Page 10 of The Virgin's Dance
“Really want to know?” Pilot gave her a grin, and she chuckled.
“As long as it’s not gun-running.”
“You might wish it was when I tell you.”
Boh smiled. “Amaze me.”
“Well,” Pilot steered the car onto the Brooklyn Bridge, “You know those little perforations in toilet paper? My dad invented the perfect ‘tear-rate’.”
Boh blinked. That was the last thing she’d expected to hear. “Really?”
Pilot slid his eyes over to her. “Nope.”
For a second Boh didn’t comprehend what he’d said, then she busted out laughing. “You had me. You really had me.”
Pilot chuckled. “Well, it was a more interesting line thanhe worked real hard in the city and made a wad of cash.”
“You are quite insane, Pilot Scamo.” She giggled, shaking her head.
They joked with each other on the way back to her apartment, then he walked her to her door. “Goodnight, Boheme Dali.”
He kissed her gently, and she smiled. “Goodnight, Pilot. Thank you for dinner, for driving me home, and—thank you.”
He stroked her cheek. “May I call you tomorrow?”
She nodded, and he kissed her one more time before he waved goodbye.
Boh went inside to find Grace asleep on the couch, Beelzebub curled on top of her head, awake, watching Boh with baleful eyes. “You’re just jealous I got to kiss a gorgeous man,” she whispered, draping a blanket over Grace’s sleeping form.
When she was in bed, all she could think about was Pilot’s kiss, his sweet smile, his touch, and she wished she were curled up next to him right now.
When she slept, she dreamed of dancing into his arms and never leaving that loving embrace. When she woke, she woke to a text message of two words.
Lightning bolt.
Chapter Seven
“I wasn’t being cheesy, I swear, but it just came to me. I was thinking about meeting you, and then when I got home, some hokey rom-com movie was on cable. That one with the guy with the floppy hair, says fuck a lot.”
Boh giggled. “Four Weddings and a Funeral?”
“That’s the one.” Pilot sipped his coffee. “Well, right at the very end, there’s that meeting between the sick-kick guy and the posh woman, and there’s this frisson. He even says it ‘Gosh, thunderbolt city.’ Are you laughing at my English accent?”
“No, no.” Boh stuck her tongue in her cheek. Had she only known this man for 24 hours? Plot flicked a crumb of her bagel at her and she grinned. “So, carry on.”
“Heard of Faraday cages?”
Boh screwed up her face. “Should I have?”
“Ah, the youth of today. Anyway, ignoramus, a Faraday cage is a kind of enclosure which will shield things, a human, anything from electricity. Say you got hit by lightning in your car—wouldn’t hurt you because the car itself is a Faraday cage.”
“Okay, I get that, Bill Nye, but what does it have to do with me, and our project?”
Pilot looked pleased with himself. “I’m glad you asked, Miss Sassy.” He pulled out a sheet of paper on which he’d drawn something that resembled a birdcage. Inside of it, he’d drawn a figure, a ballerina, Boh, capturing her perfectly in mid-flight, her long limbs angled and graceful, mirroring the lightning bolts that were hitting the cage.
“Wow.”
“You like it? The idea?”
