Page 58 of Thick as Thieves

He turned only his head to look at her.

Abashed, she said, “Maybe I’ll have a sandwich after all.”

He built her one and laid it on the griddle beside his. He topped them with slices of buttered bread and stared at them as they cooked.

She said, “Aren’t you going to ask—”

“Not yet.”

She set her drink on the table. “Would you like for me to set the table?”

“Plates are up there.”

With a brevity of words, he told her where to find things, and when the sandwiches were ready, they sat down across from each other. He plucked a paper napkin from the holder in the center of the table and began to eat.

She followed suit. The sandwich was delicious, and she told him so. “What kind of cheeses did you use?”

“One’s yellow, one’s white.”

That was the extent of their mealtime conversation.

When he’d demolished his sandwich and several handfuls of chips, he wiped his mouth and hands, balled up the napkin, uncapped his bottle of water, took a long drink from it, and returned it nearly empty to the table. Folding his arms across his chest, he stared at her for ponderous seconds, then said, “What the fuck?”

“I know it seems an odd—”

“No. No, odd would be you wanting to put statues of cartoon characters along the expanded veranda. That would be odd. This,” he said, stabbing the table with his index finger, “seems calculated.”

Of all the words she had anticipated—crazy, fickle, addlepated, just plain dumb—calculated wasn’t among them. “Calculated?”

“Yeah, planned. Devised to make a fool of me.” His eyes were as hot as twin blue flames.

At a loss, she said, “Why would that have been my intention, when I didn’t even know you?”

“Who sent you to me?”

“What?”

“Who. Sent. Y—”

“I heard you. I just don’t know what you mean by it. Nobody sent me to you.”

“I’m supposed to believe that you picked me at random.”

“I did.”

“Off the internet?”

“Why do you doubt that?”

“Nobody referred you? Or suggested me to you?”

“No. But what difference would it have made if someone had?”

“You had never heard of me before you saw my name in that list of contractors?”

“No,” she said with force. “But clearly you suspect otherwise. Why?”

“Because this sounds like a cruel practical joke played by someone of my acquaintance who thrives on this sort of shit. You might have been an unwitting partner—”