Page 19 of Stoker's Serenity

“I just don’t, at least, not really,” she said, and misery accompanied her tone.

“Okay.” I nodded slowly. “Fair enough.”

I didn’t like the silence that overtook us after that as we worked on clearing our plates. She’d made some Asian-inspired chicken dish with honey and garlic over rice and it was fuckin’ good. Made me wish I knew how to cook better than I did. I mostly lived off of sandwiches and the occasional pot of spaghetti.

“Put some of your music on,” I suggested when the silence had stretched on too long.

“What?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Florence + The Machine before, but the other gal you were talking about, Lorna something-or-other –“

“Loreena McKennitt?” she asked.

“Yeah! That one. Put some of her stuff on.”

“I mean, are you sure? She’s not exactly Saints of Corruption,” she said, and I was pleasantly surprised that she knew my band name. It wasn’t on the tee-shirt, just our logo: a skeleton robed in saint’s sweeping garb, holding an electric guitar, a crown of thorns as its halo.

“Pretty sure the band name isn’t on our tee, a mistake we were planning on fixing on the next run of ‘em we made.”

“Linny told me when I described the logo,” she said with a sheepish grin.

“I don’t really listen all that much to what I play,” I told her. “I’m willing to give anything a try.”

“Okay,” she said, giving a nod. She rose from her seat, and I followed her movements as she padded over the tile and across the threshold between flooring material. She went over to the bedside table and picked up a little speaker, pressing a button on the bottom.

“Powering on!”a woman’s electronic voice belted out of the little box, impressive with its volume. “Ready to pair!”

She set it down and picked up her phone.

“Paired!” the speaker declared. She scrolled through her music and let out a shuddering breath, hitting play.

The notes that filtered out were gentle and folksy with a definite Irish sort of flare. The woman’s voice was gentle and lilting. It was calming, soothing, and I liked it. It was different, but like anything else I'd encountered where Serenity was concerned – uniquely her.

“That’s nice,” I murmured and she smiled and shook her head, laughing slightly as she came to collect her plate.

“You’re just saying that,” she said.

“Am not,” I told her honestly. She giggled slightly and I had to smile.

We did the dishes together, listening to the soft strains of music, talking gently about life in Ft. Royal versus here around Ft. Lauderdale.

She was twenty-seven, went to work right out of high school and felt stuck like a lot of people our age. Blue collar, working poor, barely making ends meet. Survival a pain in her ass. Hell, if it weren’t for the extra coming in under the table thanks to the MC, I’d be a hell of a lot worse off than I was, so I could feel her.

She cleaned her small space while we talked and put everything to rights and I liked that about her. She kept her place so clean it looked like it belonged in a magazine spread. What she did have out to signify it was actually lived in looked like it could very well be staged that way.

I caught her hand when she turned to go back to our seats at the table and reeled her gently toward me. She was slightly reluctant, borne of nerves, leaning back from me, but I didn’t mean her any kind of harm.

I just wanted to dance with her. Hold her close, breathe her in, sway gently to the music.

I just wanted something solid and real with this woman, if only for a minute, before I had to let her go for the night. She made me want to get close, slip in between the plates of armor she wore and kindle an intimacy.

It seemed like it’d been a long time since she had it – if ever.

“What are you doing?” she asked, as I gently shifted my weight from one foot to the other with her in my arms.

“Shh, just dancing with this beautiful girl I met.”

“Oh,” she whispered, voice husky with surprise.

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