“Ten minutes.”
“For your legs or for mine?”
After a second, I recalibrate my estimations and say, “Ten to fifteen minutes.”
She momentarily thinks about it and says, “A walk sounds nice right now.”
With everything we’ve eaten, I have to agree. We begin our journey to our next destination, and when we pass the car, I put the bag with our leftovers in the backseat. As we resume, Andrea slips a greedy hand under my jacket to plaster herself onto me, so I wrap an arm around her shoulders to keep her close.
“That first half of the date was really perfect, baby,” she praises.
“I’ve wanted to take you out for so long, I had to make it count.”
At the next crossing, we arrive on a larger, more lively, and animated street. I see how hard she tries to guess where I’m taking her, and when she notices the big neon sign ahead.
An excited tremor runs through her. “Are you taking me to an arcade?!”
That impatient little… “Yes, I am.”
“Oh, my God! I haven’t been to one in ages! I used to go all the time with my dad.”
“I remember, yes. That’s why I thought you’d enjoy it.”
She stops walking, which makes me stop as well. “Do you remember every conversation we’ve ever had?” she wonders.
“I have a ‘prodigious memory.’ I can retain a substantial amount of information with near-perfect accuracy—especially when the subject interests me,” I explain.
“Oh, God… I need to be careful with what I say around you. You’ll remember it forever and hold it against me.”
“Like you’ve ever had control over what your mouth says,” I tease. “Now, come on. Part two of our date awaits.”
She lets me lead her to the arcade, and her eyes light up with excitement when we enter. This probably is a little more advanced than the one her father used to take her to, with state-of-the-art machines, virtual reality masks, augmented reality… But it also has a lot of good old arcade cabinets, as well as a bar and restaurant area.
I take my wallet out to retrieve the cards I picked up earlier today and give her one. “We both have forty dollars’ worth of credits. I’ll recharge them if needed, but this should be fine,” I explain.
She takes it and then grabs my arm to pull me further in. She looks like a child in a toy store, overwhelmed by her options. “Oh my God, I don’t know where to start,” she complains, flattening her hands over her cheeks.
“First, let’s get rid of our coats to be more comfortable. Then, I’d recommend we start with the far end corner of the floor, where they have the classics.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Many times. But usually when it isn’t this busy.”
“Really? I didn’t take you for an arcade fan,” she skeptically points out.
“Who do you think bought the Donkey Kong one at the office?”
“Right… I’m still mad at you, by the way.”
“For what?”
“I was this close,” she explains, bringing the tips of her thumb and index near each other, “to beating Nammota’s high scores.”
I tense at the reminder of what happened that day. “First, you know you shouldn’t have been playing during work hours. Second, I apologized for that. Third, do you actually believe a hacker wanted by every federal agency in the country would leave that kind of crumb trail?”
She hesitates, my argument effectively shaking her beliefs. “The guys told me they think it’s Greg—who went to work at Avoss,” she explains.
I can barely hold back a snort. “Greg isn’t Nammota.”
