“I figured as much. Shoot.”
“First of all…no sudden moves.”
“What kind of sudden moves do you think I’m going to make?”
“Handing me a book when I’m not prepared. Waving a hand in my face if I start to fall asleep. Touching my arm to draw my attention to something.”
“What if I just promise to do those things in a way that does not seem murderous?”
“Everything you do seems murderous to me. Literally everything.”
“I could try moving super slowly like this,” he said.
He actually demonstrated, inching toward a book on the table in such an exaggerated manner it made her want to laugh. Then he pretended to nod in agreement with the book’s contents in that exact walking-through-mud way, and thatwant to laughgot even harder.
She had to cover her mouth before she spoke.
“If anything, that doubles the murderousness. It makes you look like the bit in the movie when the bad guy isn’t really dead and swings for the heroine in slow motion.”
“I want to argue here, but that actually makes a lot of sense.”
“I know, right? Thank you,” she said, but he wasn’t ready to give up.
After a second of absurdly visible thinking, he snapped his fingers.
“What about if I make a warning sound?”
“Like a truck backing up?”
“Exactly.”
“I fear it will just give me the chance to murder you first.”
“You have absolutely no chance of murdering me first. I mean, you’re half my size and nowhere near as fast,” he said, half laughing as he did.
But once he glanced back at her, the half laughing stopped dead.
He saw her face—most probably tight with sudden alarm—and it was like a switch had been flipped.
“Not that any of that is a bad thing. Or a thing that I’m about to take advantage of. Is that how it just seemed? Like I was explaining exactly how I’m going to kill you?”
“It kind of had a whiff of that, yeah.”
“Okay, so what about this: I show you ways to nail me.”
“You…want to show me ways to…nail you.”
“I’m just going to breeze right by the double meaning of nailed and say yes. Absolutely yes.”
“You can’t be serious. Are you serious?”
“I am. First up, this knee right here?” He pointed to the offending body part, while lifting it a little so she could really see. “You could probably blow on it and put me down.”
“If that were true I reckon you would lose a lot more wrestling matches.”
“I don’t lose matches because no one knows my right leg is basically made of glass and sawdust. Half of wrestling is hiding your weaknesses so your opponent can never exploit them.”
“This must be pretty weird for you then. Describing exactly how I can do just that.”
