"I just thought I should mention, you might want to check with Sleeping Beauty and be sure she isn't vegetarian. She looks the type." On that note, Vincent straightened and started back off down the street.
Bastien hit the button to roll the window back up, then reached grimly for his cell phone. He punched in the number to the apartment, not at all sure that either Terri or Chris would answer a phone that wasn't theirs. Fortunately, Terri did, picking up the phone on the third ring and saying politely, "Hello, Argeneau residence."
"Hi, Terri, this is Bastien Argeneau." He paused and grimaced at the pompous ring that had. The Argeneau part hadn't really been necessary, had it? He plowed on: "I was thinking of picking up some subs for supper. Is that all right? You aren't a vegetarian, are you?"
"That sounds great!" Terri said. "No, I'm not a vegetarian. Can you pick up some chips and pop with that, too? Barbecue chips, Dr Pepper, and make my sub an assorted, please. Everything on it, including hot peppers."
"Er… yes. Assorted. Everything. Hot peppers," Bastien repeated, tugging out his small notepad and pen to scribble down her order under Chris Keyes's address. "Barbecue chips and Dr. Who?"
"Pepper. Dr Pepper," she repeated. "Shall I check with Chris and see what he wants?"
"Er, yes. Sure. That would be good," he agreed, then winced as she set the phone down, apparently on a table, because the clack in his ear was almost painful. Several moments passed as he waited; then she was back.
"Hello?"
"Yes, I'm here."
"Chris wants a meatball sub, plain chips, and Canada Dry ginger ale."
"Meatball, plain chips, Canada Dry," Bastien muttered, then stilled. "A meatball sub? Like what they put in spaghetti Bolognese?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Okay." Silence reigned between them briefly; then he cleared his throat. "Is everything okay up there?"
"Fine. Chris is watching television, and I'm unpacking," she said. "Where are you? You can't have gone far. You didn't leave long ago."
"No, I'm downstairs in the parking garage, just leaving actually," he admitted. "I just thought I should check and be sure you weren't a vegetarian or anything. I wouldn't want to bring home a sub and find you couldn't eat it."
"Nope. Not vegetarian. I love meat."
Bastien smiled at her enthusiasm. At least there was something Vincent had got wrong.
"Are you a vegetarian?" she asked curiously, then gave a laugh. "Well, I guess not, or you wouldn't be suggesting subs. Well, I suppose you could be," she corrected herself. "You could like vegetarian subs. But you just don't seem the veggie type to me."
"Don't I?" he asked with a grin. "What kind of guy do I seem to you?"
"A steak man. Rare," she said firmly. Then, "Am I right? You like your steak rare?"
"Very rare," he said solemnly. She responded with a tinkle of laughter that helped ease some of the tension he had been feeling since talking to Vincent. As Bastien listened to the sound, he was suddenly aware of a distinct reluctance to hang up the phone. He'd rather sit and talk to her than take care of business. Mind you, he'd rather talk to her in person, where he could watch the way her eyes danced with humor when she spoke, and the way her face became expressive and animated, and how her hands flew about like two birds as she described things. He'd found her charming and quite distracting on the way home from the airport.
"Well, give us a call if you have trouble finding Chris's apartment, and I'll put him on the phone to give you directions."
Bastien nodded. She was telling him to get off the phone and get moving. It felt almost like a rejection. It seemed she wasn't as eager to sit there talking as he. He cleared his throat and said, "Yes, I'll do that. Bye." He disengaged the phone before she could respond, embarrassed and a touch angry at his eagerness to talk to her. She was only a human, he reminded himself—not really worth wasting time on. She'd be around for another thirty to fifty years, then drop dead, be put in the ground, and turn to dust as Josephine had.
Bastien swallowed hard at the memory of the one love he'd had in his life. He'd been young at the time, only eighty-eight, and had spent his life until then sewing his wild oats but not caring very deeply for the women he'd sown them with. Until Josephine. He'd fallen for her hard. So hard, in fact, that he'd ignored that he could read her mind: a sure sign, his mother always said, that a couple would make bad life mates. He had revealed himself to her, begging her to join him in eternal night—or what he had thought was eternal night back then; they'd had no clue in those days that they would eventually be allowed to walk in sunlight thanks to the advent of blood banks and the safety they offered.