Strangers in the Night by Inés Saint Page B

Chicago’s Transit System bothered him. “All right Miss Diaz, where do you think we should start?”
    “Please, call me Keila,” she said, hesitating for just a beat before opening her briefcase. Taking out a few pages, she tried to pass them to him, but she had to stretch clear across the table to get them to him and still he would’ve had to stretch, too, to reach them. Unwilling to look like an idiot, he didn’t budge. Shooting her an impatient glance he said, “Miss Diaz, why don’t you sit a little bit closer? I don’t bite.” The look she gave him before stifling a sigh told him she didn’t quite believe him. But she sat closer, and quickly delved into an introduction of her ideas, her manner now formal and detached.
    Little by little, though, as she dug deeper into a subject matter she clearly thrived on, her formality gave way to vibrant enthusiasm. Jake felt drawn in by her knowledge and liveliness, and after asking a few questions, he sat back and watched her speak. Her eyes bright, she had a tendency to use gestures to punctuate her speech. It was difficult to take his eyes off of her.
    When they got to the drier budget and numbers part, Jake was impressed to see she had a quick mind, capable of turning the problems he threw at her around in her head, coming up with possible solutions in no time.
    But inexplicably, the more they got into the technical, numerical side of things — usually his favorite side, the more he wanted to see her animated again.
    “When did you begin to play?” he asked, careful to keep his tone sedate, as if he were merely trying to further understand the world of children and instruments. And he was immediately rewarded with a soft smile.
    “Third grade. I was really lucky; my mom was able to get me into a school with a music program when I began to show an interest. It was further away, but my dad took on later shifts so he could take me.”
    “They must be really proud, your parents,” he remarked before looking down to signal the end of that little segment of conversation, realizing it was better not to get personal. Too late he remembered Cate had told him Keila’s father had been a policeman, killed in the line of duty.
    “They were. I mean, my mom still is and my dad really was … ” she hesitated before taking a quick breath and saying, “But he died eleven years ago, and I was only fifteen, so he didn’t really get to see how his dedication paid off.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said, earnestly, fixing his gaze on her this time.
    She didn’t respond, just quickly looked back down at her papers. They went back to numbers for a while, Keila explaining the budget she’d worked with in Pittsburgh and the deficiencies she’d felt the program there had. His curiosity about her again got the better of him as he listened to her speak of Pittsburgh. He cleared his throat. “Cate mentioned you just moved back, are you planning to stay here in Chicago?”
    “I want to,” she replied, her eyes taking on a worried look. “I love this city. I’m so attached to it and my family — I feel like I’m never as alive anywhere else. But … it’s not up to me. It depends on where my career will take me.” She looked at him then, and Jake looked away, surprised at how deeply he understood the emotion behind her feelings for their hometown. Again, it made him realize he should stick to the technical stuff.
    But now she had questions, too. And she was fixing him with a curious gaze, wanting to know his favorite local restaurants, bands, and haunts. He tried monosyllabic answers and wary looks to bring her back to the subject at hand, while she purposefully ignored his dismissals, teasing that she would shave ten minutes off her bill and insisting that if he knew of a place where they served fresh avocados, he had to share.
    She made a note of a Taqueria he frequented, and seemed genuinely surprised he preferred authentic dives and joints to expensive restaurants. “I had