Free Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber Page B

kindred spirit. 'That kind of luck only comes from a woman,' he said, and he bought me my first Bellini."
    I looked at him, remembering last year's English class, when we'd read A Moveable Feast. "Was it Ernest Hemingway?" I asked.
    "In the flesh," Milos beamed. "He invited me to join him, and the two of us spent the rest of the afternoon drinking and talking about women. He seemed intensely interested in my experiences with the fairer sex, few though they were. A young man's distractions are far more potent than an old man's memories,' he told me. He said that in the end memory is a cheat and a lie and no substitute for what he called the real stuff, the stuff of life."
    Milos straightened up, resurfacing from half a century ago. He appeared thirty years younger, the beneficiary of some rejuvenation formula.
    "And now we drink our Bellinis."
    Exactly on cue, the white-jacketed waiter delivered three champagne flutes full of sparkling pink purée, setting them down in front of us. What was inside was cold enough to fog the glass. Gobi raised hers to her lips, and Milos lifted his. I reached out and picked mine up, sure that I was going to knock it over, although somehow I managed not to. Apparently when Milos was ordering the drinks, the UNDERAGE stamp on my hand didn't mean squat.
    "Speaking of the stuff of life..." He gestured, and when I looked around I saw that the waiters had cleared the tables away, creating an open space in the middle of the floor. Milos smiled at Gobi. "Will you two dance?"
    That was when I realized that tango music had started playing from recessed speakers in the ceiling, and several couples were already beginning to slide easily through the newfound space. Before I could say anything, Gobi took my hand and pulled me up. I reached back and polished off my Bellini in one cold gulp.
    "I can't dance, remember?" I whispered.
    "It's just a tango. It is like sex, except with clothes on." Then, squeezing me closer: "Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot, you do not know how to do that either."
    "Oh, ha-ha."
    "Relax. Just follow my lead."
    I glanced back at Milos watching us from his table. "You can't kill that guy. He's this sweet old European man. He didn't do anything."
    "Shut up."
    "He got hammered with Hemingway, for crying out loud."
    "Hush." Her body moved against me, shifting and pressing; her eyes locked on mine. The alcohol had begun to swim up my bloodstream, warming me from the inside, and her thigh grazed my leg as the music swelled. At this proximity I noticed a detail that I'd never seen before, a thin streak of white scar tissue directly across her throat.
    "Hold me tighter." She reached back and pinched my butt, hard. "You see?"
    "Ow!"
    "Come on. I won't break."
    I yanked tight. "How's that?"
    "Yes. That's it." She smiled a little and bit her lip. "You are improving." We swung around sideways and I caught another glimpse of Milos at his table. He had his cell phone out now and was still watching us with hooded, expressionless eyes. Then he was gone again as we revolved the other direction, and Gobi was all that I could see.
    "Not bad for your first time," she said. "All you need is the right teacher."
    "That's you?"
    "It could be." She cocked one eyebrow. "Unless there is something you wish to teach me —in which case you had better make it fast." Another tiny smile: "Being your first time, I suppose it will be." She was rubbing up against me again, the friction close and rhythmic until I felt something building down there. "Is your safety off?"
    "I don't have the gun, remember?"
    "Are you sure?" She reached down, gripped me. "Oh. I see. "
    "You better stop doing ... that..." I got out, not sure where I was going from there, and that was when she let me go, abruptly stepping back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Milos rising up from his chair. He was moving with surprising quickness for a man of his age, his hand jammed into his jacket pocket as he crossed the floor to Gobi.
    "What is your real