In just a couple of moments, Lucinda decided, she was going to get up and walk away. She wasn't going to give an excuse, she wasn't going to try to pawn Andrea off with a line about needing to freshen her drink or use the washroom or any of the four or five excuses that Andrea had found a perfectly reasonable but entirely infuriating way to work around in her quest to monopolize Lucinda's entire evening with the world's most boring conversation. She was just going to exert her boundaries, say she was done talking, get up, and walk away. She could do it. She knew she could. She was just...working up the nerve, that was all.
Lucinda knew she'd been telling herself that for a while now. Not quite all night-when Andrea originally took a seat next to her at the bar, Lucinda engaged her in a perfectly polite conversation about the decor in the club. It was a conversation that should have lasted all of a minute, but Andrea ("I'm an architect, and so I notice little details about the way the design draws your gaze to specific places") managed to draw it out for close to a half hour.
And of course, she made sure that any time Lucinda's attention strayed even a little to some cute guy walking past or looking thoughtfully at her or working up the nerve to approach, she snagged it back with another fascinating lecture ("now if you look at the bar back, you can see they put that red glass bottle there just to attract your attention, because that vivid, intense red is very eye-catching, and you can just imagine yourself seeing it from across the room") so that Lucinda could never quite get away without seeming rude.
Lucinda tried hinting more than once that she wasn't really here for a lecture on architecture, and anyway she did generally find the bar without the need of a distinctive visual cues, but somehow her disinterested, monotonous 'mhmm's and 'uh-huh's and 'yes'es only seemed to encourage Andrea to keep going ("and you can see that the glass in that bottle is antique, it was handmade so it warps and refracts the light in all sorts of interesting ways"). Lucinda wasn't sure if Andrea thought she was making a new friend, or if she was just a compulsive over-sharer, but the other woman practically nudged their bar stools on top of each other before she finished talking.
And when Lucinda did make her first escape attempt of the night, mentioning that she really needed to use the facilities, Andrea leaped right past the hint with, "Oh, I need to freshen up myself! Let's go ahead, and maybe we can look for somewhere a little quieter on the way back. This is kind of a high-traffic area."
Of course it was. That was why Lucinda picked it. But somehow by the time they wended their way through the crowd, with Andrea continuing her one-woman show the entire damn time ("and you can see how this part of the room is dark, and quiet, for people who want to relax a little after an exhausting day") and made it through the restroom line ("isn't it funny the way your brain just sort of shuts down when all you have to do is stand and wait? You find time just sort of disappears while you're not really thinking about anything") and made it back into the club, Lucinda found herself being steered to a dimly-lit booth near the very back of the seating area.
And of course, that was when Andrea began dominating the conversation in earnest, her ramblings covering everything from the thrilling centerpiece ("the candle holder looks handmade too, see how the flickering firelight catches all those little imperfections in the glass and draws your eyes to it") to her outfit ("Do you like my necklace, Lucy? I don't normally wear jewelry, but this just seemed to call to me until I couldn't look away") to her boring office job ("and I was so tired, Lucy, like my head was wobbling on my shoulders from deep, powerful exhaustion and I just couldn't fight it anymore.") Lucinda could barely get in a word edgewise, and even when Andrea did prompt a response, it always just seemed to be waiting for Lucinda to say 'yes' so she could get back to talking.
