Page 118 of Head Room

Though, in fairness, mine was a mere introduction to an ongoing series.

I’d paid the check and we were sipping coffee.

She made another stab at pumping.

I sidestepped with “Remember me telling you a firefighter — Miles Stevens — seemed to be interested in you?”

“Yeah.”She dragged it out, letting impatience seep into the middle.“It wasn’t that long ago, you know.”

“All right, all right.Don’t act like I’m deep into short-term memory loss.”

She grinned.“Why’d you ask?”

“Because you made a sort of grimace when you expressed lack of interest.”

“Did I?”Before I could respond, she added, “Microexpression.”

“Uh-huh.Your microexpression indicated something stronger than lack of interest.Wondered what caused it.”

“Not my microexpression.His.At first, I thought it was a run-of-the-mill smirk.Didn’t endear him to me, but I passed it off.”

“But?”I prodded when she paused.

“When I looked through what I’d shot — after I put together the package—”

I approved of her priorities.Breaking news packages came first.

“—I went back over the footage—”

And double-checking in case she missed something.

“—and realized it wasn’t a smirk.”

I gave her what she wanted.“What was it?”

“Duper’s delight.”

I’d heard of it, but...

“I took courses with behavior and body language experts.The first one, I thought it was a lark, but she wasgood.Trained military, law enforcement, national security officers.I took more courses.Comes in handy interviewing.Only problem is it’s impossible to turn off once you start noticing things and alotof people are lying, covering up, deceiving alot.It’s—” She stopped.

“It’s what?”

She should have made me wait a beat longer, but I wasn’t sharing that now, because I wanted to hear the rest.

“It’s what struck me about Mike when he interviewed me.I’d had a bunch of other interviews and...Let’s say, they didn’t build a lot of trust.”

“You picked KWMT-TV over all the other options you had because of Michael Paycik’s honest face.Sorry — I’m not laughing at you, Nola.He does have an honest face.No, heishonest.”

He was so proud, believing his persuasiveness showed Nola the possibilities of his — our — vision for the station.

“Yeah, I guess I did.”She grinned.Definitely not with duper’s delight.“And stayed because of you and the rest.”

“Tell me about duper’s delight.”I hoped it sounded like a non-duplicitous invitation and not an order.

“It’s not necessarily consistent from person to person.It can come across as smugness, including if the duper tries to suppress, especially from long practice of lying.Still, it’s involuntary.A subtle smile.Often fleeting.Sometimes a twitch.”

I thought of the twitch at the corner of Tom’s mouth that told me he was suppressing amusement.Without a drop of duping.