Chapter Forty-One
Forty-One
Despite having clearly heard Mary say – ‘fuck you, and stay the fuck away from me…’ – the couple sitting on the table to her right were trying hard not to look. Instead, they stared at each other in complete silence, their eyes wide, their lips pressed into thin lines, their bodies awkwardly stiff.
Mary had already turned her back on the man sitting at the table and taken two steps towards the exit, when he threw his trump question at her.
Still facing away from him, Mary paused mid-step. This time, her jaw didn’t tense, but the tip of her tongue lightly touched her top lip, as she closed her eyes for an instant.
Fuck! Mary thought. What she really wanted to do was to keep on walking, but she knew that curiosity would practically kill her later because what if he was telling the truth?
What if the reason he lied about his name had nothing to do with Nelson or who she was?
He did have a very good explanation the first time around.
Mary reopened her eyes. There was no harm in listening… was there?
She turned to face him once again. They held each other’s stare for a couple of silent seconds before Mary finally spoke.
‘You’ve got one minute, not a second more.’ Her eyebrows arched at him.
The man slid his credit card, which was still on the table after Mary had flicked it back at him, towards where she’d been sitting.
‘Would you please take a seat,’ he said, indicating the chair across the table from him.
His eyes moved slightly right then left, signaling that the tables around them had picked up on their argument.
Mary didn’t seem to care. She didn’t sit down either. ‘Fifty seconds.’ Her voice was crisp with annoyance.
‘OK,’ the man nodded before once again reaching for his wallet. From it, he retrieved a couple more credit cards and placed them all in a row – all three of them facing Mary. ‘This is so that you can see that I’m not keeping the truth from you anymore.’
Mary noticed that since she’d read his real name on his credit card moments earlier, this was the third time that the man that she knew only as Thomas had mentioned lying about his name, but he never actually used the word ‘lying’.
He always referred to his action as ‘keeping the truth from her’ – another very powerful, psychological, subliminal trick.
Her eyes moved down to the credit cards.
‘My real name is Quaddra Buckner,’ he revealed, tapping his index finger on each of the three credit cards that he had placed on the table. He then returned to his wallet, this time retrieving his driver’s license and placing it just above the row of credit cards.
Mary angled her torso slightly forward to read the information on the credit cards and on the driving license. The name matched – Quaddra Buckner – and so did the photo on the license.
‘For this next part,’ Quaddra said, ‘I think you’ll be more comfortable if you sit down, Mary.’
Mary poked the inside of her left cheek with her tongue once again. ‘What do you mean – this next part?’
‘Please, have a seat,’ Quaddra urged her. His voice was back to its calm, almost serene tone. ‘And I’ll explain. You’ll see how all this was, once again, just a big misunderstanding. I’m not who you’re clearly imagining I am.’
Mary hesitated for a quick moment. While she did, she noticed that several pairs of eyes, not only the ones belonging to the couples sitting on the tables to their left and right, had settled on her… and that was definitely unwanted attention.
We either sit the fuck down or we leave, the voice inside her head warned her. Because any second now people will start reaching for their cellphones and filming everything for their social media… and we really don’t want that, do we?
Mary finally sat back down, but as she returned to her seat, she was careful to slide her chair a couple of feet away from the table, so that her legs wouldn’t sit completely under it, in case she needed to get up and run… or kick the table into Quaddra.