The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [89]
“He’s been observing you and others like you for a few decades, seems like. I just happened along the bandwagon, and he got me fascinated. I know who you are, at least I’m betting on it, and unless I’m sounding like a complete asshole and you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, you know who you are, too.”
23.
A Strange Brew of Personality
....you know who you are, too.
In scenarios such as this one, there isn’t usually only one reason why one excuses himself so suddenly and awkwardly to go to the bathroom. If Melony knew what to think of this, she wasn’t so sure if she would’ve attained more firm of a grip of the situation.
The truth was, she didn’t know what to think of this and she was downright frightened to even wonder.
But what kind of a person would take such a wildly presumptuous statement from a woman he barely knew with a would you excuse me for a moment, I gotta take a wizz?
After all, she had just told him outright that she believed him to be a UFO alien, and that a portion of her career was based on that belief, inspired by the larger helping of belief from her husband’s career’s main course.
How would somebody take that?
Especially if he was some sort of alien?
She had also just revealed to him that she had been sent to meet him; that her purpose of meeting him was due to the fact that he was the subject of journalistic inquiry, a serious research project, of a story.
And that he was one of the main characters in a thickening plot.
How ironic.
Perhaps he was in the bathroom right now, hating her for it.
She was genuinely scared of wondering, but nevertheless she found herself wondering anyway. It was inevitable, this damnable wondering, and the more she lapsed into it the more it consumed her.
She assumed dinner was over. She was finished and full, a remarkable thing when weighing the dinner conversation against the eating of the dinner itself.
She pulled the chair from the table. The gritty screech-scratch of four wooden chair leg bottoms against the no-wax floor could have unnerved her had Fleetwood Mac’s merry-go-round of stereo symphony slipped into that still small void in between songs.
She forced herself slowly to her feet. She wasn’t sure whether to move or stay put, and part of her even worried about whether she should gather her purse and leave for fear of what would happen next.
But that was precisely what kept her there. She wanted to see what would happen next. That, outside of the abruptly inconsiderate rudeness Andrew might gather from her actually leaving.
This was supposed to be considered a date, after all was said and done, no matter what else it was. This she felt sincerely, because no matter else he was, she liked him.
Perhaps he didn’t know what she had been talking about, after all. If this was the case, he must be by now perceiving her as a certified wacko cosmonaut and he’d probably want her to leave. If she was utterly wrong about him, she might as well hang her hat and flush everything that was thrilling about Max’s research down the way of the Tidy Bowl Man.
She grabbed the half-empty brandy bottle from the table and took a few swigs.
She crept around the table, slowly, towards the hallway entrance. She caught sight of the bathroom door, which remained shut, and of the thin horizontal line of soft light at the slit between the carpet and the bottom of the door.
She listened.
There was talking; he was talking to himself.
She couldn’t quite hear what he was saying, so closer she crept.
She entered the hallway.
Carefully....
His talking ceased. Somehow, within the following few moments, the music coming from the living room silenced abruptly as well, as though someone had cancelled the CD selections and switched the power off.
The apartment was calm, almost tomblike. The light clicked off in the bathroom as the door opened and Andrew emerged.
By then, Melony had managed several backwards