Rita said, “After an hour, this gets to be a bore. Shall we go?” Outside, she said, “We haven’t talked about my book, and that’s really what you wanted to do. Tell you what. We’ll walk to the Hôtel George V, have some champagne, and talk.”
He was somewhat confused. She seemed to be sending conflicting signals. Hadn’t they gone to the Crazy Horse to be turned on? Hadn’t she expected him to make a pass afterward? And now she was ready to talk books?
As they crossed the lobby of the George V and boarded the elevator, he said, “Do they have a rooftop restaurant here?”
“I don’t know. We’re going to my room.”
His confusion deepened. “You’re not staying at the convention hotel? I know it’s dull, but this is terribly expensive.”
“I’ve made a tidy sum from Changing Tomorrow. I’m splurging, for once. I have a small suite overlooking the gardens.”
In her room a bottle of champagne stood beside her bed in a silver bucket full of crushed ice.
She pointed to the bottle. “Möet. Open it, please?”
He took it out of the bucket—and saw her wince.
“The sound of the ice,” she said.
“What about it?”
She hesitated. “Puts my teeth on edge. Like fingernails screeching against a blackboard.”
By then he was so attuned to her that he knew she wasn’t telling him the truth, that she had winded because the rattle of the ice had reminded her of something unpleasant. For a moment her eyes were faraway, deep in a memory that furrowed her brow.
“The ice is hardly melted,” he said. “When did you order this?”
Shedding the troubling memory, she focused on him and grinned again. “When I went to the ladies’ room at Lapérouse.”
Incredulous, he said. “You’re seducing me!”
“It’s very late in the twentieth century, you know.”
Mocking himself, he said, “Yes, well, actually. I’ve noticed women sometimes wear pants these days.”
“Are you offended?”
“By women in pants?”
“By me trying to get you out of yours.”
“Good heavens, no.”
“If I’ve been too bold…”
“Not at all.”
“Actually, I’ve never done anything like this before. I mean, going to bed on a first date.”
“Neither have I.”
“Or on a second or a third, for that matter.”
“Neither have I.”
“But it feels right, doesn’t it?”
He eased the bottle into the ice and pulled her into his arms. Her lips were the texture of a dream, and her body against his felt like destiny.
They skipped the rest of the convention and stayed in bed. They had their meals sent up. They talked, made love, and slept as if they were drugged.
Someone was shouting his name.
Stiff with cold, crusted with snow, Harry raised himself from the bed of the cargo trailer and from the delicious memories. He looked over his shoulder.
Claude Jobert was staring at him through the rear window of the snowmobile cabin. “Harry! Hey, Harry!” He was barely audible above the wind and the engine noise. “Lights! Ahead! Look!”
At first he didn’t understand what Claude meant. He was stiff, chilled, and still half in that Paris hotel room. Then he lifted his gaze and saw that they were driving directly toward a hazy yellow light that sparkled in the snowflakes and shimmered languidly across the ice. He pushed up on his hands and knees, ready to jump from the trailer the instant that it stopped.
Pete Johnson drove the snowmobile along the familiar ice plateau and down into the basin where the igloos had been. The domes were deflated, crushed by enormous slabs of ice. But one snowmobile was running, headlights ablaze, and two people in arctic gear stood beside it, waving.
One of them was Rita.
Harry launched himself out of the trailer while the snowmobile was still in motion. He fell into the snow, rolled, stumbled onto his feet, and ran to her.
“Harry!”
He grabbed her, nearly lifted her above his head, then put her down and lowered his snow mask and tried to speak and couldn’t speak and hugged her instead.
Eventually, voice quivering, she said, “Are you hurt?”
“Nosebleed.”
“That’s all?”
“And it’s stopped. You?”