[Bainbridge] There is only one person who knows how Avery Bainbridge came to be at the southern end of Grant Park, at what is more accurately termed the Museum Campus, just in front of the Field Museum of Natural History. Even deluged by tourists, one am does not usually find many people anxiously awaiting the museum's opening hours seven of those hours in advance. The woman is sitting on the lowest step, fiddling with her shoe. Presumably, God also knows why Avery Bainbridge is where she is, doing what she's doing, but neither Authorities have Yet Seen Fit To Speak On the Matter.

[J.B.] First: a dog, big, floppy-eared and loose-jowled, dashing past helter-skelter and barking. Baying, actually. Hot on the scent of some ... unfortunate squirrel or other.

Second: a man proceeding at a slightly more sedate pace -- a run, but not a sprint, one that eats up the concrete with deceptive ease. The first blasts past Ms. Bainbridge close enough for the wind-o'-passage to riffle her hair. The second too passes her, and then stops and turns around, plants his hands on his knees and huffs for a moment.

Then, straightening, he points a blunt finger at her and squints one eye closed. "The woman from the pub. Whiskey, straight-up. Literature. Unpronounceable instrument. Avery Bainbridge. Am I right?"

[Bainbridge] He huffs; she looks at him and smiles. Her smile is generous; is promiscuous; is mulling spices in cider. But first: the dog dashes by, baying like a part of the wild hunt, and she looks up startled just in time for her 'bangs' to be disturbed by his passage, dark kink-curls shifting over her forehead, heavy on her shoulders -- as if she'd just got out of the shower, or just got out of bed, after spending an entire delicious day under the covers, so to speak. Second, in her crisp, precise English: "The man from the pub. Makes instruments, but doesn't play. Dances, but only after a few drinks. Johnathan Barrister. I do remember. Who's that bagle, then? Yours, I take it?" And she's waved a cheerful and impractical stiletto boot. (...and sometimes she takes her cloven hooves off and dances without feet on the moss.)

[J.B.] He huffs; she smiles; he smiles back, somewhat self conscious, but better this than panting words at her.

"Hnh?" -- sort of a grunt, that. Beagle? "Oh, Bruin. He's a coonhound. Bloodhound-coonhound mix, actually; don't suppose you have either where you come from. Well, maybe bloodhounds," he tries to remember, gives up. "Yeah, mine. Unfortunately."

A wry grin -- distant baying. He flexes his shoulders back: one thinks of boulders rolling on a mountain, and is surprised his shoulder-socket doesn't make the crunching grinding sound of stone on stone. A few thousand years of far-northern breeding (and a few hundred in cold, old England, and another hundred or two across the pond in cold, New England) has given him length and weight of bone, and heavy, supple musculature. He tugs the round collar of his jogging sweatshirt up to wipe the lower half of his face. There's a V of sweat down his chest, and it's hard to say if by wiping he's made his face cleaner or the opposite. His brow he mops against his forearm, and then he looks around, asks the obvious.

"What are you doing out here? It must be ten below freezing."

[Bainbridge] The smile changes texture; there’s something of a chuckle in the back of her throat: husk-sound, low-thrum from the belly; little delight. Avery is naturally warm toward people, and attractive men in particular – even damaged attractive men with monstrous dogs. Anyway, rasp of amusement, low-key. "Bruin? Suits him." As she speaks, she refits the stiletto boot on her left foot, fingers yank-yank-yanking until it’s up over her calf and she can fold her jeans over it again. "Is rather cold, isn’t it? I was walking the long way home when this bloody heel caught itself on a crack and decided to break. Not all the way off, mind; just enough to cause trouble. Do you always walk your dog late at night, Johnathan?"

[J.B.] Is rather cold, isn't it? -- and he looks at her with a look that says: yes, yes it is. Then she goes on; explains her presence, her misfortune, and his look changes, becomes sympathetic, genuinely sorry.

"Oh. Ouch. I'm sorry; I didn't know." And, "Actually, yes, I do. A little earlier than this most days. A little later, some days. I live pretty close, and this is about the only time and place I can let Bruin off his leash without much fear of him devouring a toddler alive. Listen -- " there's a sort of take-charge-ness in this listen, " -- I can run back to my place and get my truck. Give you a ride home. You shouldn't have to hobble all the way."

[Bainbridge] - of him devouring a toddler alive - gets an appreciative laugh. The listen and following offer takes the smile from her mouth and, indeed, from her eyes too; she gets serious. Frowns, even. "You're certain it wouldn't be a bother?" Not a rhetorical question. Avery arches one dark eyebrow to punctuate the question.

[J.B.] "I'm certain it'll bother me a lot more to leave you to your own devices," he replies, wry again. "Wait here. Bruin!" A whistle -- fweet! -- and a pattering of dog paws on the path. Man and dog depart in the direction they'd been going. He was apparently already on the homeward stretch when he ran across her.

Some minutes go by; a good ten or twenty. The parking lot is too distant for Avery to hear the rumbling of his enormous gas-guzzler of a truck's engine, even on this cold and unpeopled night. When J.B. reappears, he reappears alone, dogless, still running. Let's hear it for Fenrir stamina. Presently he stops in front of her. It's like deja vu: he leans over, huffs. Hasn't changed and he certainly hasn't showered. Such misguided courtesies have been put aside for the sake of getting back her speedily.

Straightens, "You can walk on it? Here, take my arm." You'd think she'd broken an ankle, not a boot-heel.

[Bainbridge] Man and dog depart and Avery watches them go. MmHmm. And it's cold. While he was gone, Avery put her gloves back on and pulled her knees up to her chest. Wrapped her arms around and under her thighs. There's snow in the trees and on the museum's roof. There's snow, fine and white and fragile, dusting the stairs; there's even a few flakes in her Maenad-wild hair, white against the black. He huffs; she gets to her feet and is one of those women who can walk in heels without trouble, as long as the heels are attached; can stride in heels; dance in them; run in them. But, well: "As long as we take it slow, I think I'll be okay," she says, and accepts the offer of the helpful arm readily enough. Not her usual style, but if fate sees fit to give her a Jane Austen moment, who is she to deny it? Besides, J. B. is giving off warmth. "If I suddenly fall and crack my ijit head open, it'll be what I deserve."

[Bainbridge] Romantics
for Johannes Brahms and
Clara Schumann

The modern biographers worry
“how far it went,” their tender friendship.
They wonder just what it means
when he writes he thinks of her constantly,
his guardian angel, beloved friend.
The modern biographers ask
the rude, irrelevant question
of our age, as if the event
of two bodies meshing together
establishes the degree of love,
forgetting how softly Eros walked
in the nineteenth century, how a hand
held overlong or a gaze anchored
in someone’s eye could unseat a heart,
and nuances of address not known
in our egalitarian language
could make the redolent air
tremble and shimmer with the heat
of possibility. Each time I hear
the Intermezzi, sad
and lavish in their tenderness,
I imagine the two of them
sitting in a garden
among late-blooming roses
and a dark cascade of leaves,
letting the landscape speak for them,
leaving us nothing to overhear.
to J.B.

[J.B.] He slants her a glance, and a crooked sort of smile. "Now," he says, very gravely, "you're just being dramatic."

She gets to her feet; he offers his arm. He's giving off heat, true, quite a bit of it after all the recent running to and fro. He is also giving off a potent stink. But -- let's not be shy here: his forearm under her hand, even through a layer of sweatshirt, another of thermal longsleeved undershirt, is hard as a wood banister.

A few paces on, John suddenly laughs; a quiet laugh, and short, but real. "Sense and Sensibility," he proclaims. "That's what we've become here. All we need is a little torrential rain."

[Bainbridge] "Bite your tongue," she says, and Avery has never been a shy woman. (After all, there is a reason she can lean just so against J.B.'s supportive arm -- or not, if she chose. There is a reason she didn't lie and tell him -- nearly a stranger -- that she had a ride on the way; that there was no problem. There are dangerous people these days.) Then she laughs, too. "But, honestly, I was just thinking the same thing, although I don't think Marianne and - what was his name? Knighton? Knightly? Bingley? Something else with a -lee at the end? Rochester? - had to contend with the disaster of snow plus rain and slick city streets when they were pelted with appropriate weather."

[J.B.] Her litany of -lee's; he laughs; Rochester?; another laugh -- "That's not even Austen anymore. That's one of those mad-eyed Bronte sisters.

"True," a concession, "but then, I'm pretty sure Marianne had a sprained ankle to contend with. You, on the other hand -- " they pass under the shade of a bare-branched oak, and emerge onto a small parking lot, one of many that bud off from the parkside road, "only need to hobble so far as the Silverado there on a cracked heel."

Said Silverado flashes its lights in response to his alarm beeper. It's one of those monstrosities with a fifty-million-liter-displacement engine and a gas tank roughly as large, huge, with a double-axle in the rear, but likely never driven anywhere rougher than the potholed streets of the Cabrini-Green projects.

[Bainbridge] His correction; it gets a shrug J.B. can feel even through layers of clothing; perhaps she's a bit surprised. J. B. -- well, she still doesn't have him pegged for a type. "Big," is her comment on the truck. "American," is her second comment.

The snow looks lovely, and utterly dangerous, all amber-gilt from the street-lamps; it's begun to snow again, just light flurries which don't quite make it to the ground, and they look like petals as they pass from the dark night sky through the immediate vicinity of the lamps. As for a third, well, she does actually have to pay attention to where she puts her feet for a moment or three.

Then they're at the truck door, and Avery smiles (slow like honey). He'll open the door; he seems like the sort. Before he does, she'll squeeze his arm; lean in and against for a half-a-second. It's a nothing gesture, just a touch. Unnecessary. Avery is earth, y'see.

Then, good heel first, it's into the truck, search for the seat-belt and snap it shut while the driver settles himself.

[J.B.] The driver does, indeed, settle himself. When he gets in the truck rides a little lower on its springs. It's quite a step up. Sit in the cab and you feel ten feet tall. The reality might not be too far off. The cabin itself is spacious, with a full back row of seats; it's all nice upholstery and wood accents and beige leather. This ain't your daddy's work truck anymore. Nowadays your average American wanted the works -- the GPS, the mp3, the ABS, the SUV -- all these acronyms for consumerism.

Anyway. The driver settles himself, buckles in, and before starting the engine, turns to his passenger.

"I'd like to take you to dinner sometime." He's serious about this, and rather sincere. "No expectations. I think I'd like to get to know you better, is all."

[Bainbridge] Avery looks out the window until J. B. speaks. When he does, she turns her gaze -- faintly quizzical, the muddy, uncertain color of tea -- on him. His invitation, the qualifier, makes her smile, not so much with her mouth; more with her eyes -- simmer. "I'd like that, J. B." For a moment, it looks as if she's going to add something, but all she says is: "No pressure." Then, with a faint smirk: "Ready for the directions, then?"