Infernal

8

They'd moved to their table, a half banquet in a rear corner with a good view of the stage. The backrests were done in alternating sections of black and white; their table sported pieces of blond and brown wood done up in an art deco-ish pattern.

Tom looked around. Only half the tables were occupied. His brother's reservation had been redundant.

Canned music—nondescript blues—was playing too loud. Tom nursed his second vodka while they waited for their appetizers. He'd had a couple of pops at the hotel bar before coming over and so he could take it easy now. Didn't want to get sloppy in front of this woman.

"Where's this band you came to see?" he said.

Jack shrugged. "It's blasphemy for a blues band to start on time."

Tom hoped they never came on. He wanted to talk to Gia, learn all about her. Something he couldn't do if the band really cranked up.

"Do you like blues?" Gia said.

"I like all kinds of music."

Her eyebrows rose. "Really? How about opera?"

"Love it. Tristan and Isolde is my favorite."

Not necessarily true. He used to hate opera, but part of the politics of his judgeship included attending an endless line of functions and fundraisers. Too many of them included nights at the opera, or the ballet, or at an art museum. Boring as all hell, but his wives, all three, had loved the affairs, loved mingling with Philadelphia's haul monde. Those were the times they appreciated being the wife of a judge.

Along the way, mostly through osmosis, Tom had managed to become an esthete manque, absorbing enough culture to blow highbrow smoke when the situation called for it.

As Gia's eyes lit, he sensed this might be one of those situations.

"I love that one too," she said. "The Merry Widow is another of my favorites. It's at the Met now." She cocked her head at Jack. "But try getting your brother to go. He hates opera."

"Don't listen to her," Jack said. "I like opera just fine… it's just the singing and all the gesturing I don't like. Lose those and do it in English and I could be a major fan."

Gia laughed and leaned against him. "Stop it."

Jack turned to him. "Gia's an artist—she sees things in opera and ballet that I can't."

"That's because you don't lend yourself to the experience," Gia said.

"Artist?" Tom said. "Have you had a show?"

Still smiling, she shook her head. "I hope to someday, but it's commercial art that pays my bills—advertising, book covers, that sort of thing. Between assignments I'm working on a series of fine-art oils for an eventual show."

Time to score some points, Tom thought as he nodded.

"Speaking of fine art, Gia, may I say that you are a vision straight out of a Botticelli."

Her cheeks colored. "What a sweet thing to say."

He didn't mention that he was trying to picture her posed as Botticelli's Venus.

"Botticelli…" Jack said, snapping his fingers and looking perplexed. "Botticelli… isn't that the tropical plant place down on Sixth?"

"Ignore him," Gia said with a laugh. "He loves to play the philistine."

"Are you sure he's playing?"

Her fingers wrapped around Jack's hand. "I'm sure."

Tom repressed an insane urge to grab those intertwined hands and yank them apart. Gia should be holding his hand.

He took a sip of his vodka and forced himself to lean back.

What was the matter with him? Why was he so… so smitten with this woman? Yes, that was what he was: smitten. He'd been under her spell since the instant he'd laid eyes on her. Why?

Maybe it was genetic. Jack was obviously smitten too. Maybe Gia emitted a pheromone that interacted with the genes they shared.

She added, "But he really does not like opera."

"Or ballet," Jack said.

Gia noddled. "Right. Hates ballet."

Jack said, "Hold on now. I don't know about hate. Don't I go to The Nutcracker with you and Vicks every year?"

"And every year you doze off during the first act."

He shrugged. "It's always the same story. I know how it ends."

Gia looked at Tom. "And to be honest, your brother's not too crazy about modern art either."

"I like lots of modern art. I just don't like linoleum patterns and drop cloths passing as art. Who's that guy who does all those big splatters?"

"You don't mean Jackson Pollock?" Tom said, trying to worm his way back in.

"That's the one. Pollock. Gia can paint rings around him."

Gia gave Jack an appraising look, then turned to Tom. "I take that back. He is a philistine."

And then the two of them leaned together and laughed. The sound was acid, etching the chambers of Tom's heart.

The way these two looked at each other, laughed with each other, and seemed to communicate on their own private wavelength filled Tom with a boundless longing. He'd never had that sort of easy intimacy with a woman—no, not just intimacy . . .friendship. He'd never thought it mattered, never cared enough to miss it. But seeing his brother so bonded to a woman like Gia, sharing something precious, timeless, and so uniquely theirs… it awakened strange feelings within him… strange because he'd never experienced them, never known they existed, wasn't even sure what they were.

One feeling he did recognize: envy.

He wanted that for himself. He couldn't remember any woman ever looking at him the way Gia looked at Jack. But he didn't want just any woman to look at him that way, he wanted Gia.

The waiter arrived then with the appetizers. Tom had ordered the craw-dad soup—crayfish in a thick brown broth he couldn't identify.

Delicious.

"A delightful decoction," he said. "Anyone wish to partake?"

Gia's eyebrows rose. "Decoction? Really?"

He'd used the term loosely and she'd caught him. Obviously she knew her way around a kitchen.

Before he could backtrack, the house lights went down and a voice announced Jesse Roy Bighead Dubois and his band. As the musicians filed onstage and picked up their instruments, a tall black man took the microphone and introduced himself.

The singer said, "Our first song is dedicated to a fellow in the audience. No, wait. Not just dedicated—about. I wrote it for him and about him. I won't point him out because his deal is slipping through the cracks. He's a ghost, my friends. You don't see him unless he wants you to. But he's out there now, among you. The song's called the 'R-J Blues.' The music comes from Elmore James, but the words are mine. This one's for you, Jack."

A piece of cajun shrimp stopped halfway to Tom's mouth.

Jack?

He looked across the table and knew immediately from his brother's tense posture and uncomfortable expression that he was the Jack Bighead was talking about.

Jack… a ghost who slips through the cracks? This was going to be interesting.

Bighead gave his band the count and then they ripped into an up-tempo blues. Tom immediately recognized the wailing slide riff of Elmore James's version of "Dust My Broom."

Then Bighead started to sing.