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‘And how could I ever refuse? I feel like I win when I lose…’
Salem isn’t too sure how this situation arose. She can’t sing (well- she can hold a tune well enough, but her voice has never been the type to turn heads), she doesn’t particularly know the song, and she thought that there would be better ways to show love than a 70’s song about a dead guy. Still, she also didn’t expect to be spending the evening half-drunk with her colleagues in a karaoke bar, so life is full of surprises.
Marisol, on the other hand, has always had the kind of voice to silence a room. Hell, even Salem was taken aback the first time she heard her sing. Even though it was only some sort of campfire song (and trying to recollect the lyrics or tune now would only make her head ache), her voice carried with the gentle summer breeze, fixing firmly in the crevices of Salem’s heart. The harmonies she sings rise and fall below Salem’s voice as if a dolphin, leaping and diving and chirruping around a bemused shark, and God does she do far more justice to the song than Salem does.
The song peters out, and the others erupt into (slightly unjustified on Salem’s part, she thinks) applause. Yvonne’s arm wrapped around Marie Ann’s shoulder is awkward and uncomfortable for the vigorous applause she attempts to give, but neither of them seem to care, both two enraptured in the night’s joie de vivre. Fennel, musing their antics, smiles quietly, nodding in encouragement as their various lovers fill the room with more than enough noise without their contribution. There’d be time enough for talking later, when they inevitably crash at Yvonne’s apartment with hazy, exhausted conversation spilling out into the air (if only to stave off the embrace of sleep).
Who’s choosing all the ABBA? Is Yvonne suddenly possessed by Björn Ulvaeus? Kissing Marisol on the cheek as the opening notes play, Yvonne lets the music swirl into the night air and Salem watches on, and her only thoughts are that of the song, murmuring ‘my my, how could I resist her’.