Page 17
It was progress.
His eyes returned to my face. “Back to the paper thing.”
Paper thing. Good God. “Adversity paper,” I said sharply before Terri cleared her throat. Taking a breath, I began again. “Adversity paper was used by the Confederacy during the Civil War. As the South had to severely ration the production of even basic things like paper, it’s very thin and brown, terribly easy to tear. As you know from watching Erica yesterday, there is a lot of bleed-through or show-through, which is when the ink comes through on the other side of the paper and mars the piece.”
“So when the front—”
“Do we say front and back?” I asked him.
“What the hell else would we say?”
Instead of putting the mechanical pencil I was holding through his eye, I turned to Terri and took a sip of tea.
“You get that if this was, like, the third time, instead of the twenty-third time he was telling you this, that he wouldn’t want to put that pencil through your eye, right?” she asked.
“What?”
“I did want to put it through his eye.” I grinned at her. “That’s amazing.”
She gave an exaggerated shrug and smiled. “I’m a mind reader.”
“I knew I liked you,” I said sincerely.
“Oh, I like you too, even though you won’t come out and have drinks on Friday night.”
“Actually, I was going to ask if everyone wanted to come to my house for dinner tonight, around eight. I believe I’ve fine-tuned my lasagna recipe and—”
“Yes,” she rushed out. “Please.”
I smiled at her. “Spread the word, will you?”
“I will. And I’ll bring dessert.”
“Sounds perfect. I’ll send out a group text with my address.” As soon as she spun around and left, I turned back to Bing, and when I did, he looked sort of sad. “What’s with you?”
“Am I invited?”
“Of course you’re invited. Don’t be an idiot.”
“Okay.” He took a breath. “So if we don’t say front and back, what do we say instead? And look, I have a pad and I’m writing it down.”
“That’s my pad,” I said blandly.
“It’s cute. What is this?” He pointed at Totoro.
“That’s Totoro from My Neighbor Totoro.” I stared at him, slightly stunned. “Have you never seen that movie?”
“No.”
“I… I don’t know what to say about that.”
He scowled at me. “Well, if I use the pad up, I’ll bring you a new one when I show up for dinner. And I’ll bring beer.”
“Two things. One: You’d have to go to a specialty store to replace this pad, so ask Marc to throw you a yellow one from the filing cabinet.” I took my pad away from him. “And two: Do not bring beer, bring wine. A good red, please.”
“How do I—shit,” he grumbled as he was hit in the chest with a small pad that Marc flung over to him. “You could have taken out my eye.”
Marc looked at me excitedly.
