She’s gotten better at it.
She touches up her lipstick and powders her nose. She adjusts her stockings and her push-up bra, opens the neckline of her dress just a little bit more. She slips into her coat and belts it. By the time she gets to the gate, her plane is boarding and she waits patiently in line to take the seat that’s left. Sometimes when she gets to the gate she finds out she won’t be going where she thought she was, that she’ll have to try another flight, but that’s the price she pays for flying free. It doesn’t happen often. Harrisburg’s airport might be international, but it’s also very small and hardly ever busy. Tonight, there’s no problem.
Tonight, she’s going to Atlanta.
It will be warmer there than it is in central Pennsylvania in late September, and that’s fine. Stella doesn’t plan on sightseeing. She’ll barely even leave the airport. One night in, the next out. She has that book if she’s not lucky...but she almost always is.
She likes the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta. It has a couple of nice bars and coffee shops where she can sip iced tea or coffee or the occasional hot cocoa, depending on her mood. Like every airport she’s ever used, it has a wide selection of hotels no more than a quick shuttle ride from the terminal. She belongs to all the rewards programs. It only ever takes a quick call to confirm a cheap vacancy.
Stella is still thinking of Maria when she sits at the bar in Atlanta and settles her bag at her feet. Having to keep it with her is one inconvenience about these trips, but also the easiest escape route. She can always say she’s on her way to catch a plane if she needs an excuse to get away. She’s used it a few times, though there’s the possibility she’ll be caught in the lie when the man whose attentions she’s fleeing sees her in a different bar with a different man—but really, what does she care? She doesn’t owe them anything, even if they do buy her a drink or three. Even if she does lean a little close, fluttering her lashes, or crosses her legs artfully so that her dress gives them a glimpse of her unspoken promises.
Today isn’t the first time she’s ever been checked out by a woman. Women look each other over all the time. Women assess each other with bright and knowing eyes that broadcast their approval, envy, disdain. The tricks of gloss and glitter are meant to lure men but impress other women. Stella might have to study her reflection to know if her expression is portraying what she means it to, but all she has to do is look at other women to know if her body’s doing the same thing.
Still, there is something different about being looked over and checked out. That fleeting glimpse of desire in Maria’s eyes, coupled with the too-polite way she went about her inspection, have lit a familiar fire inside Stella. Sometimes she likes to flirt and be coy, to dance around her desires and draw them out. Make the outcome uncertain. Sometimes she likes to be pursued. And sometimes, like tonight, she wants to be the one making someone else cross the line they might not even know they had.
A man sits down beside her. One always does. He doesn’t try to hide his assessment of her, and it’s nicely appreciative. He’s conventionally attractive—square jaw, good haircut, a few feathery lines of crow’s feet and a glint of silver at his temples. Businessman, suit and tie, white shirt, nice watch. Class ring on his wedding finger. He smells good.
He’s not what she wants. Other nights, definitely, but not this one. Stella makes a quarter turn with her body away from him and focuses her attention on her cell phone. He gets the hint, orders a drink and lets his focus fall on a woman on the other side of him. Stella eavesdrops on his opening line. It would’ve worked on her on another night. Almost all do.
She sees what she wants. He’s sitting at the other end of the bar with a pint glass of beer in front of him. He’s watching the sports channel on the flat-screen above the bartender. He’s youngish, at least a few years younger than her. Clean cut, dark hair cropped close, no hint of a beard. He wears a long-sleeved black shirt and black trousers, and yes, she looks for it—the peek of a white collar from his pocket.
Stella has made an art of observation. She studies him surreptitiously, noting the black bag nestled at his feet like a faithful dog. The bag’s the sort you get at a conference, emblazoned with a dove and the words Episcopal Diocese Fall Clergy Conference circling it.
Episcopalian, not Roman Catholic. No vow of chastity, but still a priest. Still the sort of man who shouldn’t do what she wants him to do.
Guh.
He doesn’t look around the bar even when a couple of women pass right behind him on the way to the bathroom. Not even when one of them brushes his shoulder with her bag as she passes. He looks up long enough to move his chair when there’s a little bit of a roadblock between the kitchen and bathroom, so he’s not totally oblivious or entranced by the week’s sports highlights. But he’s definitely a guy who’s there to enjoy a beer and some food, not company. Especially not random female company. If the tucked-away collar didn’t give that away, the onion rings do.
Stella finishes her drink and gathers her things. She gets little more attention from him than the other women did, but when she sits next to him, he does give her a quick glance and a small, polite smile. Stella returns it with the same lack of heat and interest. When the bartender tells her that yes, they do have iced tea, she orders a glass, and when it arrives she makes a show of looking for the sugar.
“Oh...excuse me.” A smile with the right amount of friendly, gaze indirect enough not to be threatening. She points to the small dish of packets to his right. “Could you pass me the sugar?”
She’s already seen that the dish contains a rainbow of artificial sweeteners. He pushes it to her with a murmured “Oh, sure.” Stella frowns. This time when she looks at him, she makes sure to catch his eye completely. Another smile, this one a little slower.
She holds his gaze a little longer than is comfortable before she says, “Is there any real sugar?”
He looks again to his right, but this is a bar, not a diner. She’s judged him right, though. Before she can say anything, he’s waving at the bartender and asking for real sugar, which the bartender has to hunt for beneath the bar for a moment before he passes over a handful of white packets. They spill from the man’s hands, across the polished top of the bar, and Stella laughs as she helps scoop them up and tuck them into place alongside their chemical cousins.
“Thanks,” she says. It’s enough. She thought it might be.
He smiles at her. “You’re welcome.”
She tears two packets at the same time and stirs the sugar into the tea, then takes out the long spoon and tucks it in her mouth to suck the sweetness before setting it on the napkin in front of her. He looks away, but not quickly enough. She leans a little close, but not too much.
“I hate the taste of artificial sweeteners.” This is a dance. Maybe he knows it. Maybe he doesn’t. But Stella does, and she’s very careful with the steps. “They’re terrible.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” He lets his gaze tilt toward her again, but not his body. His hands close around his glass, but he doesn’t drink.
Gloss and glitter. It’s like dangling a sequined worm in sun-dappled waters, letting it drift and catch the light until the fish decides it wants to bite. The question is, will he bite? Will he?
“Some crazy weather, huh?” The second he opens his mouth to speak, it doesn’t matter what he says. It means he’s hooked. He points at the TV, across which a banner is running. Freak tornados have swept the Midwest and also odd places on the East Coast that don’t usually see them. He doesn’t quite look