Blues

Chapter Eleven

"Adaline?"

"Yes, love."

I swallow hard. I figured she would carry the conversation after that. "Where are you going?"

"Outside, to have a cigarette. Would you like to join me?"

"Oh," I say. I try not to sound so disappointed, but I fail.

She smiles, somehow already knowing what I was thinking -- or, hoping, rather. She looks down at me like I'm just adorable and slips one of her own sweaters over my shoulders. I revel in the idea of that. It makes me feel special. "Something the matter?" she prods, already knowing that something is.

I shake my head. "No, I just..." I haven't a fraction of an iota of an idea how to proceed. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Something wrong, dear?"

"Yeah, like did I...did you not...like that?"

"I liked that very much."

"Why did you stop?"

"You didn't expect me to deflower you here and now, did you?"

"Oh. No, I...no."

She laughs. "Not with everyone home and awake, darling."

"Yeah." I laugh so awkwardly I want to die. "Totally."

She turns around to walk away again and almost continues to herself. "Not until you know how to be quiet."

"What?"

"Quiet, I said. It's too risky until you know how to be quiet."

Suddenly I feel insulted, like she pursued me just a moment ago and now my inexperience is a chore for her. "I'm quiet," I find myself protesting.

"You won't be."

She opens the door to her balcony as a tremor courses through my chest and spine. 

"Coming?"

I snap out of it fast. "Yes, ma'am."

"It's chilly," she notes. "Are you warm enough?"

"Yes, thank you."

"How cold does it get where you're from? Forty, thirty?"

"Twenty," I say. "Twenty and below. High altitude."

"I loved to visit the mountains when we lived in Argentina. The Siete Colores especially, they always had a certain...charm, you could say."

"Seven colors?"

"They don't have Spanish lessons in Azarām, I take it?"

"How do you know I'm from Azarām?"

"Your accent when you speak Hereli."

"How do you know Hereli so well?"

"The same way you know me so well," she says, leaning against a rail and looking at me quite discerningly. "I ask incessant questions when I'm interested."

I give a lame smile. "Sorry."

"Don't be," she says. "It's darling."

Adaline pulls a cigarette out of the pack and places it delicately between her fingers and then between her lips, which curve into an inscrutable moue as she flicks her silver lighter and makes it glow red and golden at the end.

"Any news on the missing drugs?" she asks.

"Can I have one of those?"

She smiles like she's created a monster. "You don't smoke."