Page 11 of Alone With You in the Ether

Ah. He was right. She could hear the difference. “Rinaldo what?”

“Damiani.”

“Are you as Italian as you sound?”

“Nearly.”

“Nearly, but not entirely.” Regan noted the features of his face, the texture of his hair and the shade of his skin, categorizing him by layers of portraiture. Italian origins naturally required a different pigment than Caucasian, but for Aldo, Regan estimated she’d need something much more saturated than even the darkest shade of Mediterranean olive. If she were planning to paint him, which she wasn’t, she’d require a sienna overlay, or a distinctly reddish color burn.

“My mother’s Dominican,” Aldo said, which explained it.

“And she had no problem with your father giving you that intensely Italian name?”

“She wasn’t there to stop him,” he said.

That, too, was matter of fact. The sun had been out earlier that day. His mother had left him when he was an infant. He was maybe probably some sort of genius. He was… Regan estimated 5’10, 5’11. Not overly tall, but certainly not short. He was also wearing a lot of leather for someone who was currently drawing hexagons in the armory of a fine art museum.

“What’s your deal?” she asked him. “Why time travel?”

“I like to keep a long-term problem going,” he said.

“What, like a computer program?”

“Yes.” She’d been joking, but he clearly wasn’t.

“You’re some kind of math dude?”

“A specific kind of math dude, yeah.”

He raked his fingers through his hair, which was definitely too long on top.

“I hope you didn’t tip much on that haircut,” she remarked. “It’s not very good.”

“My dad did it the last time I was home. He doesn’t have a lot of free time.”

Well, now she felt like a dick.

“Why are you drawing in here?” she asked him.

“I like it here,” he said. “I have an annual membership.”

So he wasn’t a tourist. “Why?”

“Because I like it here,” he repeated. “I can think in here.”

“It gets crowded,” she pointed out. “Noisy.”

“Yes, but it’s the right kind of noise.”

The longer she looked at him, the more attractive he got. He had an interesting jawline. He didn’t sleep well, that much was obvious. The bruising beneath his eyes was violently purple. She wondered what kept him awake at night, and what her name was. Or his name. Or maybe they were all nameless. He was a mystery, which was interesting. He never quite did or said what she thought he was going to, though that could become its own kind of predictable after a while.

He had a nice mouth, Regan thought. She glanced down at his pen, which had bite marks along the side. She would have guessed as much. She imagined the plastic getting caught between his teeth, his tongue slipping over it.

She shivered slightly.

“You work here?” he asked her.

“I’m a docent,” she said.

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