Read time: 3 mins.
The first (official) meeting between Nasrin and Isabelle in my work-in-progress novel The Song and the Tempest.
Nasrin usually went to the bar in the hotel lobby after her shows. She’d known the bartender a few years by this point, so he let her help herself. She enjoyed listening to the artificial waterfall across the lobby from the fireplace and looking through the big picture windows facing the Gulf of Mexico. The lobby had spacious, square sitting areas along the walls, divided from each other by black marble barriers that rose about five feet. The bar also had a black marble countertop, and Nasrin enjoyed feeling the smooth coolness of it on her arms as she leaned over it.
In one of those sitting areas, a woman wearing bizarrely large, deer-themed sunglasses flagged down the person Nasrin would soon come to know as Isabelle Clements by waving $60 in 10s. “Excuse me, Dear Heart, would you get me an absinthe from the bar, please? Tell the bar girl I want it fixed Bohemian style and let her keep the change.” Her voice echoed across the high-ceilinged lobby.
Isabelle accepted the money and walked to the bar.
Nasrin had already taken the bottle out of the liquor cabinet before Isabelle made it across. She nearly dropped it when she saw the person coming towards her. She didn’t ask if they’d met before because she knew Isabelle wouldn’t know the correct answer yet. “I’ll take it to her when it’s ready. Thanks.”
“Actually, I’d kinda like to see a professional run through the ritual, if that’s alright.”
“You know about the absinthe ritual?”
“I finished a master’s in psychology last month. We covered absinthe in a course on hallucinogens. I also know most of its reputation is exaggerated and the few genuine instances of hallucinations it caused came from the high alcohol content or from inferior distillers using copper salt to get a greener color. Personally, I find it one of the least mind-blurring spirits I’ve tried.”
Nasrin raised the bottle in a toast. “Color me impressed.” She poured a measure of absinthe into a glass. “You staying in the hotel?”
Isabelle shakes her head. “We just came for my brother’s birthday.”
“You came for a party and none of you stopped at the bar on purpose?”
Nasrin soaked a sugar cube in the absinthe, placed a stylized spoon over the glass, and deposited the sugar cube on the spoon.
“Jason doesn’t do bars. His father pretty well ruined that for him.”
Nasrin didn’t tell Isabelle she recognized Jason’s name.
“Seen that toxic family dynamic before.”
She took out a match and lit the sugar cube on fire. The blue flames danced in time with the gurgling from the waterfall. Nasrin let the sickly-sweet smell of burnt licorice and the royal blue flicker transport her to the depth of unpolluted seas that hadn’t existed for millennia and probably never would again.
“So, you’re a psychologist. Do people ask you to analyze them a lot, or do you meet more of the aluminum hat people that think you’re trying to alter their minds?”
Isabelle laughed. “I usually just don’t tell people. Why? Was that a backdoor way of asking for some free analysis?”
“Are you offering?”
Isabelle leaned on the bar. “You seem like you’d have an interesting mind. Hit me with something.”
“Okay, so,” Nasrin put down the lighter and leaned closer. “I’ve got this recurring dream where I’m the captain of a pirate ship fighting a clone of myself in a hurricane, and I think I win, but then the ship flies straight up into the air and goes through the clouds. When it levels out it’s flying over my body in my bedroom. The ship circles my bed, then nosedives straight back into my head and I wake up in another dream. Does that mean anything, or should I just stop drinking absinthe before bed?”
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