Street Magic

It's a magician on the street that makes both of them stop. Robin gets that ugh, street performance, let's just move on look on her face but Barney's fingers take her wrist. It's a light touch, almost not enough to make her turn back and look, but when she does, he's still holding on and his eyes are on the man on the curb.

Street magic. Almost her least favorite thing, after malls and bad scotch.

But she's with Barney today, and they already did something for her (not that Barney protested much at the gun display she'd perused for over an hour), so she'll give him a few minutes.

The performer's dressed in a black T-shirt and holey jeans. He's winking at the crowd as a woman in a bandana and dreads pulls a card, any card, and then he flips the deck into the air, catches it in two hands, and kicks up his foot in a sideways move so he catches one last card on his ankle. Is this your card? The crowd cheers and he's on to the next illusion.

Robin watches with a bemused kind of feeling, not because it's not the tiniest bit impressive, but because she's pretty sure that Barney's about to march through the crowd and teach all these people a little something about better card tricks and fireballs.

And then she notices his hand isn't on her wrist anymore, and she looks at him as the throng of people lets out another communal cry of amazement.

It's like his face has drained of color. His hands are balled into such tight fists at his sides that his knuckles are white. And it's not disdain or contempt or anything you can do I can do better on his face. It's jealousy. Pure, unbridled jealousy for the twentysomething in the T-shirt with an audience on the corner of 55th and Broadway.

Hey, she says. You wanna get out of here?

At first it seems like he doesn't hear her, but then his hand is tight on her elbow and he's pulling her from the crowd, around the corner past Serafina's and into an alley, next to a Dumpster and a wino, who takes one look, smiles stupidly, and totters off down the way.

And his lips are on hers, for the first time in over a year, hot, pressing. Everything.

Barney, she tries to whisper, but he takes her mouth again and sinks two hands into her hair. Her back is against a wall. His knee pries her thighs apart and then the long line of his body is tight against hers. He doesn't say it aloud, but he doesn't have to. My life is fine. I'm better than that guy. I'm living the dream, baby.

And it's not pity when she kisses him back, it's hunger. To reassure him. To convince him it doesn't matter. To just have him again.

And maybe if they do this enough, they'll both be okay.