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Now he’s just taking the piss.
Right?
I mean, I can’t really tell, to be perfectly honest.
I can’t get a single read on him, and I usually pride myself on being able to size someone one up pretty quickly. That’s what meeting a new group of people every few days will teach you. Who you can trust to leave your few worldly belongings with, and who you can’t even trust with your dirty socks.
The perfect, wrinkle-free, impenetrable exterior of the man sitting across from me appears all glary and prickly, but one, he intervened to stop me getting pummeled by Baked Potato; two, he held me when I cried in his arms; and three, he took me to a diner at three in the morning, no questions asked.
All without knowing my name or me knowing his.
And to top it all off, he also just had a dessert packaged for me.
The question is, why?
He’s barely answered any questions of mine, and the only one he’s asked me is what’s going on with me.
And I don’t have an answer for that.
If I did, I wouldn’t be walking twenty miles a day and picking fights with strangers in bars.
So, I do what I do best.
Deflect.
“What color is your underwear?” I ask, popping the last bite of my sandwich into my mouth.
There’s a pause before he answers. It’s the closest I’ve seen to him being caught off guard. I like it.
“What?” he finally responds.
“Your underwear.” I wave toward his groin, trying not to follow my hand with my eyes. “What are they, boxers? Briefs? Naughty little G-string? What color are they? Or are you freeballing under there?”
He blinks, and for a moment I wonder if I’ve finally pushed too far and he’s going to storm out of here. But finally, he shrugs a shoulder and says, “It’s Friday. They’re black, obviously.”
“Huh. I never would’ve guessed that you’d have color-coordinated underwear with the days of the week. Respect. I like an organized man. What color is Thursday?”
“Guess.”
I break out into a grin. He’s playing along. Progress. “Er, I don’t think I’m going with orange tiger stripes, which seem more of a weekend thing, so… probably gray?”
“Wrong.”
“Shit. One more guess?”
He shrugs again, looking bored.
“Hmm, white.”
“Wrong again. Drink some water,” he says, tilting his chin at the glass that’s materialized next to the empty Irish coffee cup.
“No, thanks.”
He taps his fingers firmly on the table and pushes the water closer to me. “Drink it. There are about six shots of liquor alone in those three Irish coffees you’ve had. And who knows what you had before that at the bar.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You. I bet you know. I bet you know everything.”
His tongue digs into the side of his cheek, but he just repeats, “Drink the water.”
