It was probably the first place she had ever been that truly could be called a "Lounge." After all, there had been many bars, joints, clubs and other assorted locales that had born such a title through their neon and plywood signs, but they all tended to lack that essential quality that let you truly 'lounge.' Most of them were loud joints, with music blaring, cheap beer on tap, and guys in dirty t-shirts and flip flops trying to look down your shirt while they tell you how big their dick is. Usually not in those words, but the message is the same, isn't it?
But this place was different. Named "Reflections," and hidden away on the 45th floor of the Hilton Downtown, it had elevated itself to #1 on her list of best kept secrets in the city. The view of downtown was breathtaking, the city lit up, the lights from the football stadium in the distance serving as a dramatic backdrop for the slow crawl of traffic down the main drags, and people scurrying through the encroaching cold. January around here could be a bitch. And the drink and cigar selection was extensive.
She turned back towards the piano sitting on an elevated platform, letting herself go in the song. The woman was not splayed across the black wood, but standing at the microphone, slowly swaying with her own voice, accompanied by the two men behind her. Amber loved it.
Unfortunately, it had been another failed date to get here. Spencer had seemed like a nice guy, a lawyer dealing with copyright law. They had meet through work, which should have been her first clue. An intern with an accounting firm, she had been tasked with helping the accountants hired by his team of legal beagles to find some discrepancies in a tech firms books. It had been two months of backbreaking labor, pouring over books that were shoddy at best, down right felonious at worst.
But throughout it all Spencer had been an upbeat, friendly face. He was human to the people that worked for him, and managed to make her laugh when they were still in the office at ten at night. So obviously laughing had lead to a bit more, before they had managed to recover their professional decorum, and postpone any hanky-panky until after the project was complete.
Which had been last Thursday. So he had called her, and on this Friday they found themselves in the Hilton Queen's Ballroom at some charity function. It had taken him precisely 38 minutes to get sloppily drunk. At 55 minutes he had interrupted the keynote speaker by screaming out loudly, and throwing a tumbler of scotch at some of his friends at another table. At 1 hour, 6 minutes those friends had thrown two back. She had left not twenty seconds later.
The sign for the lounge had caught her eye on the way out, as she mentally calculated her chances of finding a cab, downtown, at seven at night on a Friday. Things did not look good. But the promise of a relaxed drink did, so she ascended upwards in the glass elevator, grabbed a seat at the bar, and let herself go in the music and atmosphere, the stress of the week and the pain and embarrassment of a bad date bleeding away.
Jonathan stepped out of the elevator, and looked down onto the city. He loved it here, loved living in the city. To bad that his ex-wife hated everything about it, and had done her best to poison the last ten years of his existence here. Which was amazing, seeing how she had been on the West Coast, three thousand miles away, for the last two of that decade. Women were another thing that fascinated him.
Turning to his right, he was greeted by Mario, who worked the Reflections coatroom. He handed the man his heavy overcoat and gloves, glad to be rid of the layer. He loved winter as much as the next man, but this one had not really been up to snuff. Little snow, lots of rain. If this kept up, he might have to permanently relocate somewhere with guaranteed annual snowfall. To bad most of those places were closer to the ex-wife. He really had to stop thinking about her.
The lights in Reflections were always dim, letting outside lighting play in, and giving the place an intimate, comfortable ambiance. He had seen that the charity ball downstairs was letting out, and he hoped that it did not filter up here. He doubted it, those things rarely did, but shit happened. He had an invitation to that abortion somewhere in his house, but he stayed away from such functions, sending a check instead. Nothing worse then a bunch of rich and wanna-be-rich people standing around telling each other how great they are because they gave peanuts to starving kids in Africa.
His eyes danced across the bar, and he spotted Rick trying to catch his eye. Heading his way at the back end of the teak bar, the massive black man leaned down to his friends level. "Seat number four, came up earlier. Bad date downstairs."
"What makes you think I'm here for that tonight?"
"You're always after that."
"Touché, touché."
He walked back down the bar, and sat next to the indicated seat, admiring the back view of a beautiful woman. Her hair was almost auburn in color, a deep, passionate flavor of hair. It even smelled good, and he was a good foot away from it. The gown she was wearing gave away that she not dressed up for a night at the clubs, but for something a bit more formal. It was a shoulder-and-sleeveless affair, dipping dangerously low towards her derriere, exposing a nice hourglass figure, tapering into a narrow waist, and a nice roundness sitting straight up and down on her stool. She was swaying gently back and forth with the music, one hand on the glass sitting on the bar. The fingers were long and elegant, with dangerously red nails tapping alternately on the bar and the glass.
He did not realize it, but he must have been staring, because suddenly he realized that she had turned around, and was looking him dead in the eye. Her eyes were big and green, dominating a face that was the picture of angelic innocence, with pouty red lips, a cute small nose, defined cheekbones and a high forehead. Her make up was soft and accenting, drawing attention away from the small groups of freckles that spotted the otherwise flawless skin on her cheeks.
But looking at him she was, and the alarm claxons were going crazy in his frontal lobe, trying to get the Duty Brain cells to get the mouth into gear, fire up the conversation processors, DO SOMETHING! But duty brain cell was not answering the radio, mainly because currently his eyes had tracked down her front, and realized that not only did she have a nice ass, but that her gown had a slit up the side to the top of very nice legs, which gave way to a flat stomach, which gave way to a very nice rack, the top of her gown barely containing the breasts looking up at him.
"Hello." Her voice did not come towards him the way that normal sound waves do, did not vibrate the air between them and resonate in his eardrums. It was more of a wave, like a cloud of perfume that envelops and intoxicates you. It was low and smoky at the same time, with a gentle purring quality, with no hostility or aggression, just an offering of an opening.
Finally the Duty Brain cells ripped themselves away from the periscope, and hit the emergency startup button. The lungs fired up the oxygen burners, and the cortex spun into high gear, instantly developing a response, spitting out his most charming line.
"Hello."
She smiled, slowly, spreading from the edge of her lips all over her face, like the sun rising. It was all he could do to tear his eyes away from hers, her emeralds mesmerizing him. "Can I buy you another drink?" Somehow the message that her glass was empty had gotten through, and he was acting on it. Small miracle at this point.
"I'm not sure. Already had one bad experience with a man today, why ruin the moment and create the opportunity for another?"
"Yeah, Rick told me. I was just offering it out as an apology from the rest of us, who would never treat you like that." He was not really sure what last dude had done, but he was an idiot, and he was already thanking him. He had always been on his best at the rebound.
"You must come here often, if you know the bartender by name."
Jonathan shrugged. He did not think it would help his cause to mention that he was a co-owner of the place, and that Rick was his personal trainer with a need for extra income. So instead he just waved at the man, and made a motion that told him to refill her, and bring him his regular vodka and cranberry.
She watched as Rick poured the drinks and deposited them before them on the little stone coasters, sliding her now empty glass beneath bar with a smile.
"Well, thank you, I guess." She smiled at him again, and he told her that if she smiled like that again, he would buy her another one. Finally she laughed. "A charmer, are we?"
