Today's Reading
"Are you OK?" I ask, but it's like she can't talk, and a concerned member of staff starts drifting over.
"Heydon?" she gasps finally. "Aitch, is that you?"
CHAPTER TWO
Heydon's not a name I've ever used before. The girl's confusing me with someone else. If she didn't look so torn up about it, I might even play along.
She so badly wants me to be him.
"It's me," she says, getting up off the floor. "It's Bobbie. You remember." Bobbie's wearing black clothes, black shades, black everything. We've never met before. I'd remember Bobbie. I look back at her for a moment, still tempted to tell her what she wants to hear.
"No," I say instead. "I'm sorry. I don't think so."
"How about now?" she says, sliding the shades down so I can see her face. They're covering a swollen-shut black eye, and the gathering members of staff start mumbling. One of the guys even looks like he's about to take a step toward me, like I had something to do with it.
I turn and walk in the other direction, the same way I came in. I hear the girl call after me, but I'm already gone, pushing through people, not needing the attention. I'm fifty feet away before I look back, and when I do, she's following me into the terminal.
She holds up a hand.
"Wait, please..."
"No, thank you."
"Listen," she says, drawing level with me. "I know. I get it. I'm a mess. Can you just slow down?"
I stop walking and stare into her shades.
"Look, Bobbie, I'm sorry about your eye. But I'm not who you think I am, OK?"
She takes a step back, then just stands there, looking lost for a few seconds, and for the first time, I see how much her friend, this Heydon guy, must mean to her.
"I know that," she says quietly, but it doesn't look like she was really sure until now. "I just wanted to speak with you." From her accent, she sounds like serious money, and close-up, she looks pretty smart too. Her black boots, jeans, jacket, and bag all look designer, and she keeps on blinding me with the stone on her ring. "If you've got a moment, perhaps I can explain things," she says. "What do you say, join me for a drink?"
The words sound forced, but I guess she's nervous, just trying to style out her mistake. A free drink feels like winning the lottery right now anyway. So I say, "Sure," and follow her back inside.
* * *
We take a table in the cocktail bar, sitting opposite each other. Bobbie leaves her shades on, and I'm glad. They give me some protection from the black eye and some protection from Bobbie herself. Outside, she'd seemed nervous, but I see now that was just to get me into the room. When the waiter arrives, she interrogates him about his mixing technique, then asks for a martini, her teeth glowing white against the dark lipstick.
I tell the waiter I want the same thing, then we sit in near silence for a few minutes—listening to the occasional robotic "Ground Floor" announcement from the nearby lift bank—until our drinks arrive.
"So who's Heydon?" I ask the second we've been served, much sooner than I'd meant to. Bobbie pauses, her glass not quite to her lips, then she takes a quick sip and puts it down. "Is he the guy who did that to you?"
"Did what?" she asks. Then she remembers her eye. "Oh, sorry. I'm so doped up, I keep forgetting it's there. I suppose you could say I got it from him though. Like a delayed inheritance."
"I don't get it," I say.
"Heydon's my big brother. Or, I mean, he was. He went missing five years ago."
I look up. "I'm sorry," I say. "So wait a minute. You thought I—"
"Pretty much."
Bobbie's got a croaky, vocal-fry thing going on. She makes it sound like she's taking me into her confidence, making me lean in.
"Can I ask what happened?"
"We don't know," she says. "No one does."
...
