The jazz lounge was smoky, dark, single candles on all the tables and some stage lights providing what was generously termed atmosphere, and what Xu figured was just a hell of a good way to prevent customers from suing the management when they fell on their faces.
Not that it mattered. Not that she cared.
The wine in her glass was heady, dark, rich, some shade of red that registered as black until she moved it closer to the candlelight and it glinted red. Two glasses later, the color didn't matter very much either, only that she had been observing the pianist for nearly the entire duration of the second glass and was thinking that it was, perhaps, time for a refill.
"You wanna go home with him instead?"
She started, and glanced up at Seifer as he dropped ungracefully into the seat across from her, flagged down a waiter, and ordered a scotch. He could be taught to order civilized drinks, then.
"Maybe. How'd you find me?"
He shrugged, reaching across and snagging the mostly-full pack of cigarettes still sitting near her elbow, the candle casting the lower half of his face into sharp relief as he leaned in to light the smoke from it. Exhaling a plume toward the ceiling, he sat back. "It's May third."
As if it were reason enough. And really, it was.
Xu turned the stem of her glass between her fingers; behind him, a trumpet player found a solemn, mournful note and descended the alphabet with it. The waiter returned with his scotch; she watched Seifer take a mouthful of it and set it aside in favor of another long drag. The tip of the cigarette burned red, a pinprick of fire in the darkness.
"You wanna talk about it now? Or do I get to wait until later, when you're too drunk and I have to carry you to a cab?"
"You could move out, you know."
He stubbed out the cigarette and picked up his drink again, his smile a shadow in the candlelight. "Yeah, but I like my roommate. She's hot."
A smile curved the edges of her mouth; she was grateful for the lousy lighting. It hid the smile, kept it away, a small secret just long enough for it to disappear again. "Jerk."
"You love me."
"Sometimes."
He snorted, and reached across the table, covering her hand with his, broad fingers running across her darker skin. Xu turned her hand palm-up and laced her fingers through his. May third. A woman stepped up to the microphone, and when she opened her mouth to sing, it was longing and painful, honey and velvet. Mournful melancholy.
Poetic.
She was too drunk for this, or not drunk enough.
May third.
Xu slipped her hand from his long enough to light a cigarette. Her lungs filled with smoke, with jazz, with the pain of living when her best friend was four years dead, a rotting corpse in a beautiful coffin, under six feet of earth.
She exhaled and lost the bar for a moment in the haze.
"You want to get out of here?" Seifer asked, from somewhere very far away.
"Yes."