“Maybe everyone means it.”
“Maybe.” His eyes are sharp and bright and they’re doing the thing where they look like they’re not paying close attention when they’re paying very close attention. I recognize this because I do it too. “You don’t look like someone who came for the carnival.”
“What do I look like I came here for?”
He considers this seriously, like he has been asked a big question and he is going to give it a real answer. “Someone who needed to stop moving,” he finally says. “And picked somewhere that looked safe enough.”
The whiskey glass is cool in my hand. “That’s a lot toget from a hatchback and a drink.”
“I also got it from the way you sat down,” he says. “Back to the wall, sightline to the door, far enough from the group to have deniability about being part of it.” He pauses. “You’re very good at looking like you’re not doing what you’re doing.”
“And what am I doing?”
“Right now?” He smiles mischievously. “Deciding whether I’m a problem.”
It’s difficult to keep the smile from my lips. There’s something about this guy that is not setting off my alarm bells. Which should be a red flag immediately. Yet stupid me still sits here talking to him.
He keeps his gaze on me and what’s in his expression is not threat. Not a calculation. The casually nice face that has turned my way like a plant turns toward light, not demanding anything from the direction but genuinely, simply interested in it.
“Are you?” I ask. “A problem?”
“Frequently. But not the kind you’re thinking about.”
“What kind am I thinking about?”
“The kind that makes trouble,” he says. “I’m not that kind.” He finishes his drink. Signals the bartender without looking, the simplicity of a long habit. “I’m the kind that buys the next round and asks too many questions and overstays his welcome.”
“That’s a very specific self-assessment.”
“I’ve had time to develop it.” His fresh drinkarrives. He nudges my empty glass toward the bartender without asking. “What do you do, Lola?”
“Lots of things.”
“Name one.”
“Currently? Whiskey.”
He grins. A real, full, troublesome grin. It does something to the room, the energy of someone whose enjoyment is genuine rather than faked. I feel the corner of my mouth respond before I decide to let it.
We talk for an hour.
Or he talks and I respond, and my responses get longer. Eventually I’m talking too, and somewhere in the middle of that the bar empties around us without either of us noticing until the bartender makes the subtle sounds of someone who would like to go home but isn’t going to say so outright.
Jack’s funny in the way that’s actually funny rather than the way that requires you to pretend finding it funny for his ego. He’s witty underneath the surface. He asks good questions and he receives the deflections without pressing them, which is rare, in my experience. Most people press. He just notes, and moves on, and comes back around from a different angle, which is worse in some ways but more interesting in all of them.
“The carnival,” I say, at some point. “You work it?”
“I run the game alley.” He says it with pride. “Have for seven years.”
“In this town?”
“In this town.” He looks at his glass. “I wasn’t alwayshere. Spent three years on the circuit before this.”
“What changed?”
“Someone asked me to come home. Turns out I’d been waiting for someone to ask.”
I look at my whiskey, disappointed. I had hoped he was single and now I can imagine he’s cheating on his wife and five kids. That totally gives me the ick which I try to cover with another sip.
