Just A Girl

"I just wanted to tell you how much I liked your sets tonight." Grey thought he looked way too nice for this place. He wore a tailored white silk suit that, despite the dirtiness of the White Reflection, didnt seem to have a spot of dirt on it. His voice had a rough but smooth edge to it, rare for people this far out in space, most of whom had a very neutral mode of speech.

Must be all the smoking, she thought.

All the same, she took the cigarette and let him light it. 'Thanks," she said, gesturing with the cigarette. "For both things. I don't think I've seen you here before."

"No," the man said. "This is the first time in a long time I've been in here. The name's Kienan."

"I'm Grey," she replied, reaching under the stage for her guitar case. "Y'know, I hope you don't think me odd for saying this, but you don't look like our usual clientele."

Kienan looked himself over. "I . . .don't?"

Grey pulled her guitar case free, wiping the sweat off her face. She smiled and looked at him, taking another puff of her cigarette. "No," she said, her voice still carrying a hint of mischievous childishness to it. "For one thing, no one I've seen here can afford a suit that nice, and for another thing . . .I've never seen a man with hair as long as yours."

Kienan scooped up his braid in his right hand. "I get that a lot," he mused. "What about yours?"

"What about mine?"

"Well," Kienan said. "The last blue-haired person I met was Rigellian."

Grey grinned around her cigarette and looked at him as she bent over the stage to get her guitar. "Is this where you ask me if I'm a natural blue?"

"I dont know. Is it?"

Grey smiled and put her guitar in her case. Kienan looked over at it. "An electric blue Fender Stratocaster," Kienan said. "You have refined tastes. This things looks to be at least two centuries old."

Grey smiled. "I love that guitar more than life itself. The only time I feel alive is when I hold it in my hands and I'm up here. Do you play?"

Kienan smiled. "Piano," he said.

Grey closed the guitar case and hopped up on the edge of the stage. "They say all piano players are melancholy borderline psychotics," she said with a smile and a raised eyebrow.

Kienan smiled and lit a cigarette of his own. "They also say all guitarists are self-destructive."

"They certainly talk a lot don't they?"

Kienan smiled. "Yes," he said. 'They do."

Grey smiled at him. "Look, uhm," she said shyly. "Will you be around tomorrow night?"

Kienan took a long, thoughtful drag off of his cigarette, exhaling it slowly. "I can be."

"Well, I'm only playing the first set tomorrow night," she said. "If youre here . . .well, maybe we could go out?"

Kienan smiled. "I've never been asked out by a woman."

"Then you dated the wrong women."

"Hm," Kienan said. "Heard that before." He smiled and dropped the cigarette to the floor, grinding it out with his foot. "You've got yourself a deal."

"Tomorrow at ten, OK?" Grey asked, smiling still. Kienan smiled back, a little tighter--smiling wasn't something that came all that naturally to his face--and nodded.

Grey watched him go and grabbed her guitar case. She slid off the stage then stopped, her smile fading a bit and her face darkening with worry.

I hope I miss that date, Kienan, she thought. But I have a funny feeling I won't

Kienan shrugged off his white silk jacket and hung it on a hook on the wall.