Hot. Hot and sticky. And hot. Brooklyn, mid-July, the end of a humid day and a thunderstorm getting ready to rock and roll. After a day spent working to a deadline, Maggie wants nothing more than to quit, switch off the lights (the storm has robbed her of a good hour of daylight), cover the table and go drink something very cold, very fast. And find a cool spot. She wants to quit, but she wants to finish...but she wants to quit. As she's deciding if she's at a good spot to stop, one where she can go on, she hears a key in the lock downstairs. Well, that's one decision out of her hands, and in no time, she's standing in the lower hallway of the brownstone, waiting for Dave to walk through the door.
"I wasn't really expecting you," she tells him, then sees that he's carrying a shopping bag. "Ooh, good boyfriend! What did you bring?"
"I brought sustenance," he tells her, savoring every syllable. "I knew you wouldn't have done anything, and I wanted to eat, so I brought it to you."
"Well, come on," she says, and goes down the hall to the big kitchen in the back of the house.
It's marginally better in here, a little below street level, in the back away from the worst of the day's sun, and the tile floor is cool on her bare feet, but it's still oppressively hot. The first hints of thunder can be heard, still at the point where the question is, is it just a plane, or is it really thunder?
Dave thumps the bag down on the table, and together they unpack it. Ciabatta, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, salami, strawberries. "You are the best," she tells him, and suddenly hungry as well as thirsty, quickly has one end of the long table set for two. The finishing touch is a shallow bowl of herbed olive oil, to dip the bread into. Dave is opening two bottles of beer--"Use glasses," she reminds him--and then she lights some candles and switches out the light. "I thought it might seem cooler this way," she says.
"We need the storm to break it," he says, and for a short while, they're silent, eating. It's one of those times when hunger truly is the best sauce. After the first pangs are assuaged, and they're down to picking, Maggie asks Dave how his day was. "Fine," he answers. "Rehearsal was good....look at that," he says, changing the subject suddenly. "Nothing is moving, look at the flames, they're not even flickering."
It's true, the air is still and heavy. There seem to be more horns blowing than usual--the weather making tempers even shorter than normal.
Maggie is wearing a black, v-necked t-shirt, and it's so humid that it looks nearly painted on her. Her generous cleavage glistens with sweat, and her hair has turned into a cloud around her head. She reaches up to lift it off her neck, the v of her decolletage deepening as she does, then lets it drop again. She does this a few times, and Dave begins to feel a heat that has nothing to do with the weather.
