She turned back to Julien. “Do you dance?” she asked.
“No, not at all,” he said, grinning.
“Too bad.”
The waiter came back, bearing their steaming plates. They ate and Lumi was relieved to find that whoever had cooked had been in a jovial mood. She blessed him or her silently. Julien seemed to be enjoying the food too, and he offered her some fleshy discs of oxtail to try. He also speared a shrimp off her plate.
When the meal was done, the waiter came around once more and asked if they would like anything else.
“I’ll have an espresso and the dessert menu, please,” Lumi said, and Julien contorted his features into a playfully shocked expression.
“An espresso at one thirty A.M.?” he exclaimed.
She shrugged. “In my family, there’s no set time for drinking coffee,” she said simply.
Julien focused on her more acutely. “Lumi, where is your family from?” he asked.
Someone in the kitchen had adorned her plate with an edible orchid, and she picked it up and examined it in the candlelight. “My mother is from the Dominican Republic, and my father is, or was too.”
“Is, or was?”
She looked down at the flower. “We don’t know his whereabouts. He left my mother when I was one and a half years old,” she said.
Julien placed his hand on her forearm as he took in this new information. “I’m sorry to hear that. It must have been very hard for your mother.”
“Well . . . what can I say? To my mother, good men are like ghosts: everyone swears they’re out there, but nobody can substantiate having encountered one. So, who knows . . .” She tore the corner of a leaf off the orchid and squeezed it between her thumb and index finger until she extracted some juice.
“And you, what do you think?” he asked.
Lumi let out a long exhale. “I don’t know,” she said, “I’ve never been much of a ghost hunter.”
Suddenly, she didn’t feel like dessert anymore. The mechanics of chewing felt crude, and she was aware of how intensely Julien was watching her.
“Anyway, that’s enough about me,” she said. “Why don’t we get the check and walk a bit?”
Julien seemed pleased by this suggestion and signaled for the check. Lumi was itching to stand up. She was overcome by the urge to stretch her legs . . . and the feeling that she had said too much. She hadn’t planned on talking about her family life with him, but there was something disarming about having him listen attentively to her every word.
It felt good to be outside in the fresh air. It had gotten colder since they were last outside, and between the espresso filtering into her bloodstream and the brisk night air, Lumi felt revived.
They had walked several blocks when they stopped on the corner to wait for the light to change. Julien turned toward Lumi and took her hands in his, looking deep into her eyes.
“You’re quiet all of a sudden,” he said.
Lumi turned away. “I talked way too much in there,” she said.
Julien shook his head. “I don’t think you talked too much at all.” He paused. “Ms. Santana, can I kiss you?”
She nodded, and he pulled her close to him and touched his lips to hers. The kiss was sweet, but there was a jagged edge of hunger. She felt a faint churning in the pit of her belly, gradually growing stronger as he slid his hands down her waist, pulling her even closer to him.
She thought of what he said at dinner. Just for one night, forget about all the rules, she told herself. Their tongues twisted together, and he caught her lower lip between his teeth, giving it a playful little nibble. She could feel his smile against her lips. He pressed her body flush against his.
A low whistle came from behind them: “Woohoo, get a room.” A pack of frat boys who looked like they had just stumbled out of one party passed by looking for the next. Lumi pulled away from Julien, remembering herself and that they were, in fact, in the middle of Avenue A.
She looked up at Julien, and his eyes were burning with desire. “Do you want to . . . go somewhere?” he asked, his voice thick and gravelly.
Across the street, Lumi eyed a shrouded storefront with an eerie green light glowing around the edges of the curtain.
“Absinthe NYC . . . what’s that?” she asked. She knew that a bar wasn’t what he had in mind, but she didn’t feel quite ready to go somewhere more private. Once they were alone she wasn’t sure she would be able to convince herself that being with him was a bad idea.
Julien studied the storefront. “Looks like a bar to me,” he said.
“Right, I got that,” she said, “but do they actually serve absinthe in there?”
Julien shrugged. “Only one way to find out,” he said, as they walked over to the door. He pushed back the curtain and ushered Lumi inside. The entire bar was lit with eerie green lights that formed a chartreuse-colored halo over the top fringe of the window curtains. The lounge area was scattered with small triangular tables, almost all of them taken by men and women who nursed mysterious, colorful drinks. Cacophonous jazz music blared over the stereo, combining percussive drumbeats with dainty trumpet solos that made an almost comical contrast.
Julien leaned over the top of the bar, keeping Lumi close at his side.
“Good evening, sir, do you in fact serve absinthe in this fine establishment?” he asked.
The bartender rolled his eyes. “Yeah,” he answered in a flat voice.
“We’ll take two shots of your finest absinthe, then,” he said, picking up a tiny info card that rested on the bar top.
ABSINTHE—FAMED LIBATION FROM THE 1800S, MUSE TO MANY ARTISTS AND WRITERS, CREDITED WITH INSPIRING SOME OF THE GREAT WORKS OF THE BELLE EPOQUE, ALONG WITH MAKING SOME OF ITS PROPONENTS GO MAD.
“Well, there’s a recommendation,” he said, chuckling.
He held out his hand and helped Lumi climb up onto one of the barstools. The bartender passed them their shots over the bar, and they each took one in hand. Julien examined the bright green liquid, turning the shot glass this way and that. He looked at Lumi with a raised eyebrow. “Are we really doing this?”
She laughed. “Yes!” she answered, as they clinked glasses and downed the shots as fast as possible. Her throat burned as the absinthe slid down, but she forced herself to swallow it in one gulp. Julien shook his head like a dog shaking off water.
“Christ. That tastes like it’s from the 1800s,” he said. He laughed loudly, then turned to Lumi. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you want any water?”
Lumi shook her head sweetly. “I’m fine.”
Just then, the bartender drummed on the bar top to get their attention. “Hey, sorry, but I’ll need you guys to move to one of the tables,” he said. “We have a jazz band playing an after-hours set in ten minutes, and they’re going to be setting up in front of the bar.”
Julien and Lumi exchanged glances.
“I love jazz,” Lumi said.
They took a seat at one of the tables lining the wall opposite the bar and fell into a comfortable silence as the sounds of laughing, singing, shouts, and clinking glasses swirled around them.
After a while, Lumi started to grow a little warmer and more fluid. She got an uneasy feeling that they were being watched. She looked around the room and met the eyes of a pale, heavyset man with wild curly hair and a flushed face. He was watching them intently.