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Mike drops the accent when he names the songs, and right when I open my eyes there’s a swish and I see the brief flick of a red cape disappear over the railing of the balcony.
And then, before I can move from the spot where I’m leaning against the wall, I see Thalia.
Walking in my direction, though she’s not looking at me. Wearing short shorts and fishnet stockings with garters, the thin black strap snaking up her thigh, under her cutoffs.
She’s got on a vest that’s half-unbuttoned over cleavage and a gray sport coat over that, something poking out of the pocket.
My whole body floods hot, then cold. I swallow hard and shove my hands in my pockets and try to look away, I swear I do. I can’t. I feel like a cartoon dog going AAAOOGA, eyeballs popping out of their sockets, tongue lolling practically to the ground.
Stop staring. Stop staring.
I can’t. I hate this, but I can’t, and for long seconds I’m standing against the wall, just watching her, like some sort of pervert. She closes the distance between us, still not looking at me, and I dream of cold showers. I imagine standing naked in a snowbank. I think of hiking ten miles in the rain over rocky ground.
I promise that when I get home I’ll immediately put a profile on every dating site in existence just so I can meet someone else and forget about this inappropriate girl, and then she looks at me and tilts her head slightly and smiles.
“Oh hi,” Thalia says, folding her arms in front of herself, like she’s self-conscious. “I didn’t know you were coming. And I didn’t see you there, I was just walking to… that way.”
She nods vaguely behind me, so I turn and look, and it’s just as well because her folded arms only give her more cleavage, her breasts straining at the already-unbuttoned vest like they’re planning a jailbreak.
There’s a hallway. It looks mostly dark. I don’t know where it goes. I don’t think she does, either.
“Walking to that way, of course,” I tease. “Don’t let me stop your walk. To that way.”
“You’re not going to offer to come with me to keep me safe?”
My skin prickles, my defenses slightly up, because I don’t want a replay of the last time we talked. I didn’t even do anything besides attend a concert this time.
“Are there many unknown threats back in the mystery hallway?”
“If I knew, they wouldn’t be unknown, would they?”
“Touché.”
She’s got black eyeliner with dramatic wings and red lipstick, and she reminds me of the night we met, the only other time I’ve seen her look anything like this though there was no fishnet or cleavage then.
“What’s your costume?” she asks, arms still folded in front of her.
I look down at myself: boots, jeans, and a t-shirt that’s got a drawing of a bear and some trees on it.
“A professor who doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb at an undergrad event,” I say, pushing a hand through my hair. “How am I doing?”
“If you were about fifty percent drunker I think you’d blend right in,” she says, laughing. “At least you didn’t wear spectacles and bring a briefcase.”
“They’re not spectacles, they’re glasses,” I correct her, smiling. “Dr. Schwartz assured me they were very cool.”
“Dr. Schwartz wasn’t wrong,” she says.
“Was he right?”
She pauses for a moment, glance flicking away, her lips twitching like she’s about to either laugh or say something, and I don’t know which.
“He wasn’t wrong,” she says again, and now she’s laughing.
“Are you wearing a costume, or is this just Saturday night?” I ask, risking a look at her again.
“Oh, God no,” she says quickly, taking a step back, looking down at herself. “It’s a costume, and it’s a little more than I thought it would be because I told my roommates —”
She pauses for half a breath.
“— they kind of took control of things since I’ve been so busy,” she finishes.
“Who are you?”
That gets a smile, a sparkle in her eye.
“Guess,” she tells me, and the lights go low again.
I try to take her in as cooly and clinically as possible: shorts that look like they were once slacks, fishnets, the vest, the sport coat.
No idea, and then my eye catches on whatever it is in her pocket, and I point.
“May I?” I ask, and she nods.
It’s a long cylinder, paper covered, and as soon as I take it from her pocket I know it by its scent.
Thalia lifts one eyebrow.
“It’s just a cigar,” she says, and there’s a tease in the curve of her lips and in the way she’s looking at me, and instantly, I know who she is.
“Sigmund Freud,” I say, flipping the cigar through my fingers. “If Freud was in a production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
“Congrats on being the first,” she says, and I slide the cigar back into her pocket.
