Part 33 (2/2)

Perry sprayed beer out his nose. ”That's awesome!” he said, wiping up the mess with a kleenex that she extracted from a folded paper purse. Looking closely, he realized that the white baseball cap she was wearing was also folded out of paper.

She laughed and rummaged some more in her handbag, coming up with a piece of stiff card. Working quickly and nimbly, she gave it a few deft folds along pre-scored lines, and a moment later she was holding a baseball hat that was the twin of the one she was wearing. She leaned over the table and popped it on his head.

Luke came back with the water and set it down between them, pouring out gla.s.ses for everyone.

”Smooth lid,” he said, touching the bill of Perry's cap.

”Thanks,” Perry said, draining his water and pouring another gla.s.s. ”Well, you people certainly have some pretty cool stuff going on here.”

”This is a great town,” Luke said expansively, as though he had travelled extensively and settled on Madison, Wisconsin as a truly international hotspot. ”We're going to build a kick-a.s.s ride.”

”You going to make it all out of paper?”

”Some of it, anyway,” Luke said. ”Hilda wouldn't have it any other way, right?”

”This one's your show, Luke,” she said. ”I'm just a fundraiser.”

”Anyone hungry?” Hilda said. ”I want to go eat something that doesn't have unidentified organ-meat mixed in.”

”Go on without me,” Ernie said. ”I got money on this game.”

”Homework,” Luke said.

Perry had just eaten, and had planned on spending this night in his room catching up on email. ”Yeah, I'm starving,” he said. He felt like a high-school kid, but in a good way.

They went out for Ukrainian food, which Perry had never had before, but the crepes and the blood sausage were tasty enough. Mostly, though, he was paying attention to Hilda, who was running down her war stories from the Multiple Origami fundraiser. There were funny ones, sad ones, scary ones, triumphant ones.

Every one of her stories reminded him of one of his own. She was an organizer and so was he and they'd been through practically the same s.h.i.+t. They drank gallons of coffee afterward, getting chucked out when the restaurant closed and migrating to a cafe on the main drag where they had low tables and sofas, and they never stopped talking.

”You know,” Hilda said, stretching and yawning, ”it's coming up on four AM.”

”No way,” he said, but his watch confirmed it. ”Christ.” He tried to think of a casual way of asking her to sleep with him. For all their talking, they'd hardly touched on romance -- or maybe there'd been romance in every word.

”I'll walk you to your hotel,” she said.

”Hey, that's really nice of you,” he said. His voice sounded fakey and forced in his ears. All of a sudden, he wasn't tired at all, instead his heart was hammering in his chest and his blood sang in his ears.

There was hardly any talk on the way back to the hotel, just the awareness of her steps and his in time with one another over the cold late-winter streets. No traffic at that hour, and hardly a sound from any of the windows they pa.s.sed. The town was theirs.

At the door to his hotel -- another stack of the ubiquitous capsules, these geared to visiting parents -- they stopped. They were looking at one another like a couple of googly-eyed kids at the end of a date in a sitcom.

”Um, what's your major?” he said.

”Pure math,” she said.

”I think I know what that is,” he said. It was freezing out on the street. ”Theory, right?”

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