“Berthe de Joux,” she said. “French pour.”
He waved the bartender over and repeated the name of her drink; the man nodded and came back a moment later with a tray. He put a clean reservoir glass between Caleb and the woman, poured an ounce of the green absinthe into it, and set the silver slotted spoon across the top of the glass. He put a sugar cube on the spoon and then set a small carafe of ice water on the bar. He nodded at Caleb and then went back to the group at the other end of the bar.
“You pour it,” she said. “I like to watch the louche.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Drip the water over the sugar cube, until I say when.”
“All right.”
The carafe must have been in a freezer before the bartender filled it with ice water. His fingertips melted through a scrim of frost when he picked it up. He held the carafe above the sugar cube and began to tilt it, but she stopped him. Her fingers were light and cool on his wrist.
“Higher,” she said. “It has to be a little higher.”
She moved his hand until the lip of the carafe was nearly a foot above the sugar.
“That’s right,” she said. The way she let go of his wrist was like being kissed by her fingers. “Go on. The slowest drip you can.”
He watched the sugar cube melt through the slotted spoon into the absinthe. The liquid in the glass changed from green to milky white, the cold water precipitating something from the spirit. He could smell a mix of bitter herbs now. Wormwood and rue. Anise.
“Stop.”
He put the carafe down. She took the drink and dipped in the slotted spoon to get the rest of the sugar, and then she sipped it with her eyes closed. Her eyelids were dusted with something that might have been crushed malachite. When she opened her eyes, she smiled again and put the drink down.
“Your forehead,” she said.
She reached to him and touched the wound with the tip of her forefinger and then showed him the drop of blood. It looked black in the darkness of the room.
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay.”
She rubbed her forefinger against the pad of her thumb until the blood was gone, and then she took another sip of her absinthe. He had never seen anything like that. Anything like her. She finished her drink in one last sip and set it down. Then she stood from her stool. Her clutch was still on the bar. She put her hand on the back of his neck and leaned toward him until her lips were next to his ear.
“I have to go,” she whispered. Her perfume wrapped him like a cloak. Her left breast brushed his arm, nothing between her nipple and his skin but the slippery silk of her dress. “But maybe I’ll see you sometime. Thanks for the drink.”
She stood and took her clutch. He watched, immobilized almost, as if she’d struck him with a curare-tipped dart.
“Wait,” he said.
She smiled, that same half-smile that crossed Bridget’s face when a painting was almost done, when whatever final form she’d held in her imagination was about to pass over into the canvas.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“Next time. Maybe.”
She turned and left, her hair swaying against her naked back as she walked away from him.
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About the Author
JONATHAN MOORE lives in Hawaii with his wife and son, and is the author of five books. Before completing law school in New Orleans, he was an English teacher, a bar owner, a raft guide, a counselor at a Texas wilderness camp for juvenile delinquents, and an investigator for a criminal defense attorney in Washington, D.C.
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The Dark Room Page 33