“This?” She glanced down at the snug, short and strapless red leather dress under her winter coat. “Sexy,” she decided, running a tongue over her teeth. “What do you call it?”
“We’ll talk about that later, too.”
With her arm through his, she crossed the broken sidewalk. The swatch of formfitting leather didn’t provide much protection against the wind, but it felt good to wear something other than jeans. It felt even better to note how often Jacob’s gaze skimmed over her legs.
The cold was forgotten when she opened the door to a blast of heat and music.
“Ah... civilization.”
He saw only a dim room dazzled by intermittent flashes of light. The music was every bit as loud as she’d promised, pulsing with bass, blaring with horns. He could smell smoke and liquor, sweat and perfume. Through it all was the constant din of voices and laughter.
While he took it in, she passed their coats to the checker on duty and slipped the stub in her bag.
She was right. He’d needed it—not just the sensory stimulation, not just the anonymous crowd, but also the firsthand look at twentieth-century socializing.
Overall there was very little difference from what he might have found in his own time. People, then and then, tended to gather together for their entertainment. They wanted music and company, food and drink. Times might change, but people’s needs were basically the same.
“Come on.” She was dragging him through the crowd to where tables were crammed together on two levels. On the first was a long bar. There was a man rather than a synthetic behind it, serving drink and setting out bowls filled with some kind of finger food. People crowded there, hip to hip.
On the second level was a half circle of stage where the musicians performed. Jacob counted eight of them, in various kinds of dress, holding instruments that pitched a wall of sound that roared out of tall boxes on either corner of the stage.
In front of them, on a small square of floor, tangles of arms and legs and bodies twisted in various ways to the beat. He noted the costumes they chose and saw that there was no standard. Snug pants and baggy ones, long skirts and brief ones, vivid colors and unrelieved black. Women wore shoes flat to the floor or, like Sunny, shoes with slender spikes at the back.
He imagined this meant those particular women wanted to be taller. But it had the side effect of making it very pleasant to look at their legs.
He appreciated the style of nonconformity, the healthy expression of individual tastes. He knew there had been a space of time between this and his own when society in general had accepted a uniform. A brief period, Jacob mused, but it must have been a miserably dull one.
As he stood and observed, waitresses in short skirts bustled on both levels, balancing trays and scribbling the orders shouted at them.
Inefficient, he thought, but interesting. It was simpler to press a button on an order box and receive your requirements from a speedy droid. But it was a bit friendlier this way.
With her hand in his, Sunny led him up a short flight of curving stairs and began to scout around for an empty table. “I forgot it was Saturday night,” she shouted at him. “It’s always a madhouse on Saturdays.”
“Why?”
“Date night, pal,” she said, and laughed. “Don’t worry, we’ll squeeze in somewhere.” But she abandoned her search to smile at him. “What do you think?”
He lifted a hand to toy with the trio of balls that hung from slender chains at her ears. “I like it.”
“The Marauders are good. The band.” She gestured as the sax player went into a screaming solo. “They’re very hot out here.”
“In here,” he corrected. “It’s hot in here.”
“No, I mean... Never mind.” Someone bumped her from behind. Taking it in stride, she wound her arms around Jacob’s neck. “I guess this is our first date.”
He ignored the crowd and kissed her. “How’s it going so far?”
“Just dandy.”
Taking that to mean “good,” he kissed her again. Her satisfied sigh set off a chain reaction inside him. “We could always just stand here,” he said, directly in her ear. “I don’t think anyone would notice.”
“You were right,” she said on another sigh. “It is hot in here. Maybe we should just—”
“Sunny!” Someone caught her by the waist, spun her around and, ending on a dip, pressed a hard, wet kiss to her mouth. “Baby, you’re back.”
“Marco.”
“What’s left of me. I’ve been pining away for weeks.” He slung a friendly arm around her shoulders. “Where’d you disappear to?”