In which the two new main characters get to know each other, though really it’s just an excuse for the author to once again pad the word count in the most obnoxious ways possible.
“Thanks for meeting me here,” Stephanie said. “I know it was short notice, but I have to squeeze in my social life when I can.”
“No problem,” Nenipven said. He smiled and took a sip of his wine. Weird stuff, alcohol.
“I thought we could maybe get to know each other a little better,” she said slyly. She was intrigued by this very strange man, and saw a great series of articles in him.
“Okay, how about this,” Nenipven said with a burst of inspiration. “We’ll each tell a truth or lie about ourselves, and the other has to guess if it’s true.”
“Deal. I’ll go first. I was married, and in two years I would have spent as much of my life with him as I did without him. Although, really, since my memories of the first five to seven years of my life are sketchy, it really seems as if it had been more than half.” Stephanie sat back and sipped her wine.
“Lie. You’ve never been married,” Nenipven guessed.
“Correct. Your turn!”
“With the exception of meeting a very sexy young lady with whom I spent considerable time, I hated every moment of college. It was the crappiest time of my life. Overworked, overstressed, and completely broke – no fun at all. But then, I wasn’t a partier, so… maybe that’s why. You couldn’t pay me to go back to that time.” Nenipven sat back, crossed his arms, and smiled.
“Lie. You were totally a frat boy party guy,” Stephanie said, her eyes narrowed.
“Correct! Now you.”
“I can write backwards, in cursive, and often do so just to annoy and confuse people,” she said.
“Oh, that is so true.”
She laughed and nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “I can remember poems I was forced to memorize back in the third grade – and I can prove it, wanna hear the beginning of Paul Revere’s Ride? No? – and the license plate of a car my family owned when I was a kid – BXM 231 – but I will forget your name three seconds after you tell me. That doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten you, I will be able to tell you in detail all the things we talked about, how we met, etc, but I just don’t do well with names. I’m sorry, who were you again?” He winked at her.
“That’s a tough one. I’m going to go with lie, because you seem like the type with a pretty good memory.” She paused a minute. “But I’m only about sixty percent sure on that one.”
“Well, you’re right. I’m good with both names and numbers, I have a photographic memory.” He smiled. “We’re both two for two.”
“Okay, how about this. I love math, especially statistics, though not so much LaPlace Transforms, which can kiss my… well, you know, and it makes me sad that so many people, especially girls, hate math out of hand. But here’s the kicker. While I can perform complex calculus, I need a calculator for basic math. I blame being out of town the week we had to memorize our multiplication tables in the fourth grade. No, really.” She protested when he laughed. “I was the flower girl in my aunt’s wedding. You can ask anyone! I was very well remembered at that wedding. During the ceremony, I passed out, fell over, and split my forehead open on the step to the organ player’s pit. I spent a good portion of the reception in the emergency room getting stitches. And I still have the scar, and the limited muscle movement, in my forehead to prove it.” She pointed at her forehead, but her bangs covered any scar that might be there.
“Hmmm, this is a tough one. Either it’s true, as absurd as it is, or you’re a really good storyteller. I already know you’re a good storyteller, because you’re a journalist. You make your living telling stories. But it’s so absurd, you couldn’t expect anyone to believe it if it wasn’t true. So I’m going with…” He paused for a long moment. “True. No. False. No. True.”
“Is that your final answer? True?”
“Yes.”
“You are correct! That wacky story is very much true, and where I got this.” She pulled her bangs to the side to show a thin white scar.
“Well played. I can name 90% of the countries in the world, from memory.”
“You already said you had a really good memory, but I’m going to call shenanigans on this one. False,” she said.
“Nope! Incorrect. I can,” he said smugly.
“Oh, yeah? Prove it,” she challenged.
“United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru, Republic Dominican, Cuba, Caribbean, Greenland, El Salvador too. Puerto Rico, Columbia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guyana, and still, Guatemala, Bolivia, then Argentina and Ecuador, Chile, Brazil. Costa Rica, Belize, Nicaragua, Bermuda, Bahamas, Tobago, San Juan, Paraguay, Uruguay, Suriname, and French Guiana, Barbados, and Guam. Norway, and Sweden, and Iceland, and Finland and Germany now one piece, Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Turkey, and Greece. Poland, Romania, Scotland, Albania, Ireland, Russia, Oman, Bulgaria, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Cyprus, Iraq, and Iran. There's Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, both Yemens, Kuwait, and Bahrain, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Portugal, France, England, Denmark, and Spain. India, Pakistan, Burma, Afghanistan, Thailand, Nepal, and Bhutan, Kampuchea, Malaysia, then Bangladesh, Asia, and China, Korea, Japan. Mongolia, Laos, and Tibet, Indonesia, the Philippine Islands, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, New Guinea, Sumatra, New Zealand, then Borneo, and Vietnam. Tunisia, Morocco, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Djibouti, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, Swaziland, Gambia, Guinea, Algeria, Ghana. Burundi, Lesotho, and Malawi, Togo, the Spanish Sahara is gone, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, and Liberia, Egypt, Benin, and Gabon. Tanzania, Somalia, Kenya, and Mali, Sierra Leone, and Algier, Dahomey, Namibia, Senegal, Libya, Cameroon, Congo, Zaire. Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Rwanda, Mahore, and Cayman, Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Yugoslavia... Crete, Mauritania, then Transylvania, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Malta, and Palestine, Fiji, Australia, Sudan!” he sang triumphantly.
“Oh, drat, I’d forgotten about the Animaniacs. Fiddlesticks.” She gnawed on her lip in frustration. “Point to you. Okay, an easy one, then. I prefer to listen to audiobooks when I drive because when I listen to music, I speed.”
“Tricky. This one could be false on two levels. Either you don’t prefer to listen to sudiobooks when you drive, or even if you do, that’s not the reason. I’m going to go with… false.”
“Nope! Perfectly true. All tied up again,” she said.
“You wish,” Pippiment said very softly, so only Nenipven heard him. He shot the little dog a look, and Pippiment settled back into his lap.
“I’ve never taken any drugs not prescribed by a doctor,” Nenipven said. “I’m actually allergic to hemp and most narcotics.”
“Ohh, that’s a two-part question, as well. I’m going to say false, since we’ve established that you were a party boy.”
“And you would be wrong again. I partied, but I didn’t do drugs.” He took another sip of his wine. “Alcohol, though sometimes considered a drug, excluded.”
He was pretty proud of himself, making all of this up on the fly. It was only a matter of time before she started asking more specific questions, though, so he started constructing a more detailed version of his fictitious life. Hopefully she wouldn’t have the time or ability to check up on his story before he was done with his mission. He took another sip of wine, enjoying the swirling, dizzy sensation. He realized with a start that he was dangerously close to getting drunk, and that would not do. What if he let something slip about the Union of Worlds?
“Okay, fine, but then how did you find out about your allergies?”
“Routine allergy test on the hemp, I really don’t know why they test for it except there is a growing prevalence of hemp oil and hemp fibers in fabrics, so maybe a lot of people are allergic to it and it’s becoming a problem. The opiates, well, I have been prescribed painkillers, and they all make me sick.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “My spine is like a pretzel. I have Scoliosis, as well as a weird twist that means my right shoulder is further forward than my left. I also had a herniated disk, and surgery to remove it when I was twenty.”
“So many parts to this one! You’re not playing fair.” He thought about it for a moment, trying to study her posture. “True.”
“True. Okay, so you’re still up a point. Your turn.” She sat back and moodily sipped her drink. He realized he probably really should let her win.
“My favorite movie is The Princess Bride, though I have to admit Spaceballs and National Treasure are close seconds.”
“False,” she said quickly.
“You are correct,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t ask him what his real favorite movie was. He didn’t know what he would say. “All tied up again. Your turn.”
“I’m a people pleaser, completely willing to make a fool of myself to make people laugh. I don’t know if that’s a sign of supreme self-confidence or a lack of self-respect, but overall I think that’s a good thing,” she said.
He thought about it for a moment, and was pretty sure she was lying. She seemed a little too uptight for it to be true. So he said, “True?”
“Ha! No way. That’s my friend, Jenny. She’s the one who would be willing to dress up in a giant bunny costume and dance around to make people laugh, not me. Though I do think it’s a good thing, and she does make everyone laugh.” Stephanie was about to say something more, but at that moment her phone rang. She checked the display and frowned. “I’m sorry, I have to take this. Hold that thought.”
She answered, and quickly got up and walked away from the table, leaving Nenipven to sip even more wine and stare bemusedly at Pippiment, who was alternately snoring and hiccupping in his lap.
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