Page 16 of A Spot of Tea
“His voice was raspy, like he was lowering it or something. I felt like I was talking to the Batman.”
Joey burst into a laugh. “Yeah, sounds like Bruce Wayne.”
Eliza laughed too, but stopped herself. “He wasn’t Batman, though. And I helped him rob a bank.”
He stopped writing and looked up at her. “How were you supposed to know he was going to rob the bank?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because he insisted on coming in with two bank-robbing bags?” Eliza put her hands over her face and groaned. “It’s so embarrassing I didn’t catch onto any of it – the beard, the voice, the bags – as being suspicious.”
“No, it isn’t,” he said firmly. “You thought you were helping a man in a wheelchair have an easier day at the bank. You didn’t question him because you’re a nice person. That’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
He seemed to believe that. Eliza picked up her teacup and sat back. “Then we went into the bank and the rest is history.”
Joey held the pen at the corner of his mouth, scrawled something, then tapped it on the desk. “I think we have a good start. Lots of details. There’s an answer here. I can feel it.”
That was kind of him. When she’d told this story before, the ATF agent had told her to “stop trying to come up with a list of useless details.”
She cleared her throat. “I’m glad you’re optimistic, because I’m not.”
“I’m always optimistic.” He flipped through the pages. “How about we figure out where he got that wheelchair? It seems like it was local, don’t you think? With all those stickers?”
She leaned in. “Huh. Yeah, you’re probably right. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”
“You’re too busy memorizing every single detail around you all the time. It’s amazing.”
“Thanks,” she said sheepishly. It had been a long time since her power of observation was actually useful.
If this could be considered useful.
“Are you ready?” he asked, standing from the table. “We’re going to change your life, Eliza.”
She looked around. There wasn’t anything else to clean, and she didn’t have any other plans. “Sure. Why not.”
Seven
He couldn’t believe his pitch had worked. She didn’t seem entirely sold on his idea, but it was better than nothing. She closed the tea shop and Joey offered to drive.
“What’d you say you went to school for?” he asked as they rode into town.
“I went to school with a mission to embarrass everyone.”
He burst out laughing. “What?”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, a smile on her face. “It’s true. I thought it would be fun to get a scholarship and then drop out. I wanted to teach those smug scholarship people a lesson.”
He shot her a look. “I bet you had a 4.0.”
“No.” She turned to look out the window. “3.9.”
Joey pulled his eyes away from her and back onto the road ahead of them. “Why did you drop out?”
“I already told you. I didn’t like all those people believing in me. I needed to take them down a notch.”
He smiled. She was joking, but not exactly. There was some truth to it. He’d get the whole truth out of her eventually. People loved confessing things to him. He had one of those faces – or maybe, being a pilot, they figured they’d never see him again and they could use him as a free therapist.
He preferred it that way. No need to stick around, waiting for awkward silences.
Not that there were any of those with Eliza yet. She deflected everything with jokes. Funny jokes, too, which made it hard for him to keep his footing.
