Re: The Fortune Teller/ The Soldier
The wounded question came, and at least it was better than the penultimate, the most awful question. "No not me, not like some of the lads. Lucky, that's me." He said it happily, cheerfully, and with utter sincerity. That is, the words were sincerity, but the cheer was not. In fact, the sentences and the smile that went with them were as structured as a script and just as practiced. He reeled them right off and dove desperately for anything else to talk about.
He went pretty willingly where she wanted to go, though at first he tried to veer off toward the bar in automatic habit. He sat down fairly well where she indicated, muttering happily about how all the best dressed boys he went to school with never tried that hard at it, and that was the key, not trying. She was gone in a star-like twinkle that made him want to stare at everyone's nose just in case they might have one too, and he was slumping down in a high-backed chair trying to pinpoint what language it was that she spoke while she left.
When she returned to the table with her sweating glass, he was staring out of the window into the dark banks of snow. For a moment he thought he saw something flicker out there, but it was only his reflection... or someone else's. He tore his gaze away and put something else over the moody blankness that was drunken self-reflection. A smile. He hadn't noticed who or what she'd been doing over there. He took the glass and drank about half of it before he realized it was just water. He made a face and put it down. His blue gaze dropped to her now-empty hands. "Didn't get anything for yourself?" He started to struggle out of the chair. "I should have done it myself, if my head was right, but it was that knock in the hallway, you know. I'll just find someone here... something to slake your thirst I think, got to keep up the strength, we might have to get out and push." He chortled, steadying himself on the table. "You take my chair." He tried to take her elbow again the way she had taken his, and got a handful of shawl on accident, pulling it more than he meant to.
He immediately let go. "Oh, I say. Beg your pardon. It is a pretty thing, I hope I haven't torn it. Big clumsy oaf I am, sometimes." Not that he was taller than she.