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“Hold please,” Auggie said.
A moment later, a photo came through on Jem’s phone. The image showed the same olive-skinned woman Jem remembered from the hotel room—the same dark hair and dark eyes and sideburns. She was smiling at something off camera, and she looked less…well, erratic.
“Holy crap,” Tean said.
“I know, right?”
“Don’t encourage him,” Theo said, and it was one of those things that sounded like a joke and then less and less like one the more Jem played it back in his head.
“I’m good,” Auggie said. “I don’t need encouragement; I already know it.”
Theo answered with a sigh.
With a laugh, Jem said, “He’s cute when he’s like this, huh?”
“He certainly thinks he is,” Theo said, and this time, the affection in his voice was clear. Then he grunted and said, “Jesus, Auggie, my ribs.”
“How did you find her?”
“It wasn’t that hard,” Auggie said, and the pride in his voice was strangely endearing. Jem’s mental outline of the younger man began to take shape: probably had older siblings, distant parents. Daddy issues was too easy and too throwaway a phrase to mean anything, but there was a reason he’d chosen an older partner. He liked being good at things. He liked being the object of attention. But not in a way that was annoying. Jem did a quick revision: it wasn’t annoying yet. “I had her picture from the conference,” Auggie continued, “and then I joined some Birds Aren’t Real groups on Facebook. It wasn’t that hard. I just posted her picture, one with the hotel security taking her out of the resort, and asked if anyone knew her.”
“And that worked?” Tean asked. “It seems like a group of paranoid people who believe in conspiracies wouldn’t be willing to identify one of their own.”
“Oh, yeah, they didn’t want to. So, I got on a dummy account and answered my own question, said her name was Clarice Starling. People couldn’t wait to correct me.”
Jem burst out laughing.
“I said don’t encourage him,” Theo said, but wry amusement gave the words a twist.
“Is Clarice a friend of yours?” Tean asked.
“Oh my God,” Jem said.
“Oh my God,” Auggie said. “You’re as bad as Theo.”
“Excuse me,” Theo said. “I’m the one who introduced you toThe Silence of the Lambs.”
“Yeah, but that’s only because your deep well of cultural knowledge, acquired from years and years of experience—”
“Because it came out before you were born,” Theo cut in.
“You’re going back on your schedule,” Jem told Tean. “At least one movie every week from the golden age.”
Tean looked like he was trying not to make a face. “No one has ever considered the Nineties the golden age of anything.”
“Except parachute pants,” Auggie said. “And I’m going to tell you this, knowing it probably won’t mean much to you, but I found a picture of Theo wearing parachute pants—”
“For a Halloween party,” Theo said. “Because of MC Hammer. When it was topical.”
“—so if you want to see it, I can totally send it to you.”
“What are parachute pants?” Tean asked.
“Remember those jeans you found for a dollar nineteen at DI? The ones where your whole body fit into one leg?”
Auggie burst out laughing. “Wait, what?”
“They were fine when I wore a belt,” Tean mumbled.
