Bill watched Alyson eat and admired the vigor. He loved how raw she was
sometimes, a few places where her armour wasn't polished. She was tough, he
could tell, and she obviously worked hard. He thought she looked wild, not
just lonely. He wondered how living in the city had rubbed on her. He
wondered which mining town she had lived in. He'd seen them all, he figured.
It felt like another lifetime. He had joined the army right out of high
school. He'd been lucky, lucky to serve during the peaceful years between
wars. He'd spent most of his tour working on cleanup crews in the mine
towns. Hard work, but you didn't get shot at while doing it. He'd been
appreciative of that.

* * *

Alyson looked up at him and reached for her wine glass. Bill reached and
touched her hand, signalling waiting a moment.  He reached for his own glass
and raised it.  Surprised, she hesitated and looked at Will, intently
watching Bill, and looked to Bill. 

"To new friends and new experiences!"

She took a sip of wine, and spluttered a little. She had expected sweet, and
the dry red wine deceived her. She took a breath and tried again, this time
more carefully. Fear coursed through her, and her mother's warnings about
abusive alcoholics and date-rape drugs. She wasn't sure whether to expect it
to be pleasant or not. She decided that she liked how the flavor of the wine
mixed with the sauce. She took another sip. Warmth spread down her throat
and she felt herself relaxing even more. 

"Alright, now that you've come for dinner, you get to tell us a little bit
about yourself." The curiosity in his voice showed plainly.

She tried to decide whether the honesty and ease she felt was caused by the
wine or the friendship, and after a moment decided she didn't care.  "I
don't know what to tell you. I mean, I know you know that I work at the
market down the street. That place is crazy! Wall to wall people from the
time it opens until the time it closes. The only reason they clear out on
time is that the manager locks the door ten minutes before closing and lets
people out one by one."

Will laughed. "I used to go in there and try to be the last one out. It was
a kind of strange social sport. I know what you mean about wall-to-wall. I
spent an hour trying to get to the deli case to place an order once. I would
have given up except that Bill wanted proscuttio and I wasn't going to
dissapoint when dinner hung in the balance."

"But they have the best deli in the entire city. There's a reason that it's
that way. Not many markets manage to turn over that kind of inventory in
that small of a space. I've loved that place since it opened. I knew David,
the first owner. Great guy. Fantastic cook. I think he opened it just so he
had wholesale prices on ingredients. Now he's a chef at a hotel downtown. I
haven't heard from him in years." Bill poured more wine.

"I looked for a job here for months. I moved here in November last year, and
I couldn't find work until February. I must have made a thousand resumes,
and I spent five hours every day filling out applications and dropping them
off." Alyson sighed heavily. "I spent every bit of my savings on rent for
those months. I still haven't put anything else away. I come home every
night exhausted, and at the end of the month, between rent and heat and
food, I'm lucky if I have ten dollars to save." She drank more wine,
deciding that she didn't care for once about keeping control.  She tried to
keep track of how she felt, but the overwhelming feeling of safety and of
finally having found friends in the city made her lose track and just enjoy
the company. She finished the pasta. 

"My parents split up when I was ten. They hadn't been happy in a few years.
I lived with my mother. My father was never the sort who seemed particularly
responsible, so he didn't get any custody. Money was always tight, and the
mines had already been closing down one by one for years. Dad had done a
little mining, but it was never his thing. He tried pottery one year,
farming another. He liked to garden, but anything bigger never paid off. We
always had plenty of zucchini, though."  She laughed at the joke she and her
mother had always shared. They'd said that he should have to pay to get rid
of them. "Mom and I got by okay. I'd come to work with her. I'd work on
schoolwork or whatever project I happened to have going on the floor while
she did her job. She was a cleanup contracts planner for a few years. We
made ends meet but never much more.

"I turned eighteen and I decided to move here. Mom has a friend who lives on
the west side of town, and I stayed at her place until I found the apartment
I'm renting now. I didn't know it would be this hard. There's more jobs here
than there are back home, but only barely. I dreamed of serving coffee, or
maybe finding work at a library. I gave up on those after the first week.
They laughed at me when I applied, no experience, just moving here. They
said they didn't want to train anyone, and when an opening came, they'd just
fill it with someone who had experience." She felt tears brimming and cursed
the wine a little. Normally she'd be able to fight them back. "I finally
found the market here. They hired me on the spot, but it's really hard work.
I don't make enough. It's hard on my body. I'm tired all the time. But I'm
living. I can make it. I'm just lonely all the time." The tears began to
flow down her cheeks, nothing stopping them now.

Bill shook his head, and Will put his hand on her back again, then pulled
her toward him and hugged. Alyson felt the tears slip past her attempts to
stop them and splash onto Will's black turtleneck. Bill hugged her from the
other side. She tried to look up at them and every time she moved, the tears
welled stronger. Her body shook, sobs barely held in. She felt stupid for
opening up so much to two near-strangers. She struggled feebly to sit up, to
stop crying. Part of her wanted to jump up and leave, grab her leather
jacket and run until she couldn't breathe anymore. Run for home, run as much
of the way as she could. She knew she couldn't run the whole way, but she
wanted to try. Her body wouldn't move though, and she managed a sort of
flop before giving in to the tired, lonely and tipsy feeling. She
acquiesced and the tears flowed a little slower. The painful feeling in her
chest began to subside. "So lonely." she sobbed it over and over.

Bill stood up slowly. "I know just what we need." He walked to the
refrigerator and shuffled things about for a moment, then turned around with
a chocolate torte in his hands, the center of the fallen cake filled with
strawberries.

Alyson turned, finally pulling away from Will and looking at what Bill held.
"You didn't have to!" 

"You can't have someone over for a meal, get them crying, and not finish it
out properly.  Besides, it's my grandmother's recipe. You can't say no. And
it's chocolate." 

Alyson couldn't contain the grin. Since she'd found her job, she'd lived on
toast for breakfast and lentil soup for most of her dinners and lunches.
Once a week, she spent a dollar and a half on one of the imported chocolate
bars at the cash register at work, and she would break off a piece each
night. Chocolate was her one indulgence. 

"Chocolate is my one weakness. Alright then."

Bill served a thin slice with an elegant motion, another for Will, and a
third for himself. He pulled a bottle of Brandy out of the cupboard above
the refrigerator and offered it around. "Alyson? Try a little brandy with
it?"

"Oh... why not." She laughed at herself, going from never having tasted
alcohol and being afraid she'd lose control of her life to trying two in a
day and quite possibly getting drunk.

He poured three little glasses, trading out the wine glasses on the table.
Alyson tried to decide whether to try a toast of her own, and found herself
starting to before she'd finished deciding. Some small part of her was
disconcerted about that, but it got shuffled to the side of her mind. 

"To people who actually care."

Both Bill and Will smiled. "Caring!"

They drank, and another round afterward as the worked their way through the
rich chocolate dessert. 


------------------

He wasn't so sure whether to be appreciative of Janet, now his ex-wife.
She'd come from one of those same mountain towns. They all looked alike to
him -- dirty, poor miners, half unemployed now that the mines were shutting
down. She wasn't any different than most of them. They were closed-minded,
hated anything or anyone new. He'd always received animosity from the
miners. 

They'd married just after his tour with the service was over. They'd
planned to settle down somewhere -- anywhere. In hindsight, he realized
how much he had just wanted to be out of there, how much he hated the army.
He took the first path he found once he left. Her family had never liked
him.