I sat down quickly and was amazed by the plushness of the blanket. I could still feel the wooden floor beneath me, but the blanket had a layer of short fur to provide a warm barrier between our bodies and the cold ground.
“Wait right here,” Henley said before disappearing into the crowd of people standing behind us.
The air seemed cleaner by the floor where I was sitting. Standing, it felt like your head was in a fog from what the people were smoking.
Something tapped me, and I looked up.
It was Henley and he was holding a large pillow out to me, with another by his side.
“Where’d you find these?” I took the pillow.
Henley put the other down on the blanket to sit on.
“I just asked people,” he said.
I wedged my pillow between his knee and my back.
“Making a backrest?” Henley laughed.
“Exactly what I’m doing.” I lay down to see if it was any good.
The pillow was softer than it looked, and it was the perfect spot.
“So when’s this supposed to start?” Henley had to call down to me as my head was practically in his lap.
“It was supposed to start maybe ten minutes ago . . .”
“Then I still have time to get one more thing.” Henley got up again.
That man never sat still.
Alone again, I focused on the people around me. Sure, there were people here with a group of friends, but it looked like the majority of people were couples.
I leaned my head against the wall next to me.
On my other side was a girl with long bangs into her eyes. She was peering through them at a man in a leather jacket next to her. The way she kept looking at him made me think they had only just started going out—maybe one month in? I knew the look she had when she faced his way. She was trying to limit her staring only to when his back was turned. She looked so happy. She felt happy. She felt like the universe was all of a sudden going her way.
The couple behind us were already making out . . . it was more like sucking face, though. I was glad the sounds of people talking and the low background music managed to block out whatever sounds they were making.
Both couples were sitting only an arm’s distance away. If I wanted to, I could reach out and touch them. That was how close everyone was to one another. But the noise served as a barrier. I couldn’t hear their conversations, and they couldn’t hear mine. That barrier made us feel miles apart.
“Here we go . . .” Henley was back.
He gingerly stepped around me, taking care not to step on anyone’s legs or fingers.
He squatted down next to me.
“I bought you a drink,” he said.
He passed me a glass bottle. I squinted at the label, but the writing was too small to read in the dark.
“Thanks.” I took a sip. And struggled to force it down. “What did you buy me?”
“Beer.”
“Beer?”
“Yeah, I didn’t know what was good here, so they just handed me what they said was the most popular dark beer.”
“Did they ask to see your ID?” I asked.
Henley looked like he was laughing, but I couldn’t tell in the loud room. “My dear, do you think we’re in a place where they would ask to see identification?”
He had a point.
I took another sip of my beer to see if it would taste any better the second time around. Surprisingly it did. It went down easier this time.
Henley sat down, balancing a cup in his right hand.
“What did you get yourself?” I asked.
I peered into his cup. The liquid inside looked clear, but it also could have been the lack of lighting.
“Gin and tonic,” he said. “I was actually surprised they had gin. But I suppose shouldn’t have been.” He gestured around us. “All these fine film devotees probably know their drinks.”
I couldn’t figure out if Henley was genuinely calling them film devotees or if he was using sarcasm. But they did certainly know their drinks, if by “knowing their drinks” Henley meant they had a lot of practice chugging them down.
“I think these film devotees of yours might be more interested in each other than the actual movie,” I said.
“You don’t know that,” Henley said. “The film hasn’t even started.”
“Hey, mate!” The man next to us leaned over his girl to tap Henley on the shoulder.
He said something when we turned, but it was lost over the music.
Henley cupped his hand against his ear.
“You wanna spliff, mate?” the man yelled over at us.
“Spliff?” Henley said.
I could hear him, but I didn’t think the man could.
“No thanks,” I called over. “We already did the spliff back home before we came.”
What was spliff? And how on earth was one supposed to take part in it?
“Nice . . . ,” the man drawled.
I guessed I had given an appropriate answer.
“If you ever need to buy some, my man Ricardo in the back got you covered.”
Henley nodded his thanks.
The man seemed to be looking out for us. His girl must be proud.
I smiled at her.
Something screeched on the speaker system. The music stopped.
“Okay . . .” A male voice sounded through the speakers. I could barely hear him over the people talking. “Okay, settle down. I’ll wait.” As soon as he said that, the voices started to hush. “Glad to hear that line still works. Now contrary to some of our beliefs, we’re not here just for the cheap liquor. That’s a valid reason to come, but we’re mainly here to watch my boy Danny’s new film!”
At that there was some whooping and hollering.
“So where’s my boy Danny?” the announcer said.
I turned to scan the crowd behind us.
A man with a neatly trimmed goatee by the corner of the bar raised his hand slowly. I guessed that was Danny.
“Give it up for Danny!”
People yelled and stomped their feet. Henley and I simply clapped.
“Start the damn movie already!” Danny yelled.
There was laughter and someone finally pressed play.
A projector turned on and reflected on the far wall in front of us. “A Fine Experiment,” it flashed up. Flute music started playing.
I didn’t even remotely know what the movie was about. I wondered if I had made the wrong choice in bringing Henley here. I tried to take a peek at him without him noticing.
Henley’s jaw was slightly slack. I saw the movie title reflected back in his eyes. He was already engrossed and the movie hadn’t even properly started.
Suddenly, Henley looked up. He was looking at the ceiling.
I was confused.
Henley looked back at the makeshift screen. Then at the ceiling again. Finally, he twisted his entire body and looked toward the back of the room.
A slow smile crept onto my face. Of course. Henley was trying to figure out where the projector was and how it worked. That would keep Henley engaged more than the actual movie itself.
The screen flickered. Old movie effects maybe? The camera followed an old woman being led around a garden by a young man. So far, there was only music. It was almost like watching a silent film.
My eyes drifted from the screen. I noticed the back windows of the room were taped over in dark plastic, so even though it was the middle of the day, it looked like night outside. “We’re having the stereotypical date,” I whispered to Henley. “We’re out watching a movie.”
“Dinner and a movie minus the dinner?”
“We’re becoming normal.”
Glancing around, I took in the people around us.
There was a man up front who was completely absorbed by the movie. He had a notebook on his lap that he was scribbling notes in furiously. Film student, perhaps? Or someone who wanted to be?
Next, I saw a girl who was more in
terested in examining her own hair than watching the movie. She seemed like she was looking for split ends. She was the first man’s opposite.
For the most part, the entire middle section of the room looked like they wanted to be there watching the movie. There were nachos, pretzels, and packs of candy being passed around, but everyone’s eyes were glued to the screen. The back of the room was different.
The smoke seemed denser in the back. I squinted to see outlines of faces and bodies. The people looked more squished against one another. I could hear the low murmur of their talking from where we sat.
Henley leaned over toward me, his eyes not leaving the screen. “You don’t look like you’re paying attention to the film,” he whispered.
“No. No, I am.”
For once, there was no cheeky reply. Henley was too busy watching.
Maybe it was because I missed the first few minutes thanks to my people watching, but the rest of the movie made no sense to me. There was no narrator and no apparent plot. The characters seemed to be doing random things. Where there wasn’t any music, there were interspersed bits of dialogue between the old woman and the young man, but the lines seemed random and nonsensical.
I decided to keep drinking my beer and try to follow along as best as I could.
In the end, a character who looked like the personification of death came and took the old woman away, forcing the young man to continue his life without her. None of it made sense.
When the credits started rolling, I looked around the room. People were clapping. Some of them were even standing up.
“Bravo!” someone shouted.
The front and middle of the room seemed to have loved the movie.
“Wondrous” was a word thrown around.
“Meaningful poetry,” I heard someone say.
The back of the room didn’t seem to have even noticed the movie had finished. They still smoked and talked.
“That was superb,” Henley said. He sounded breathless.
“That good?” I asked.
“All the colors . . . And the sound was so good.”
“Amazed by the change in technology since your time?”
“Well . . . yes.”
I had to laugh. He was almost as impressed as he had been when I had shown him how the computer worked.
There was a crackle as the speaker system turned on again.
“My God was that some deep mind-twerking stuff, am I right?” It was the announcer from before. “Let’s hear it again for my man Danny!”
The claps were loud and more people whistled than before.
“Danny, do you want to say some words?”
“Free beers on me!” he yelled.
There was a mad stampede toward the bar.
“My lord, that’s . . . impressive,” Henley said.
“What? The rush?”
“The fact that they’re still acting like children, even though they must be all adults,” he said.
“I’m not so sure about that. Those children seemed to understand the movie much better than I did,” I said. “Maybe I didn’t understand it because I don’t understand death.”
“You know that’s not true. You’re probably just overthinking it.”
“Then you want to go back?” I asked.
“No, I’d like to stay a while, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all.”
I looked at the other people in the room to see what they were up to. Still chatting, still smoking.
Henley stretched out on the vacated pillows around us. “Do you sometimes feel that the only place you can be alone is in a crowd?”
It was hard to put into words, but I knew that feeling. “We’re doing it right now, aren’t we? Having this private conversation in a room full of people. Everyone’s so preoccupied with their own conversations and their own lives that we’re alone.”
Henley sat up on his forearms. “Do you want another beer?”
I glanced over at the beer bottle a foot away from my arm. It was still half full. “Not beer.”
“Then something else?”
“Sure,” I said. I had very little knowledge of alcohol.
Henley left to get our drinks. The crowd by the bar had dissipated after everyone had gotten their free beer. Whoever was tending bar was probably having a good night.
When Henley came back, he carried two plastic cups.
“Plastic?”
“They ran out of real ones,” he said.
I looked into Henley’s cup. It looked like he had gotten himself another gin and tonic. The drink he held out to me was tinted green.
“What did you get me?”
“A green apple martini,” he said.
Hesitantly, I took a sip. I was worried it would taste like the beer. People had always said alcohol was an acquired taste. I guess it was one thing I hadn’t acquired when becoming immortal.
But it was good. The drink was actually really good. It smelled faintly of an apple orchard, and it tasted like it smelled. It was more similar to the wine I had at court in 1527 than that horrible beer.
I took another sip. And another.
“I’m glad you like it, but you might want to slow down,” Henley said.
“It’s okay,” I said. I was already more than halfway through my cup—they hadn’t filled it up all the way—and I felt fine. Completely unchanged, in fact.
My cheeks started to feel warm. It was like the feeling I got when I blushed, but instead of embarrassment, I was filled with pure radiating warmth. It felt good.
“Can I have another?” I asked Henley.
“I’ll get you another if you promise to drink it much more slowly.” Henley got up to go to the bar.
I liked that Henley could guess what I would like. I wasn’t a beer person, but I liked the sweetness of the martini.
I tried to remember if anyone I knew drank much. Miss Hatfield never drank. That was for certain . . . at least in front of me. I couldn’t remember whether Cynthia’s parents had drunk . . . maybe a glass of wine, only during holidays? Or maybe they drank all the time and I just couldn’t remember it.
Henley was back with another cup. I reached out to take it from him, but he held it back.
“Slowly,” he said, before handing it to me.
“I know. I know.”
I relished the way the sweet drink warmed my throat on the way down. From the way it slowly burned, I’d have thought it would have a syrupy texture, but it was smooth and almost too easy to drink.
I tilted my head back and smiled. If I hadn’t had anything else to worry about, this moment would have been perfect.
“Are you all right, Rebecca?”
I wanted to tell Henley that of course I wasn’t “all right”—I had a murderer after me and I was stuck on the wrong continent—but I remembered the promise we had made not to talk about that.
So I said, “I’m fine.”
“You’re looking a tad rosy there,” he said.
I rolled my head to the side to look at him. “Am I?”
“You’re getting a bit tipsy, aren’t you?”
“Am I?” I asked again. I looked down at my cup. It was empty. I could’ve sworn I hadn’t drunk it all.
“Wait . . . This is your first time drinking, isn’t it?”
“I’ve had wine before,” I said, but the word “wine” seemed to stretch out unnaturally in my mouth.
I couldn’t tell if he looked concerned or if he was smirking. It’s very hard to tell someone’s expression when you’re looking at him sideways with your head tilted.
“Do you feel like you’re in control?” Henley asked.
I began to shake my head, but the room moved. I didn’t like that. I steadied myself on Henley’s shoulders.
“It’s nice to feel not as in control as I normally do,” I said.
“It’s nice to not feel in control?”
“That’s what I said . . . Can you get me another drink?”
H
enley took my hands off his shoulders. “I don’t think that’s what you need right now. What you need right now is some water . . . I can’t believe you drank those couple of drinks in a few seconds. You know there’s vodka in them?”
I gave him a blank stare.
“Wait right here. And don’t move.”
Henley walked away from me.
“Hey, can I buy you a drink?” Someone was tapping me on the shoulder.
“Oh, that’s nice of you. An apple martini,” I said.
It was dark, but I think the man was blond.
“Sounds good. The bartender’s a friend of mine, so skipping the line will be easy for me.”
He flashed a grin. His teeth were so white, they glowed in the dark.
As he walked away, I wondered if he whitened his teeth with those handheld devices they sold on television. What were they called? . . . I couldn’t seem to remember. But either way, it was so nice of him to go around buying drinks for random strangers. I wondered if the host was paying him to do it, to make people have a good time.
He was back in no time with my drink.
“Thank you!” I said, taking a sip.
“So you’re a martini girl?”
“I guess you could say that.” It was also the only drink I knew, but he didn’t need to know that.
I saw Henley coming toward me. I waved to show him where I was—I hadn’t moved an inch since he told me not to.
“Who are you waving at?” the man asked.
“Henley,” I said.
The man looked surprised and left. I didn’t understand why he didn’t want to stay to say hello to Henley. Henley could’ve used a drink too.
“Sorry that took a while. The line was long. And all that for them only to tell me that they’re out of water. Who’s ever out of water and ice at a bar?” Henley said. “And who was that man?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. I lifted my new cup. “But he bought me a drink.”
“He bought you a drink?”
“An apple martini.”
I made sure to show him the drink, but he took it from me.
“Go get your own,” I said. “Besides, I’ve already drank most of it anyway, so you’re not getting much out of that cup.”
“You’re not supposed to take drinks from strangers,” he said. He actually looked mad.
“Like Miss Hatfield. Oops.” I covered my mouth, but it was too late.
The Day Before Forever Page 18