"Do you know," Margo said as they entered the restaurant, "that I think this is the first time I've actually seen you wear a suit?"
Tom chuckled. "Now that's not true. Remember Jack and Cassie's wedding? I dressed nice for that. Well...at least for the ceremony. I figure I throw 'em the reception, I get to dress however I want for it." The two of them headed up to the maitre'd, and Tom said, "Reservation for Ballard, party of two."
The maitre'd looked down at his little list. It was very full; reservations at 'Joi de Cuisine' had to be booked at least a month in advance. Margo had been totally floored when Tom had mentioned that he'd gotten them a table--really, who wouldn't be at least a little surprised when their boyfriend came back from the depths of the South American jungle and announced they were going to a fancy restaurant? But between cell phones and the Internet, nowadays even Darkest Peru wasn't as far away as it used to be. Tom had booked the table before he'd even gotten back to Lima.
"Right this way, sir," the maitre'd said, gesturing elegantly as they headed into the restaurant. The whole place was a marvel of understated grace, with soft lighting that made the candles on each table really glow, and soft music--not from loudspeakers, either. They had an actual in-house string quartet.
"This is lovely," she whispered to Tom as they headed to their table. "Absolutely lovely." She felt almost reverent as they sat down. "You didn't need to do it, you know. Six months of only seeing you through a webcam, and I'd have been satisfied with pizza and beers on the couch."
Tom grinned. It was nice to see that grin in full resolution. "We'll have plenty of time for pizza and beers, honey. We brought back a nice haul of pieces from the dig; it's probably going to take at least a year just to catalog it all and get it ready for display. You won't have to worry about me tramping out into the jungle again anytime soon."
She reached a hand across the small table and squeezed his own. "I don't worry about that, Tom. I knew when I first met you that this was your passion. It's a part of who you are, and I love that person. That smart, funny, handsome, fabulously wealthy, great-in-bed person," she said with a grin.
Tom breathed a mock sigh of relief. "Glad 'fabulously wealthy' came in fourth," he said. "Mind you, it did come in ahead of 'great in bed'..."
Margo winked. "It's been six months, I might have forgotten a few of the details. Play your cards right tonight, and it might climb that list."
The two of them were still laughing at that when their waitress arrived. "Bonjour, m'sieur et madame," she said in a slight accent that suggested she wasn't faking her knowledge of French. "My name is Nicolette, and I will be your waitress for the evening. Your chef for the evening is Monsieur Edgard LaMarche, and he wishes you both to know that he greatly looks forward to preparing your meal. Tonight's hors d'ouvres are done in the style of the Cote d'Azur, and include bouillabaisse, ratatouille, soupe au pistou, and salade niçoise."
Margo ordered bouillabaisse, Tom chose soup au pistou, and then the complex process of choosing a main course began. All in all, it took almost five minutes before everything was settled (counting the time it took to consult with the sommelier on an appropriate choice of wine), and they were finally alone together again. "Now where were we?" Tom asked. "I remember it being something about being great in bed..."
Margo sighed theatrically. "Six months away, and that's all you can talk about?" She paused. "No, wait. That actually makes sense. Seriously, though," she said as they fought down another round of giggles, "I presume you're happy with the trip? You seemed to be full of excitement every day down there."
"Oh, we found some amazing pieces. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that the Collection might now be the largest repository of Incan artifacts in the world." Tom always just called it 'the Collection', but it was really more of a privately-owned museum. Mind you, that was Tom all over. Any other rich guy with a passion for Incan culture would lock it all away in a mansion and gloat over it in the middle of the night, but her boyfriend opened his own museum and showed the pieces to everyone he could drag through the doors.
"In fact," he said, "there's one particular piece I wanted to show you tonight." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small case. "It's very rare," he said as he opened it to reveal a gold ring. "Not a lot of Incan metalwork survives, it was all melted down by the conquistadors for the gold and silver. But we found a cache of hidden jewelry. Probably some rich woman, stashed 'em someplace when the soldiers came and didn't survive to get them back out."
Margo looked closely at the ring. It was an unusual design, a stylized woman with wide, swelling hips and... "Exactly how many breasts is this woman supposed to have?" she asked, slightly nonplussed.
"That's Mama Allpa," Tom said with a salacious grin. "She was a minor deity in the pantheon, sort of a pagan love goddess. Only back then, they weren't exactly shy about what they meant by 'love'. Mama Allpa was all about sex, a good old-fashioned 'be fruitful and multiply' sort of gal."
Margo looked at the ring again. It was actually very beautiful, once you got past the multiple breasts thing. Whoever had made it had given the piece a sort of primal beauty, raw and elemental in its celebration of...well, lust. There was no other word for it, really. Just the lines of the figure suggested sex. Margo suspected it wouldn't look nearly as pretty once Tom put it on display; the flicker of the candlelight played off of the worked metal in a way that made Mama Allpa seem to sway her hips just slightly in a sort of sensuous dance. Museum lighting wouldn't have the same effect. A shame, really. "It's beautiful," she said quietly.
