8

An hour later Kendra showed up at Carlisle’s Pub.  She handed the heavily muscled guy working the door ten bucks, and then stared at the single dollar he handed back in change.  She’d had no idea that there would be a cover charge, and wished she’d stopped at an ATM on her way over.  She wasn’t used to having money, so it had never occurred to her.

“Are you going in, or what?” he snapped.

“It costs nine dollars to get into this dive?” 

“What?” he inclined his head of closely clipped hair toward her.  A group of rowdy undergrads behind her jostled to move forward.

“Nothing,” she shouted, and began to walk away, but was jerked to a halt.  Mr. Muscles spun her back toward the door.

“I have to stamp your hand,” he said and flexed first one, then the other bulging biceps, “unless you’re not going in.”

 Intrigued, Kendra stared.  What would it be like if he flexed in time to music, and what other muscles could he flex, she wondered.  He grabbed her hand, turned the palm toward the floor, and stamped her hand, then gave her a gentle shove into the crowded pub. 

Kendra sort of appreciated his gruff guidance, so it didn’t bother her that the undergrads behind her laughed.  She stepped into the nearest corner to survey the crowd.  She spotted Phil at the bar, and immediately wished she hadn’t.  Had he planned to come before she’d mentioned it in their session, or was he checking up on her? 

“Yeah, right,” she muttered to herself, “like he’d care about whether I did the assignment I set myself.”  She glanced at him again, and saw that he was in conversation with an attractive blonde.  The two seemed to be on a date.  Good.  She wouldn’t have to figure out what a girl was supposed to do when she ran into her counselor socially—well, she hadn’t actually run into him.  In fact, she thought as Phil took his date’s hand, she could turn blue and die and he wouldn’t know.

Kendra stood unnoticed in the corner for another few minutes.  She recognized no one else.  Might as well act like I belong.  Now how do I get a guy to buy me a drink?  Kendra decided that proximity to the booze wouldn’t hurt, so she hopped into one of the few free bar stools at the far end of the big rectangular bar in the center of the first floor.  Behind it three huge, shiny brew-tanks rose past the second floor.  Kendra could see the profiles of people seated next to the railing on the second floor.  Now and then a face looked over the rail to survey the action below.  She made eye contact with a guy who looked like Shaggy on the old Scooby-Do reruns she watched whenever she was in her apartment and couldn’t sleep.  Without thinking, she smiled at him.  When he smiled back, she panicked.

“Shit!” Kendra swore as she studied the grain in the bar.  Shaggy was real.  What would she do if he sought her out?  She ran her fingers over the bar.  It was nice, probably some kind of oak, and so smooth that there must be a dozen coats of polyurethane over the wood.

“Can I get you something?” the bartender, another bulky athletic guy, asked. 

“Um, no--”

“She’ll have a gin and tonic in a tall glass, and so will I.”  Shaggy slapped fifteen dollars on the bar.  The bartender glided off to mix the drinks.  Shaggy leaned forward, one elbow resting jauntily on the bar, and grinned at her.

“I’m Matt,” he said.

“Really,” Kendra quickly blended her surprise that his name wasn’t something closer to “Shaggy” with a pretended disinterest.  Amazingly, it seemed to work.

Matt frowned a little.  When he spoke, he pitched his voice lower.  “I haven’t seen you here before.”

Kendra rolled her eyes.  An actual pick-up line--she hadn’t thought that guys still used them, but perhaps they were timeless.  The thought of words anchored in a current of time made her snort.

“Did I say something funny?” Matt asked, completely oblivious to how ridiculous he sounded.

Kendra looked him over now that he was close enough.  He was cute, but-- “How old are you?”

“Aren’t I supposed to ask you that question?”

“A) Your question is not grammatically correct and (B) if I’m correct about the assumptions behind it, then I find the question incredibly sexist, perhaps even racist.”

“You know,” Matt leaned in, “I haven’t met a bright woman in here for months.  Let me--”

Kendra stood up, terminally insulted.

“Wait,” Matt put a hand on her arm, “I didn’t mean that like it sounded.”

Kendra shook him off, prepared to leave, but from across the bar Phil met her eyes, and his sympathetic grin was enough to make her hop back onto her bar stool in defiance.

“I have sincerely been looking for an intelligent woman with whom to converse.”  Matt sounded different.  Kendra deigned to look at him, curious.

“I know I look like an art student, but I’m really a math--”

Kendra felt Phil’s eyes bore into the side of her face.  She didn’t dare turn to find out if they actually were.  The sound of his voice rang in her memory, “arrested development,” and he’d worn that knowing grin,  a smirk really, as he’d said it.  Feeling more defiant than she had since she’d been Elle’s age, Kendra grabbed the lapels of Matt’s jacket--leather, of course--Elle had been right about that, and hissed, “Doctoral candidate in physics,” before she kissed him.

At first Matt’s lips faltered, but then he sucked her bottom lip, and ran his tongue under her top lip.  Kendra’s heart and all of her other parts lurched toward him.  His tongue explored her mouth.  The sensation was surprising, erotic, and intimately presumptive.  She swirled her tongue over his in a kind of weird swordplay, and began her own exploration of his mouth—very strange.  She retracted her tongue and focused on his lips.  They were smooth and firm, even chewy, she thought, and tried an experimental nibble.  Matt’s arms tightened around her.  Kendra rested a hand on his upper arm, and assessed his biceps through the leather--could be bigger.  She realized that her neck was kinked and about to cramp.  She straightened, and the kiss ended.

The bartender rang a bell at the end of the bar, and the whole place erupted in applause.  Was it somebody’s birthday?  Kendra looked around, but found everyone staring at her and Matt.  A couple of wolf whistles erupted from the other side of the bar.  Matt ducked his head modestly.  Confused, Kendra blushed.

The bartender, whose biceps Kendra realized she had wanted to find under Matt’s jacket, plunked two more gin and tonics in front of them.  Kendra had yet to taste her first one, and looked at him, perplexed.

“That had to be the kiss of the night.  You each get a drink on the house.”  He grinned at them, and made to remove their first drinks, but realized that Kendra’s was still full.  “Better drink up,” he winked at her.  “I’m not supposed to serve one customer two drinks at a time.”

Matt smiled and hoisted his fresh drink in her direction.

Not to be outdone, Kendra lifted her first drink, and clinked it against his glass.  Social life, here I come, she thought, and downed the whole thing.  When her empty glass thudded against the bar, the first floor erupted into applause once again.  She looked to Matt for an explanation, and saw his eyebrows rise as if amused.  What is it with guys and smirks?

Determined to wipe it off his face, Kendra knew she had two choices.  To knee him in the nuts might be construed as assault, so she pulled him toward her once more.  As she stared into his eyes, she realized that it was not his response that she cared about, but her own, and with that, she knew that the moment was hers, virgin though she was.  Arrested development, my ass.  She kissed him again, and paid more attention to the rest of his body that time.

The band started, and the crowd swelled toward the makeshift stage.  Hoping that she had enough moxie to pull it off, Kendra shoved Matt away so that she had room to get off her barstool, then stalked toward the dance floor.  The low heels on the boots that LB had loaned her threatened to pitch her forward, but the muscles in her back remembered just in time how to correct for the angle.  She strode onto the small parquet dance floor, and made a half-turn into some kind of dance move, or so she hoped. 

Thank the universe that Matt had done what she’d  planned for him to do and followed her.  He put an arm around her, and mated his pelvis to hers.  Kendra nearly stumbled.  Should first dates involve this much bodily contact, she wondered belatedly.  Matt grinned at her with enthusiasm as the drummer marked every other beat with a thump on his kick drum, like the beat of a giant heart. 

At about the time that Kendra realized that she was over her head in a social ocean, she felt the gin and tonic crash over her brain like a wave swallowed a surfer.  Her right knee folded, and she stumbled into Matt, who held her up.

“You don’t drink much, do you?” he shouted in her ear.

That was true.  Even though she had taught Elle how to not poison their brain with alcohol four years ago, the most Kendra drank since then was a half-glass of wine with the fancy dinners sponsored by the industrial giants.  That memory’s new, and yet not because it was a memory of the last three years, but is it real?  Kendra reminded herself that reality and truth were just resting points for the human spirit.  They had no conceptual merit.  She looked around the crowded dance floor.  Everyone there believed in the solidity of his or her surroundings, they believed in truth.  She felt so far from them that her head spun.  Maybe the disasters foretold in the legends of time travel happen like this, slowly.

Kendra stopped dancing, if anyone could call her aimless motions dance.  She didn’t dare shake her head.  The bar whirled slowly as it was.  She ignored Matt’s outstretched arm, and did her best to walk straight to the patio.  The crowd was so thick, it didn’t matter if she staggered.  She let herself be buoyed toward the door.  All the accidental touches and bumps were sort of fun.  She giggled, then stopped.  Wasn’t she supposed to be figuring something out?

Outside, Kendra leaned both hands on the low railing that surrounded the patio, separating bar from not-bar.  The sidewalk was inches away that the distinction seemed so arbitrary, like much of life.  She glanced at Matt, as he came up behind her.  His mother really should have named him Shaggy.  Involuntarily she giggled.  How stupid.

“God, I’m drunk, aren’t I?” she asked.

“Man, you’re a cheap date.  Have some water.”  Matt handed her a tall glass.  “It’ll help prevent a hangover.”  He drank from what seemed to be another gin and tonic.

“Hangover?”  Kendra was horrified.  “I don’t have time for a hangover.  I’ve got to much to do!”

“Don’t flip out.”  He gestured for calm with his free hand.  “After only one drink with plenty of tonic water, you should be fine in a couple of hours.”

Kendra inhaled deeply.  “This was stupid.  I shouldn’t have come.”

“Oh, come on.  When was the last time you just relaxed and had fun?”

She looked at him, not in the mood for pseudo-therapy.  “The spring of my fourteenth year.  So what?”

“So live a little.  Let’s go dance some more.”

“The sound level in there has to be over a hundred decibels.  I can hear my ears buzz.  That means hearing loss.”

Matt sighed, and leaned his backside on the rail next to her.  Kendra glanced at his face as he scanned the crowd.  He seemed glum.  Great, now Shaggy’s about to dump me.  The thought of being alone and drunk in a crowd scared her.  She blurted the first light-hearted thing that came to mind.

“Do you mind if I call you ‘Shaggy’?” 

He turned to her, surprised.  “Shaggy?  You mean like on Scooby-Do?”

She smiled shakily.

“No, that’d be cool.”  He grinned.  “But I hope I have a little more on the ball than he did.  So are you Thelma?”

“Nope, Daphne.”  Kendra flung back her hair, taking care not to jerk her intoxicated head, then stuck out her chest.

Matt laughed, but it was a friendly laugh.  “Wanna get out of here?”

Kendra’s heart sped up.  “And go where?”

Matt shrugged.  “My place?  Or we could go to yours, if you’d rather,” he added quickly.

“No, let’s go to yours,” she said, thinking fast.  “I don’t have anything for breakfast.”  Had she really just said that?  She clapped her hand to her mouth, and looked at him, mortified.  “I mean--I don’t want you to think that I think--” she stopped, confused.

Matt laughed softly, tipped her chin up, and kissed her.