaps in conversation.”

“Thank God for that, because uncomfortable silences have been a real bother tonight.”

There hadn’t been any lull in the conversation. They’d bantered and prodded and downright delighted each other for the last hour.

The sommelier returned with their decanter, poured two healthy glasses, and left again.

“I’d think,” Nick said, taking a sip, “asking ‘what do you like to do’ would be a better way of actually getting to know someone.”

Sewanee cocked an eyebrow. “Bless your heart. Stop evading.”

Nick guffawed. “I’m not evading! It’ll just bore you.” He grabbed some bread. “I work for a VC that buys and sells companies.”

“So, finance.”

“Now, try and contain your excitement, please, I’m not done yet.” Nick leaned in, mock-whispering, “I’m the closer. It takes a good amount of charm to close a deal and in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m quite charming.”

“I hadn’t, no.”

“Huh, it’s usually the first thing people notice about me.” Grinning, he took another swallow of wine. “What’s the first thing people notice about you?”

“My wit,” Sewanee deadpanned.

“It is wonderfully dry.” He held up his glass. “Like a fine wine. But it wasn’t the first thing I noticed about you.”

“No?” Sewanee drawled.

“No. First thing I noticed was your mouth.”

Sewanee ignored the hum that went through her at that. “Really.”

Nick paused with the glass at his lips, looked thoughtfully out into the restaurant. “No, you’re right. It was your legs. Your head was down at the time. So, chronologically . . .” He looked at Sewanee over the rim of his glass.

She leveled her gaze at him. “You can ask.”

“What do you do?”

“Not that. Go ahead. Ask about the eye patch you’ve so graciously avoided asking about.”

Nick looked baffled. “I haven’t avoided asking about it, or anything else for that matter. It wasn’t a topic of conversation. Much like your legs, which hadn’t come up until a moment ago.”

She could see why he was good at what he did.

He continued easily, buttering his bread, “An accessory? A statement piece? Like a fake tattoo or lens-less spectacles? This is Vegas, after all.”

“No.”

“All right, then. Not temporary?”

“No.”

“Well, then.”

There was a silence. The first true silence between them.

Sewanee leaned forward. “You’re not curious?”

Nick shrugged, pouring them both more wine. “’Course I’m curious. The same way I’m curious about what’s under that dress, because it’s you and I’m curious about you, but satisfying that curiosity isn’t in the cards for us tonight.” He set the decanter down and stared at the tabletop for a moment.

“Can I say, though?” He leaned so far forward their faces were less than a foot apart. And then he looked up at her. His eyes had brown flecks. “Cover up whatever you please for the world, but in intimacy? Hide nothing. In intimacy, everything is beautiful. So, what do you do?”

Sewanee didn’t hear the question. That is, she heard individual words that formed a question, but she didn’t hear what was asked. It came to her on a delay. In the ensuing silence, she picked up her glass and took a drink, mmm-ing about the wine, stalling, regrouping.

She had already given him a false name and Texas twang. It was too late to drop the charade, so she continued the deception. “I work in publishing.” She knew enough about books and how they worked. She did sort of work in publishing, after all. She could sustain this until he left. “I’m an editor.”