Katie and Tomasz.

She slides a tight triangle of paper into his massive hand. His other is on a half-full beer and he's looking diagonally away from her, at the band, at the bassist whose left hand is up and down the fingerboard. He made some awkward weather talk when they first sat down with the others, but the music started and he'd turned away. For such a big man he sure seems shy and self- conscious, she thought. She had been passing him here and there around town since she arrived, two weeks ago, and learned here and there in bits and pieces that he'd been with several town women but hadn't settled on one. When she was getting ready, washing, putting on perfume, dressing a bit but not too much, getting her good jeans out and brushing her boots, one of the girls from the restaurant had dropped in and they'd had a bottle of wine so she is pretty well pre-loaded and now she's drinking a beer and feeling the heat coming off his arm, which is why she passed the note. All that plus the encouragement she's received from her new girlfriends at the restaurant, who say he's sweet and who already have their own men. She wrote: can I take you to Pines this weekend? and folded it junior-high-style in a tight triangle and on the outside wrote: open later! because right before handing it to him she felt shy through the alcohol. Now he's looking at her over his shoulder and looking at the triangle, and then holding it out a ways to read it, which makes her think: maybe he is older than he looks because he reads with his arm almost straight unlike a young man. He smiles a bit and looks unsure what to do and the music is going up and then he just leans so he can put it in his jeans pocket and smiles again and goes back to looking away, studying the band, watching the bassist. What she promises herself to remember is the way his shirt is ironed and the way it stretches across his back and the way the red late sunlight under the poplars runs up his neck.