How to Tell a Lie (6 page)

“I see. Me either.”

“That’s convenient. But again, probably not a safe topic if we’re supposed to avoid talking about last night.”

“We
are
avoiding it if you want to keep eating breakfast with me this morning, Doctor
Feelgood
.”

“Are subsequent mornings still open for negotiation?”

“I’m not making any commitments for or against at this stage.”

“I guess I’ll have to live with that for now. Thank you for keeping the possibility open.”

Allison snuck another glance at his face, but his glasses were once again catching the light and masking his eyes. His body language, however, was open and inviting. He was taking another bite of pancake and seemed happy and relaxed, without a care in the world. All that changed in a moment as he spotted somebody across the room. His shoulders stiffened, and Allison could almost see his jaw clenching.

“Damn it. Would you excuse…never mind, he’s coming over here.”

“Who?”

“Well, good morning, Doctor Brantley. And the lovely— I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met?”

“You’ve sort of met. Drew, this is Doctor Allison Moore, from Psychology. Allison was one of our healers last night, her screen name is all the vowels. Doctor Moore, this is my brother Drew, also known as
Knotmaster
in the game. Drew works out in the real world, far from the ivy-covered halls…”

“Ma’am.” Drew Brantley reached out a hand. When Allison took it, expecting a handshake, he raised it to his lips instead. “They sure didn’t make professors like you when I was in college, Doctor. I might have stayed even longer if they had.”

Seth rolled his eyes and rescued Allison’s hand from his brother’s, squeezing her fingers almost imperceptibly before releasing them. “We were actually just discussing a research project, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Drew grinned, his green eyes twinkling. He looked like a taller, beefier version of his brother, with darker, wavy hair and without glasses. “I wouldn’t mind at all. You know I’m all about research. Miss, could we get another cup of coffee here?” He had already pulled a free chair from the next table and swung it around, flagging down the waitress and sitting down as smoothly as if it had been choreographed.

“So. What’s this research about?”

* * * * *

Allison had made her excuses quickly and escaped soon afterward, fleeing the restaurant and the unexpected company but laughing at herself even as she speed-walked down the street toward campus. Seth was persistent and she half expected him to come after her, but his brother seemed to have kept his attention long enough to allow her a sufficient head start. She had almost contemplated staying longer, in part to enjoy the lively exchange between Seth and his brother.

Drew was full of energy and devilish humor. He flirted outrageously with Allison but she sensed it was for Seth’s benefit, meant to tease his brother rather than attract her. She didn’t mind, but she thought she would find him taxing to be around for too long at a stretch. Like Seth, she suspected, she needed a certain amount of quiet in order to think through the events of her day. Drew’s personality was slightly larger than life, and she wondered whether that had developed as a defense mechanism and, if so, what he was defending himself against.

Allison only went as far as campus, where she liked how much she was able to accomplish on a Saturday morning, with hardly anybody else in the building and no distractions from her work.

Still, as she sat in her office and worked the morning away, she found herself unaccountably longing to hear the phone ring, or her email alarm chime, or some other indication of attempted contact by the deliciously attentive economics professor. When no such sign came, she couldn’t help but be a bit peeved. She finally called her cousin Tess and made a lunch date, leaving her office with a swift and unsatisfying slam of the door. Tess would have advice, and although it would only come after a thorough grilling and heartless teasing, it would almost certainly be good advice. And after all, if she couldn’t whine about her love life to the best friend who happened to be her cousin, who could she whine to?

* * * * *

“Who the hell are you and what have you done with Allison?” Tess demanded. It was a cliché, but sometimes it was simply the only appropriate thing to say. This was such a time.

“Tess, it’s not like he was a stranger. Not a real stranger, anyway. I mean, I knew who he was. He’s a professor, he works across the quad, we had a friendly dinner. It’s not like it was dangerous.”

“Not dangerous?” Her voice nearly broke and she slapped her palms on the table. “For God’s sake, Ally, what have you been smoking? I don’t give a rat’s ass if he’s clean or normal or anything else. At least admit that you took a huge emotional risk by doing this. This is so completely unlike you. What were you thinking?”

Allison scooped condensation from the sides of her iced tea glass in long, even strokes with one fingertip, leaving a striped vertical pattern of droplets.

“I wasn’t thinking anything. I was caught off guard. And it all just seemed so…so surreal or something. I don’t know. It was meant to be just a virtual adventure.”

“You had dinner with this man you’d just met online, and then later that same night you had phone sex with him.”

“No! The way you’re saying it, it sounds terrible. That wasn’t it at all.” Allison sought her mind, looking for any distinctions she could possibly offer Tess that would make the evening sound not at all like Tess was describing. There were not many. “For one thing, I didn’t just meet him online. I’ve known him online for two, three months or so. And he’s never lied online, either. Which is almost unheard of.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“It’s what I do, I know how to tell. Plus, he’s philosophically opposed to lying.”

“He’s…oh please. You fell for a line like that? You’re worse off than I thought.”

“No, really. It makes total sense if you know him. He believes lying is inefficient. And he works just across the quad. I could have seen him from my window at work, any time I bothered to look. He’s not some random person. He’s an economics professor. And besides, it wasn’t phone sex.”

Tess snorted and took a long swig of her iced tea. “Explain to me how this wasn’t phone sex.”

“It wasn’t on the phone, it was on voice chat. And only the end of it was. The rest was just in regular chat. You know, private text chat in the game.” Even as she said it, she realized it sounded like a weak rationalization.

“So let me get this straight. Let me get the revised version of this thing straight, okay?” Tess raised her elegant chin, resting her elbows on the table and tapping her fingertips together like an evil genius with a plan. “You and this—economics, you said?—this economics professor have worked for the same university in adjacent buildings for at least the past two years, have eaten at the same restaurant as each other a few times a week for the same length of time, have overlapping research interests and have actually been playing the same online game for the past several months. But you never met, I’m sure in part because you were both such huge nerds that you hardly ever left your offices, and when you did leave work you were probably nose-deep in some sort of work-related reading material and never looked up to notice the people around you?”

“Again, when you put it that way, it just sounds terrible. But a different kind of terrible, maybe. Terrible-pathetic, instead of terrible-stupid.” Allison nodded her assent. “Okay, go on then.”

“So when the penny finally drops and you and this guy realize you’re practically neighbors, you decide to go and eat cheap Indian, then to culminate this romantic extravaganza you determine that the appropriate next step is to get together that night with eight other dweebs and play an online game? Each of you in your separate, sad and lonely little apartments? Each of you probably drinking alone, to boot?”

“And?” Allison prompted, with gritted teeth.

“And then after the game, when you’re at your saddest and loneliest, and also probably tipsy because you’re such a lightweight, you and this guy start chatting privately and one thing leads to another and the rest is history? Tacky, sordid history that should be censored?”

“Fine. You’ve summed it up.” Allison pushed her salad around with a fork, having lost interest in the food.

“I take back what I said. You and this guy totally deserve each other. You should have a big cyber-wedding and tons of fat, bouncing, virtual babies.” Smiling smugly, Tess took a large bite of her own grilled chicken salad and munched happily as Allison seethed.

“Are you going to give me practical advice here or not?”

“Well,” Tess managed as she devoured her meal, “you’ve established he’s probably not an ax murderer. And he is gainfully employed. He seems to have a sense of humor, from what you’ve said. Those last two definitely put him head and shoulders above your last guy. So does the fact, if you’ll excuse my saying so, that you got off too.”

“Nice.”

“But true. And I do know how you love the truth.”

“Touché,” Allison granted. “But to be fair, I got myself off, which is actually exactly like being with James. Except for the part where I was talking to the guy at the time. That part would be very different from when I was seeing James. Also the part where I was visualizing Seth when I got off. That would be different too.”

“You go, girl. Get
outta
town!”

“No, really. It was crazy.”

“I guess so. So I guess I’m changing my mind, and suggesting that you see this guy again to find out if it’s that crazy in person. God knows it’s been a while for you.”

Tess never ceased to amaze Allison. Her full-speed-ahead approach to life was something Allison could only envy, never duplicate. She, Allison, worried far too much about the details. She always got bogged down worrying about one tiny factor or another, one possible outcome or another. Tess, on the other hand, seemed to paint her view of the world in broad strokes of vibrant color, moving on to the next swatch before the paint had a chance to dry. Yet for all her impetuousness, she had good instincts, which might have been why she was such a success as a reporter and more recently as a crime novelist. She was a shrewd judge of character and had never failed to give good advice. She had advised Allison to stay away from James, for instance.

“But I don’t do stuff like this,” Allison reminded Tess. “You said so yourself.”

“Maybe you should. Maybe this guy should too. It sounds like he’s a male version of you, sweetie. Maybe the best thing for you both was to get caught off guard.”

Tess had been flippant before, but now she was clearly serious. The fact that her words made a strange sort of sense worried Allison to no end. She reminded herself she wasn’t ready for a relationship again, not this soon.

“I’ll think about it.”

“No, don’t. That’s where you’ll screw yourself.”

“Would you stop, like, knowing me so damn well? Please?” She looked around for the waiter and waved him over. “Can we have a piece of key lime pie and two forks, please? Thanks.”

“We’re at pie already? Man, you are in bad shape. What’s this guy’s number? Maybe I should check him out.”

Allison thought for a moment. “Um. Yeah. I don’t know his number, actually.”

“Ally, honestly.”

“Well, we met online, and then in the game we were just using voice chat, so…”

“Does he have your number?”

“No. Hey, no! He doesn’t have my number!” She was thrilled. It might explain why he hadn’t called. Of course, he could have looked her up on the university’s website and found her office number that way. But if his brother had kept him busy and he hadn’t been near a computer since, then he wouldn’t have been able to do that. And he would have had no reason to think she was in her office on a weekend.

“How do your people ever reproduce?”

“We’re from the same people, remember?”

“I often find that impossible to believe. You’re some kind of pod person. I love you and all, but seriously, you’re not quite human.”

“Love you too, babe. So how’s your own love life, then?” Allison asked sarcastically.

“Wow, the bitchiness was very human. Maybe I’m wrong after all. My love life is dead, as you well know. But I’m going home next weekend to catch
Mikey’s
football game. Maybe I’ll find somebody to hook up with, you never know.”

Allison gave her cousin a speculative look. Tess looked so similar to her, the same long dark hair, the same dark gray eyes, the same tilt at the corners of the mouth. How could she and her cousin be so different in personality? “Just somebody, huh? Anybody I know?”

“I doubt it.”

“So it’s not Jake?”

Tess rolled her eyes. “Why does everybody insist on pairing the two of us up? You’re the one who dated him, why don’t you go home and snag him yourself if he’s such a prize? I just never saw the appeal, personally.”

She rubbed at her nose, blinking a few times. Allison noted all this with a researcher’s eye. “Me either, that’s why I stopped going out with him.”

“So did you two ever, you know?”

“No!” Allison replied firmly. “How many times have I told you that? He wanted to, I said no. You know what I was like in high school. I still thought I was saving myself for marriage or something like that. That wasn’t why we broke up though. Really, there just wasn’t any chemistry. We were friends, we still are, but we just weren’t that into each other.”

“Yeah. I know how that can be.”

Allison changed the subject to her young cousin
Mikey
, and Tess seemed only too glad to follow along. Talking about
Mikey
and then about nothing in particular, they took moody bites of pie until the plate between them was clean.

* * * * *

Seth played it very smoothly, Allison thought. He sensed that she felt pressured and he was trying to take things more slowly, or so it seemed.

When she got the first email on Monday, friendly and nonthreatening, she was uneasy at first but responded politely. Later that day, a casual reply from Seth, nothing important, just another contact being made.