Turner 454

          The Attic - the fourth and highest section of the Mellow Mushroom - was more Sarah's style. The music was no less loud, but it was all organic silicon - interwoven, indistinguishable, nonrepeating random melodies and an ultralow beat that seemed to stomp heavily around the room like an earthquake with a wandering epicenter.

          With each level of the club tiered in a way to offer a good view of the next dance floor down, The Attic was the coziest space: a very long, narrow room, with waterseats running the length of the wall, and opposite it a seamless curved plexi window bubbling out over the shimmering, shifting carpet of heads below.

          It was impractically dark, and the air was filled with a thick soup of the assorted and mostly illegal substances people had come up to smoke, and Sarah simply could not focus her vision on the face of her dance-floor rescuer, even though he was sitting close to her.

          Quite close.

          "So how's that margarita?" He had to raise his voice, but it still sounded calm and casual. Sarah saw only faint, Cheshire flashes of teeth.

          "The best," she lied.

          "Sorry the keep didn't know how to make a … a Vince? What's in that anyway?"

          Stifling a most uncouth snort, Sarah replied, "You wouldn't like it. It's sweet with no substance. A sissy drink." She had to stop herself before going on to describe the beverage's stunted intellect and lousy taste in shirts.

          "Hmm."

          A realistically dense holo of a shark wriggled overhead. Several hands tickled deep inside its nothingness as it passed.

          After a long fidgety silence, Sarah offered, "You like this music?"

          "Sometimes I think it's better than anything we've been able to make in, oh, five years or so."

          "I think so too," Sarah replied. She only had a vague idea of where her companion's head was, and yelled in the general direction. "Sad that even a baby's crib can come up with stuff more interesting than six guys on a stage these days."

          "Hmm."

          Sarah's head felt light. She turned to look at the laser effects out the heavily tinted window just to be sure she hadn't gone blind. Beams of red and blue light danced, shifting faster and faster until the unmistakable shape of a woman's body materialized. It was someone on the floor, twisting and flailing, projected in mid-air. Eventually the dancer looked up and saw herself (and her doppelganger looked up and saw nothing), but just as she was about to do something outrageous, the lasers scattered. Show over.

          "So," Sarah said, for a moment hunting for something to say, but quickly seizing on the most obvious. "I'm Sarah."

          "I'm David."

          "Thanks for saving me down there, David."

          "My pleasure," David replied.

          The music shifted into a new movement, and the light in the room cycled half a shade brighter to match the subtly brighter mood. Finally Sarah could see David's face, although barely.

          Handsome, Sarah thought. A sharply cut, square jaw, a faint reddish patch of beard on his chin, and a neck nearly as wide as his head. His hair was short, but fell in thick bangs on his forehead. Though she couldn't make out the color of his eyes, they seemed on the light side.

          He was a bit overdressed, with a dark coat and a button-down business shirt, but also a bit underdressed, wearing an obviously well worn pair of jeans. The 'Shroom dress code for men, Sarah surmised, applied mostly above the belt.

          She was studying him so intently, she didn't realize that she had leaned in quite a bit, or that her mouth was smirked off to one side.

          "You're quite pretty," David said.

          Sarah snapped to, sat up, and grinned. "Thank you. That sure beats, 'I'm an artist, would you like to pose for a holo?'"

          "Do you like art?"

          Sarah cocked her head slightly. He suddenly seemed engaged. And the question sounded more like an earnest inquiry, rather than a reply to what she'd just said.

          "Are you an artist?" she asked, playfully.

          "No, I'm not," he said. "But I like art. I wanted to know if you did too."

          Interesting. "Yes, I do."

          "What kind?"

          "What do you mean?" The conversation barreled out of nowhere, but Sarah was glad for it. She really liked the sound of his voice.

          "Do you have favorite artists?"

          "Sure, sure," she said, glad for once she was responding to small talk with real answers. "Some modern stuff, Lovell, Hirokawa, Mona Dawud…"

          "All painters."

          "Yeah, human hands, mixed inks, old fashioned stuff - if you can call Dawud's murals old fashioned -- but apart from her and the others, mostly classics."

          "Gaugin?"

          Sarah startled. "Yes!" She grabbed his knee, instinctively. "Exactly like that, him especially."

          He just smiled.

          "Most folks, when you say classics, think I mean the '30s and '40s," she gushed. "I mean the 1800s, maybe the first decade of the 1900s. Impressionists."

          "Degas, Pissaro, Monet?" He turned and rested both his hands gently on hers.

          "Yes, yes, and yes," she said. "More Monet than Degas, I think, but Gaugin most of all." She leaned over and bumped his shoulder with hers. "Well, David, you know your art, after all."

          "It helps when you want to meet smart women," he said.

          Sarah searched for a joking look. "Oh, come on."

          He smiled again, broadly and warmly. "I'm kidding, Sarah," he said. "And Gaugin is my favorite painter too."

          "I'm sure, I'm sure," she said, mocking disbelief. But she believed him. At least, she really wanted to.

          "He is," he said, fixing his gaze with hers. "I have one."

          Sarah pulled her hand away. "Oh yeah, back at your place?" She shook her head, but couldn't suppress a slight chuckle. "I'd really like to see that."

          "Yes," he said, and leaned in until Sarah could see his eyelashes. His long eyelashes. "And would you?"

          Without a thought, she kissed him, then pushed him back with a laugh. "Is it paintings you collect, or smart, pretty women?"

          Suddenly, he stood up. Sarah immediately expected something awful to happen. Instead, though, he turned, slid his arm around her waist, and scooped her up and set her down on her feet.

          She laughed again. "What are you saving me from now?"

          He kissed her back, pulled her close, and the next thing she knew, they were moving, dancing. She couldn't help but close her eyes and drink in the smell of him.

          "Listen, Sarah, I didn't come here to meet someone, or anyone - I've always come alone, enjoyed myself, and left alone," he said, softly, his lips lightly brushing her ear. "But you were looking at me funny, and I just asked you about art, and you answered, and even said you liked Gaugin, and I have to tell you that's a first for me."

          "Okay," she said, starting to melt. "Okay."

          "You might as well have said you have an unexplainable but intense attraction to anyone named David," he said, chuckling.

          "Actually, all the David's I've known have been assholes," she replied, jabbing him in the back with her finger.

          "Ah," he said. The music built to a crescendo and shifted again, but he seemed to have anticipated it, and the two of them leaned and spun through the change perfectly naturally.

          "So," she said, breathless. "You promise you actually own a genuine painting by Gaugin, even though I know you don't?"

          "Yes," he said, laughing.

          "And you promise you're not going to try and seduce me?"

          He cleared his throat. Sarah could feel his smile on her neck. "Yes," he said.

          "Let's go."