‘And it was him?’ Denise asked, her expression clearly indicating that she was now enjoying the story.
‘Yep,’ Mary confirmed.
‘Stop… so what did you do?’
‘I fucking froze, that’s what I did.’ Mary chuckled. ‘Inside my head I was going –Oh my god. It’s him. It’s fucking Quaddra. What the fuck is happening right now? Why is he here? And why is he talking to me when I look like a goddamn hobo?’
‘What do you mean? Why would you look like a hobo?’
‘Because I was dressed like shit, Denise,’ Mary clarified. ‘And wearing barely any makeup. Not only had I completely forgotten about the exhibition, so I left home in a hurry, but my wardrobe at the time was a joke – five, maybe six pieces – and none of them exactly glamorous.’
‘So, what happened next?’
‘Well, I tried my best not to panic… to keep it cool… trying to be charming and all.’
‘You’re always charming,’ Denise said, nodding at Mary.
‘Well, that night, I didn’t think that my powers of seduction were really up to scratch,’ Mary told her. ‘In fact, I thought I blew it because he walked away from me within a minute.’
‘What? For real?’
‘Yeah. No smile… no flirting… no nothing. He just walked away. I was already thinking that I would have to go back to my original wine-shopping plan, you know? Bump into him again there – like in a week or so – but this time, dressed to kill.’
‘But that wasn’t how it happened, right?’
‘No. I bumped into him again at the exhibition, like ten… fifteen minutes later. We got talking, and this time…’ Marygave Denise a shy smile, ‘… there was definitely flirting… from his side.’ The smile turned into a serious face. ‘Until I fucked it all up.’
Sixty-Four
‘Thomas?’ Denise asked, as she and Mary moved their conversation to the L-shaped sofa in front of the panoramic windows that faced the San Francisco Bay.
‘That’s the name he gave me at first,’ Mary confirmed. ‘And that was when I fucked up.’
‘How do you mean?’
Mary half grimaced. ‘I knew his real name was Quaddra, and I was not expecting him to give me a false one, so when he introduced himself to me as Thomas, I frowned at him, as if Thomas was the weirdest name I’d ever heard in my life.’
‘And he noticed it.’ Denise phrased it as a statement, not a question.
‘Of course he noticed it. Wouldn’t you?’ Mary exaggerated a frown that made her eyebrows almost touch above her nose.
Denise laughed. ‘What did he say?’
‘He asked me if there was something wrong with his face.’
Denise laughed again, harder this time. ‘What didyousay?’
‘The first crap that came into my head,’ Mary explained. ‘Which was that he didn’t look like a Thomas. I then tried to patch that bullshit up by telling him that I used to have a teacher called Thomas when I was a young girl, so I always associated that name with his image, which Quaddra looked nothing like.’
‘That doesn’t sound so bad,’ Denise tried to reassure Mary. ‘It’s believable.’
‘Maybe, but I still thought I’d blown it because he never asked me for my number, though I really thought he would. The flirting was definitely there… the chances were definitely there, but nope – he just walked away… again.’
‘You didn’t ask him for his number, did you?’ Denise, once again, dipped her chin to look at Mary.
In their game, asking a mark for his number was a very big ‘no-no’. For it all to seem legit, the mark is the one who has to do the chasing… not them.
‘Of course I didn’t.’
