The Direction of the Wind, Part II

Posted on Tue 24th Apr, 2018 @ 12:11am by Lieutenant Damion Ildaran & Elizabeth Anderson M.D.

942 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Brushfires
Location: Orchids and Jazz
Timeline: Evening of the day that Hermes docks.

From Elizabeth's apartment, Damion notified the Orchids and Jazz staff that he and his guest were on their way and to please not cancel their reservation. Then they rode the turbolift to Deck 600 and alighted into a crowd of people. It was the dinner hour, and the Promenade was hopping.

"I've never seen anything like this," Damion said as they walked along a curved hallway toward a straight hallway that intersected it. The floor shone with polish, despite the many footsteps it endured every day, at all hours. Many of the shops, Damion noticed, were open around the clock, and so were most of the restaurants and entertainment centers. With ships docking and crew wanting leave at all hours, it made little sense to lose business for so trivial a thing as sleep. "They have the most interesting names. What do you suppose they serve at a restaurant called 'Pearl with a Chainsaw?' And 'Signs of the Prophets'--Do you think they make Bajoran billboards?" He grinned at Elizabeth. "I don't care what they really do; I'm just playing a game with the names."

"Have you ever looked at a directory of the shops on all one hundred decks? It's an amazing assortment of things for sale, and some of the names are really funny. For example, there's a barber shop on Deck 597 called Hairy Cutter. For some reason, that tickled my humor chip." As they walked, it seemed natural for Elizabeth to take Damion's arm with her hand, to stop and point at something, and with a gentle nudge go forward again. In only a few minutes of relaxed walking, they were at the entrance to Orchids & Jazz, where they were greeted by the doorman.

"Good evening. You have reservations?" he asked with a charming smile.

"If we're not too late to enjoy them," Damion said. "I put in a call to say we might be delayed. The reservations are under the name Damion Ildaran."

Reon did a quick check and smiled again, "Yes, we have them and did hold them for you." He signaled to the Orchids & Jazz Administrative Assistant who was pinch-hitting on the very busy evening. As she walked up, he said, "Reservation for DF left table 3."

Serena smiled at the attractive couple and wondered if they were married. "You'll love the table, I think. If you'll follow me, please."

Elizabeth went ahead of Damion and the beautiful blonde led them to a table on the left front, in the shadows outside the lights on the small dance floor and smaller stage. She recognized the music as jazz, but the woman singing was unknown to her.

Damion trailed behind the waitress and Elizabeth as she led them to their table, seated them, told them what the special of the day was, and gave them menus. Damion began reading his once the blonde woman left and glanced at Elizabeth. "I have no idea what some of this is," he said in a low voice. "Have you ever heard of eggplant la-sag-na?"

"I don't have any experience with it, but I know what eggplant looks like," she answered, not correcting his pronunciation. Just because a million things, including Italian food, were built into her database didn't mean she had to be a show off. "You can't go wrong with chicken, though."

The music as they entered was interesting, Damion thought. It had a slow, dreamy, meditative quality, yet it was precisely sung. He counted the beats and decided the song was in 4/4. It still amazed him that there were people in the Federation who could make a living doing nothing but singing.

"Do you know how to dance?" Damion asked Elizabeth, curious, as he eyed the dance floor.

"I do, in fact, though I might be slightly ... methodical. I haven't had a lot of practice, so I might not be very good at it." Elizabeth didn't want to admit to him that she'd had no practice at all. Her programming contained all the moves, and she rapidly accessed them, just in case. A few electrons drooped at the thought that she might never get to try it. Who wanted to dance with a ... with a robot, she thought harshly.

As they were seated, she asked, "Is there much dancing on Turkana IV? What you've told me about life there doesn't sound like there would be much reason for it. Aren't people usually celebrating something when they dance?"

"There's some," Damion said, "but we've lost a lot of the Earth music and steps and have invented our own. We do celebrate for things like weddings, births, and whatnot. I didn't learn Earth-style dancing until I was required to for an intelligence course. They called it 'the James Bond class' after a famous Earth spy. I thought the whole point of spying was to not be famous or even known of, but whatever. I've not had much chance to practice dancing, either, so shall we be awkward at it together?"

Anderson thought for a nanosecond or two, and then smiled and said, "Why not? If we don't do it, we won't get any better. After we order, if she sings something nice and slow where we can take our time, maybe?"

"That sounds fine to me," Damion said with an answering smile and resumed studying his menu for a moment. After a bit more dithering, he at last decided, once Serena came back, on ham steak with baked potato and peas, and the Black Forest cake for dessert.

"That sounds good. Make it two."

 

RSS Feed

Comments (1)