A Book of Dust and Breath

Chapter 3.2

Vaguely, like a dream from childhood, Max remembered the crowded marketplaces of Egypt, rich with the smells of incense, fabric dye, and fresh-caught fish. He could still recall the grit of desert sand beneath his feet as he strode through the bustle of the Jewish Temple during Herod's reign. The heat radiating from the crush of bodies in the Roman coliseum would be with him forever.

All of those distant impressions of noise and the press of human flesh were brought to mind by being on the floor of a Vegas casino. Lights flashed. Bells rang. An announcer called out numbers through speakers mounted in the ceiling. Elderly women shouted at their half-deaf husbands. Men in expensive suites cheered around felt-covered tables. Hazy blue clouds of cigarette smoke and the stinging scent of alcohol assaulted his every sense.

Max skirted the edge of the room and found a buffet table piled with crab legs and shrimp. A woman as round as she was tall tottered on swollen ankles behind her toothpick-thin husband, both of them carrying plates stacked with food. Max thought of Jack Sprat, who could eat no fat, and his wife who could eat no lean.

He let a crowd of boisterous young men in college t-shirts push him through a door into a hallway that was marginally quieter and twenty degrees cooler. Following the corridor, he found a bar where the lights were low, the jazz was soft, and every table was polished to a sheen.

A pretty hostess with a mass of raven-black twisted hair that couldn't possibly be entirely her own smiled at him. "Table for one?"

He nodded and trailed along behind her to a tiny table in the far corner of the room. In the booth across the aisle, the driver of the pink and grey truck sat with her iPhone in one hand, and a fork in the other. She absently poked at a bite of steak and lifted it to her mouth without looking away from the screen.

"Destiny has spoken," he said.

She raised her eyes to his, but said nothing.

"They're going to seat me right next to you so, even if you don't mean to have dinner with me, you'll be having dinner with me."

"I really don't want to have dinner with you," she said. Her low, husky voice crawled into his belly and coiled there like a restless snake.

"Why not?"

"I'm reading."

"Stephanie Meyer?"

She lay her fork down. "Leo Tolstoy."

He pictured the first page of the volume from his library. "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." He rolled his eyes. "It's rubbish. You can't classify people as 'all.' Not ever. Not even 'all people.' There is an exception to every rule."

"I'm not reading Anna Karenina. It's A Confession."

He shoved his hands in his pockets, ignoring the impatient hostess's loud sigh. "Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it," He quoted. "Can't argue against that. Democracy ruins the values of those who come to hold majority rule as their religion."

It seemed her mouth knew no form other than the thin, straight line. "Why do you want to eat with me?" she asked.

"Because my friend coerced me into going to Vegas to meet an intriguing woman. If I can tell him about you it will make a good story and he'll leave me alone for a few decades."

"There are thousands of pretty girls in this city."

"But only one intriguing woman, so far as I've noticed." Remembering the hostess, he turned toward her. "No offense. You and I just don't have the same shared history as I have with Lily."