“Yeah, you’re okay.” He smiles. “You still want to go out?”
“You bet.” More than before. I want to be surrounded by noise and people and eat greasy things so I don’t have to think for a couple hours.
“Where are we going?” He falls into step beside me as we leave.
“Surprise. Meet me outside the lobby.” It’s safer to go down separately since I’m dressed as myself.
Although I expect him to press me for details, Sam seems happy enough to follow me outside and onto the subway.
“I can tell you our stop if you want to sit alone,” I say before the train arrives.
He rubs the back of his neck. “Why would I do that?”
“So we’re not seen together?” Obviously?
Sam glances down the platform. We’re the only people waiting. “Seen by whom, exactly?”
I nudge him with my shoulder. “Funny. I mean on the train.”
“I’m sure a car will be empty.”
“Up to you.” An interesting change from the man who is paranoid about everything. He hasn’t even mentioned the security cameras, although the chance of being recognized from grainy black-and-white footage is probably slim. It’s nice that he’s loosening up about it.
He’s quiet as we wait for the train to arrive. As he predicts, we find seats that are relatively isolated.
“I like trains,” he says as we sit down on the stained red velour seats.
“I thought you took cars everywhere.”
“Mostly,” he agrees. “When I think it’s safe, I like to use public transit. More people to watch.”
“Safe?”
“If I think no one will recognize me.”
“People watching is that important to you?”
He glances down the subway cars. We’re on one of the interconnected trains so we can see all the way down to the end. “I can’t get ideas for how to play characters from being alone inside my house. Look there.”
I know exactly who he’s referring to because a few rows away is a man in a full tuxedo and a dotted bow tie carved of wood with polished combat boots who’s reading a Georgette Heyer Regency romance. The questions ask themselves. Who is he? Where is he going? Is this his usual look or a special occasion look? Why that book?
We have the manners to not talk about the man right in front of him, but the moment we get out, we compete for who gets to tell the man’s backstory first. I win and regale Sam with my narrative—that he’s a modern Miss Havisham pining for his lost cat and the bow tie used to be Lady Fluff’s—for the block it takes us to get to the bar. It’s one of my local places and I’m one hundred percent confident that not a single person there will recognize or care who Sam is.
We take a booth in the corner. Sam sits facing the wall, which is decorated with framed black-and-white photos. “Mugshots?”
“It’s called the Mugshot Tavern.”
“Of course it is. I see James Brown and Robert Downey Jr.”
I point down the line. “Paris Hilton. Bonnie and Clyde. Lindsay Lohan. Macaulay Culkin.”
Sam nods. “What I’m hearing is that if I get arrested, I can look forward to being on this wall of infamy.”
“Are you planning on a new career in crime?”
He sucks in his cheeks as though considering it. “Never say never.” Then he smirks at me.
The server slaps down a couple of menus and we order wine. I’m not Fangli tonight, so I have no qualms about drinking. I look at the menu. “I want fries.”
“As long as they’re not sweet potato.”
“Those are a travesty.”
Because Sam has a photo shoot the next day, he doesn’t want to order anything with a lot of sodium, which will make his face puff up. That limits his choices to a green salad, and he finally sighs and orders a burger. “I’ll drink a glass of milk before bed.”
We sit in a companionable silence with our wine. The bar is about half-full and I casually eavesdrop on the conversations around me. Everyday person things: gossip, work complaints, and a bumpy first date.
“Weren’t you going to tell me something?” Sam asks. “Before Mei called?”
“Can’t remember,” I lie. No point going into my concerns now that I’ve decided to stick with the contract.
“You did well today.” Sam finishes his glass, sees I’m almost done, and orders two more.
“You were patient.”
Now that it’s over, I can barely recall the day. Like most crisis situations, it comes to me in flashes of perfect recall among a background of vaguely acknowledged impressions.
“Was the kissing as bad as you thought it would be?” He glances at me over his wineglass and his tone is more curious than mocking.
I choke. “It was fine.”
“Gracie.”
I rub my nose. “It was strange, that’s it.”
“Do you want some advice?” Sam looks at me intently under the low brim of his hat.
“On my kissing technique?” I ask with utter dismay. “No. Of course not. Jesus. What is it?”
“Your kissing was fine,” he assures me. “It’s your face.”
“My face,” I echo. The problem Sam has with kissing me is my face, excellent news. I’m going to melt from shame but this is like watching a horror movie. I need to know. “Weren’t your eyes closed?”
“Before you kissed me, you looked away.”
“I didn’t.” Surely I would have known that, plus how could I have looked away from Sam about to plant one on me?
“You did it when we were practicing, too. When I’m about here,” and he holds his hand about fifteen centimeters from his face, “your eyes go to the left as if you were looking for an escape.”
I clutch my wine and hunch into the red leather back of the booth. “It’s probably because of the context. I think with a real kiss I wouldn’t.”
“That’s why I told you to look at me.”
“I thought it was part of the scene that I forgot.”
“Ad-lib.”
“What does your girlfriend think about you kissing Fangli?” I’ve been trying to find a way to confirm what Mei said, and the internet was no help. This is as smooth as I can make it.
“What?” He drops his burger and swears when it falls apart. Not so smooth, then. “My what?”
“Mei said you had a girlfriend, or hinted at it.”
“I don’t. But if I did, we’d talk about it. I wouldn’t do anything to make her uncomfortable.” He mashes his burger back together. “Why do you ask?”
“I think it would be hard if that happened,” I say thoughtfully, trying to pretend that my goal was a deep dive into relationship maintenance instead of nosiness.
“It can be. All jobs have their pitfalls.”
“Not like that, though.”
“I’ve heard actuaries can get fairly wild.” He starts eating again.
I share my fries and he shares his onion rings and we don’t say much more until we’re done eating and have a third glass of wine in front of us. It’s a cozy silence. Sam pours a glass of water and pushes it across the table to me. I drink it down because I want to work on Eppy and see Mom tomorrow as well as do my Fangli practice, and although I deserve a damn break after today, I don’t want to do any of that with a hangover.
“What happened at your last job?” Sam asks, breaking into my relaxation with his unerring ability to home in on uncomfortable subjects.
I already have an answer ready for job interviews so I trot it out. “It wasn’t a good culture fit for me. I wanted a place open to testing out new ideas.”
“If you’re going to give that answer, don’t scrunch up your body,” Sam says. “They’ll sense you’re lying.”
I look down and see both my arms and legs are crossed. “I wasn’t lying.”
“How many times do we need to have this fight? For a woman who’s currently pretending to be someone else, you’re a very bad liar.”
“I don’t like lies because I always forget what I’ve said.”
“Yet here we are. What really happened?”
“I hated my manager, the one you saw at the art gallery.” It comes out in a burst. “He was a weasel and then he fired me when he saw that photo of me in the coffee shop.”
Shit, I’ve said too much. I forgot I was hiding that. Stupid wine.
Sam puts his glass down. “He saw what?”
Time to come clean. “I called in sick the day that was taken and told him it wasn’t me but he knew it was because it looks like me. My hair, my bag.”