Martina had shoved my dog-eared copy of Principles of Accounting into my purse, but I could still see it peeking out. “I did have a great-grandmother from Romania. Family legend has it that we’re all part gypsy.” As I said it, I picked up my purse as surreptitiously as I could and stowed it at my feet.
“Now you’re just pulling my leg.”
“It’s true,” I said. I could almost feel the words forming, the story of my great-grandmother as told through the generations. How she’d long sworn that we had nomadic blood. But I caught myself just in time. I realized that I wanted Kevin to stay and that a long-winded and unprompted account of my family history was an unlikely aphrodisiac. Besides, my father’s Anglo genes had washed out my mother’s gypsy swarthiness along with whatever remained of the ancestral wanderlust. I’d lived in California for twenty-six of my thirty-one years at that point, and with light brown hair and blue eyes, I didn’t look like any gypsy.
“Can you tell my fortune?” Kevin asked.
“Well, I could, but I’m off the clock,” I said. “I do see an intriguing stranger in your future.”
“I see one in my present,” he said.
Oh, he was good.
We talked for the next ten minutes, throughout which I managed to keep the conversation relatively light and avoid referring to any Eastern Bloc countries. He was funny, relatively new to the East Bay, and worked as a building contractor, renovations mostly. Martina, meanwhile, had taken the bar stool on my other side and struck up a conversation with the man next to her.
“I understand you’ve already met my meddling friend,” I said, elbowing Martina. She looked over and smiled at Kevin.
“In line,” he said. “Cheers on your promotion, by the way. Marketing crackers, did you say? Got any samples on you? These pretzels are stale.”
“Premium packaged edibles,” Martina said, nodding. “It goes way beyond crackers, my dear. And I don’t. I’m waiting for my next assignment. Oh, this is Carl. Carl, this is Sasha. That’s Kevin.”
“Hey,” Carl said, with a wan nod. He seemed uninterested in any detour in his conversation with Martina. He fidgeted with his key ring. From where I sat, I could see that it sported a Porsche trademark.
“So your friend pitches food. I build things. What do you do?” Kevin finally asked me.
“Besides hang around with barflies?”
“Those weird facts in your head didn’t get there by accident. And it’s a pretty head, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“You know, I got it on special over at the dollar store.”
I meant it as a joke, but he frowned a little, as if trying to gauge whether I was serious. “You’re a little kooky, aren’t you?” he finally asked.
It had taken him all of fourteen minutes to notice. Martina would probably count that as a record.
“I don’t mean that as a bad thing,” he added quickly. “But seriously, where do you work?”
I felt my heart rate rise a little. I wasn’t ready. “You know, the usual. In a building. Inside a cubicle. Behind a desk.”
“So where’s the desk?”
“Not far. Approximately 2.56 miles from here,” I said. “You could walk it, if you needed to. I mean, I didn’t. I drove.”
“2.56 miles, huh?”
“Give or take. I had my reasons for measuring it,” I added, when I saw his frown return. I wanted the smile back.
“And what do you do there, besides sit and look cute?”
“That’s about it,” I told him. “Looking cute accounts for ninety percent of my billable hours. It’s a huge growth industry.”
“No, really.” He was waiting, and at some point, I would have to answer him.
“Truthfully, I work for the government. I’m a civil servant,” I finally said.
Sometimes that would be enough. Some guys would have stopped pressing for details and let me relax. But not Kevin. He was determined. He was focused. In other circumstances, those traits would have been appealing.
“Better than being an uncivil servant,” he said.
“Only when cornered,” I said. “Then I scratch and hiss.”
He laughed. “So who do you civilly serve?” he asked. “We do a lot of government work. Maybe I’ll come visit you. Do you have a card?”
Martina must have overheard him. Suddenly, she was at my elbow. “So, Sasha, Carl was just showing me his shoes. Show Sasha your shoes,” Martina ordered, pulling us both into their conversation.
Carl held out his leg. The black leather of his loafers was shiny and even, as if he’d taken them from the box that morning.
“They’re Prada,” Martina said. “This season.”
“Wow,” I said, though I didn’t trust a man who wore triple-digit shoes. I preferred Kevin’s dusty work boots.
Carl’s shrug belied how much he cared. “You gotta dress the part,” he sniffed.
“And your part is?” I asked.
“I work over at Morgan Chase,” he said.
I knew the investment bank, so I nodded. “What do you do there?”
He paused, narrowing his eyes ever so slightly. “Well, I’m temping right now.”
“Martina, maybe you can tell me where your friend works,” Kevin said. “She’s being evasive.”
“Evasive, huh? Isn’t that ironic.” Martina laughed.
“How do you mean?” Kevin asked.
“Sasha just likes to control the flow of information. She likes knowing what’s going to happen,” Martina said. “She’s not the most madcap person. She prefers to be prepared.”
“What, are you a Boy Scout leader or something?” Kevin asked, quite seriously.
“What? No.”
“Isn’t that their motto?”
“Be Prepared?” I asked. “Well, sure. It’s the motto for both the Boy and Girl Scouts and the scout movement in general, which was founded, as you may know, by Robert Baden-Powell, who was known as B.P., bringing us full circle to Be Prepared. But no, I’ve never been a Scout. And Martina, I’ll have you know that I’m just as madcap as anyone else in this place.”
“You’re right. That was incredibly madcap.” Martina rolled her eyes.
Carl pulled out his wallet with a flourish. “I’ll get the next round,” he announced, as if to force the conversation back in his direction. He handed his credit card to the bartender.
As he passed it over, I noticed that it was an Elm Street Optimus card. I knew the brand. Not from personal use, but I knew of it. It was one of those secured credit cards, typically given to folks with major blemishes on their credit reports. From that single glance, I knew that Carl was paying upwards of twenty-five percent interest, probably a penalty for previous financial misdeeds.
I smiled, and not because he had bad credit. I smiled because, at that moment, I probably knew more about Carl-the-temp’s real life than anyone else at the Escape Room. If they were the right details, all you needed were a few.
“Thanks, man,” Kevin said to Carl. “I’ll take another beer.”
“I meant that I’d buy for the ladies,” Carl said.
I watched Kevin’s sweet smile