“Vera?” Mateo said over the line. His voice sounded higher on the phone, crisp and professional.
“Yup,” I said and immediately started toying with the phone line, wrapping it around my finger.
A thick silence permeated the line. He cleared his throat. “You are supposed to go first. It says so.”
Oh, right, the script. I flipped open the pages, feeling a bit nervous all of a sudden. There was something quite serious about Mateo’s tone, as if we’d stopped being friendly for a moment.
The script was fairly straightforward. I was an investor who was calling about the business. My job was to ask Mateo the questions and he only had a brief word or two telling him what he should talk about without supplying him the actual script. He had to make that up on his own, pulling from his real life.
It went okay, at first, but when it called for me to ask him “what are the advantages of investing in your company” he started to stumble over his words. He was saying them wrong, drawing a blank.
“Merde,” he swore harshly into the phone. “Fuck. Fuck!”
I was taken aback by his change in tune. I swallowed hard and said, “It’s okay. We can just start over. It’s a hard question.”
“It’s a question I can’t even answer in Spanish,” he said bitterly. “How the fuck do I answer in English?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I continued to coil the phone line around my finger. I heard him sigh.
“Sorry,” he said. “I am sorry, Vera.”
“It’s okay,” I said in a small voice.
“It is not okay,” he said. “But it has nothing to do with you.” He paused. “I will try and think of something to say about my company for next time. Do you mind…do you mind if we just talk instead?”
“What about?” I asked.
“You. Let’s talk about you. Vera Miles.”
“I’m not very interesting.”
“You say that, but I have many questions.”
I smiled, my heart starting to beat a bit faster. “Okay…but if I tell you all my secrets, you’re going to find me boring.”
“You? Boring?” he chuckled warmly. “Impossible. I only have twenty questions for you, like the game. You know the game, yes?”
“Yes,” I slowly said. But I seriously didn’t feel like playing it with him. Now, if the game were reversed, that would be another story.
“Well, I shall ask you one question a day. I am here for only twenty-one days, so on the last day you can ask me a question.”
“That hardly seems fair,” I said. Still, if he had to ask me a question every day, that meant he had to talk to me every day. I couldn’t say no to that.
“It is fair, to me,” he said simply. “First question is…did it hurt when you got that hole put in your tongue?”
I laughed. “What? My tongue ring?”
“Yes. Did it hurt? It looks like it would hurt.”
Funny, I’d never seen him eyeing my tongue ring before. Usually it was quite noticeable when someone finally spies the silver inside your mouth. It’s not like I went around all day doing the Julia Roberts laugh.
“Yeah, it hurt,” I said. “But I don’t mind a bit of pain.”
“I see,” he said. “It suits you.”
“Really?” All I’d heard from my mother and sister was that it made me look like a cheap tramp. I was sure to someone like Mateo, it was looked at as being gross and immature.
“Yes,” he said. “When I was younger, I thought it was a cool look. I wanted one.”
I couldn’t picture Mateo with a tongue ring—or any kind of ring, other than his wedding one. “I have to say, I can’t really imagine you with a tongue ring,” I admitted. “It’s not really your style.”
“Oh, I was a fun person, when I was younger,” he said. “Now, I just get buzzzzzed. That’s it.”
That was the second time he had said when he was “younger.” I wondered if being around him was like reliving the past. “You’re not old, Mateo,” I told him. “You’re not even forty.”
“But I will be forty before you will be forty. You will only be twenty-five.” He sighed. “You will see. Sometimes you are stuck being the person you are and not the person you were. Or could be.”
The somber quality to his voice filled the air around me, making the apartment seem shades darker, like the curtains had been pulled closed. It was scary how I totally understood what he was talking about, no matter what age I was.
He cleared his throat and went on, his voice louder. “Well if you do not mind, Vera, I think I will need to make a phone call or too, a real one. I will see you tonight at the party, yes?”
“Yes,” I said softly. The receiver on his end clicked off and I stared at the phone for a few moments before hanging it up. Through the littlest lapses in character, I was beginning to think there was more to Mateo than what met the eye. Though he’d be playing twenty questions with me, I was going to make sure I unravelled him first, silken thread by silken thread.
Chapter Six
“I’ll give you ten euros if you do it.”
I put down my drink and gave Eduardo a steady look. “Are you serious?”
“Of course,” he exclaimed and patted Angel on the back, hard. “Isn’t that right, Angel?”
Angel, who probably spoke the least English out of everyone at Las Palabras, nodded. Like his namesake, he had a round face and a mop of curly brown hair. His thick-framed glasses and geek chic outfit made it hard for me to determine if he was a young hipster or a nerd in his mid-thirties. He worked for a software company in Madrid, which didn’t help.
I plucked the cherry out of my screwdriver and held it in front of my mouth. I looked to Eduardo who was eyeing me with a big fat grin on his face.
He and Angel were among the first people to show up at the party. I had gotten there early, not wanting to pull the same thing I did at dinner and get there late. I had gotten so wrapped up with catching up on Facebook and writing long emails to Josh and Jocelyn that I barely noticed everyone piling past me into the dining room. By the time I logged off, all the tables were taken and I had to sit with Edna, a retired teacher from Manchester who really didn’t seem to like me. She was here with her husband Nick and I recognized them as the people who had given me dirty looks on the bus.
Luckily, the Spaniards I sat with were nice. There was quiet Cristina who barely talked and Yolanda, a hippie-ish woman with a toothy grin and really dark skin that looked like beef jerky. Yolanda loved to talk and show off the English she picked up from some yoga guru in Nepal. I don’t know what she was talking about, actually, but it prevented me from having to contribute to the conversation. I just concentrated on the wine and the food the whole meal, occasionally looking over at Mateo who was sitting with Wayne, Beatriz and a pretty blonde I think was named Polly. He had seemed to be chipper over dinner, laughing loudly at whatever Wayne was saying.
“Well, do it,” Eduardo coaxed to me, bringing my attention to the task at hand. He was a cute guy, late twenties, kind of short and on the preppy side but he had flawless golden skin and really nice smile. He was also a bit of a pervert. Then again, so was I.
“All right,” I said. I placed the cherry in my mouth and bit it off seductively. This part was for the show. Eduardo eyed my lips eagerly as I sucked on it for a moment and Angel seemed to blush right up to his roots. Then I smiled and swallowed it down. Time for the party trick.
I placed the stem into my mouth and with deft concentration I slowly worked the two ends together with my tongue, trying to tie it into a knot. As sexy as it was supposed to be, it’s actually impossible to look good while doing this and I knew my face was contorted.