“I’ll be back shortly,” he said and disappeared through the door.
If she was going to be bad, she might as well be disgustingly bad. She hadn’t touched a cigarette in years, although she’d never been a serious smoker. It had felt grown-up and sophisticated to smoke when she was a teenager and all her friends had tried it, but as she grew older and gave up the habit, she was ashamed to remember preaching about what an evil it was to anyone who had the nerve to light up. God, she must have been annoying. She would remember to keep her opinions to herself in the future and let people live however they damn well pleased.
“So here you are.” Matt eased through the door using a broad shoulder and strolled toward her with a sundae glass of ice cream in one hand and a silver cigarette case in the other.
“Are you GPS tracking me?”
He smiled and put the glass dish down on the table next to her glasses. “No, I don’t need to. I can feel where you are.”
Piper made a snorting noise in the back of her throat. “Gimme a break.”
“No, seriously, I asked the concierge if he’d seen a goddess with red hair. He had, I gave him a ten dollar bill, and now you’re busted.” He flicked open the cigarette case. “Now this is a bad habit.”
“Only if you can’t stop at one recreational, nostalgic stick of cancerous badness.”
“Can you stop at one?”
“Yes.”
“So why do it?”
She shrugged. “The taste, the kick, the nicotine hit, the forbidden fruit of it. It’s a stupid, expensive thing to do, but sometimes I have to do something totally evil that only hurts me.”
Matt nodded to a couple who’d just appeared about fifty yards away. “You’re not alone in that. “ She took one of the slender Nat Sherman black and gold cigarettes and he did the same. “We’re not alone.”
“Just the one, agreed?”
He shrugged. “Sure, we’ll give the concierge his silver cigarette case back pretty much intact.”
“We should leave him a tip. I can’t imagine these little beauties come cheap.”
“If you say so, but this is a very clever way of getting his fancy cigarettes for free—our room account will be debited with a pack of twenty and he gets to keep eighteen.”
She laughed. “Oh well, you’re paying.”
“Actually, yes, I am, and it wasn’t easy getting a room here for the night. I booked us in independently when I had to choose your courses for the wedding banquet.”
“You didn’t think to ask me?”
“No, I’m a control freak, remember?”
“The food was very nice. Thank you.”
He clicked the lighter into life and offered her the flame. “The bride’s parents paid for the food and drink.”
Piper lit her cigarette and took a quick puff. “Damn, did you see how that Bob guy stuffed everything that wasn’t nailed down into his face? No wonder his wife is so freaking thin and brittle.”
“She used to be a very large lady. Lost seventy pounds or something years back when they were trying for kids. Made no difference.” Matt lit his own cigarette and it made him look like a black and white film star. She melted inside. “Personally I think Bob’s been firing blanks for years after pickling himself with liquor, but that’s somewhere our conversations never go.”
“No, that’s just as well, but obviously if I’d known, I wouldn’t have been so snippy with her.”
“Forget it. She’s still a difficult, snobby social climber so don’t feel guilty.”
“Thanks.” She took another drag of the cigarette and exhaled slowly, letting its toxicity take effect, anticipating the dizzy high that would soon follow. “So tell me, how are you going to get out of that outrageous lie?”
Blue smoke curled from his sensuous lips as he appeared to consider her question. “Which one would that be?”
She giggled. “Doh! The one where you said you were leaving town to avoid dinner with the Dodges.”
He stubbed his cigarette out after just one puff and tipped his head to one side with an expression of regret. “It wasn’t a lie.”
“For real?”
“You sound like Pippa.”
“Pippa?”
“The lady at our table with the yellow feathers on her head.”
“Oh, her… Mrs. Computer.” Piper killed her cigarette, too. She suddenly felt sick and overwhelmed with regret. It wasn’t just because of the cigarette either. “You kept that quiet, the fact that you’re leaving very soon.”
He shrugged. “I did a shift at the Railway Tavern last night for the first time in a while. Stood there pulling at the same old taps, chewing the fat with the same old guys, talking about the same old things, and it occurred to me that I know just about every detail of their personal lives, their sex lives, their hopes and fears…and it felt like a big hand was coming out to strangle me.”
“Maybe you should reconsider your role as a bartender. That’s kind of what they’re supposed to do, right? Listen? Counsel and pour out liquid courage, tell the gang what they want to hear?”
“Exactly. Like I’m part of their lives or something.”
“But, Matt, you are part of their lives. There’s nothing you can do about that now.”
“But I can. And I am. That’s why I’m leaving and starting up somewhere new. Somewhere without vacation postcards pinned up behind the bar, thank you letters, pictures of me and the guys and big fish they’ve caught on the walls.” He sighed and looked into the middle distance toward the mountains and bright blue sky. “I don’t have a place to call home because it’s only a matter of time before you start to collect things, and then you get attached to them, irrational emotions take over, and you end up in a mess where you can’t move on. And you can’t forget things you really want to when there are reminders all over the place. The spaces where I sleep, shower, and get dressed are clean because I have control over that and they’re not really mine, but stuff comes into the tavern and I can’t stop it.”
“What don’t you want reminding of?” she asked gently, but sensed almost immediately that she would be added to the Forget List very shortly.
“Just about everything important,” he said flatly. “My mom, the place I should be able to call home, and my dog.”