No One Knows Us Here(14)

I’d chosen the restaurant myself. Thai Lotus, run by a husband-and-wife team. One or both of them were always around, and sometimes I saw their kids—a boy and a girl—in there, too, ringing up customers or just doing homework on one of the back tables. It was the wife who came over to our table to ask if we were ready to order.

He hadn’t even opened the menu, but a stream of foreign words rushed out of my companion’s mouth.

The owner acted neither surprised nor impressed that a white dude could speak Thai. They went back and forth, and he must have said something amusing because he got her to crack a little smile, and then they both laughed.

“Have you seen the movie The Beach?” he asked me once she’d slipped back to the kitchen.

“No.”

“Thailand is nothing like that—not if you’re doing it right.” He talked at length about his travels there, the adventures he’d had, while I sipped at my Thai iced tea. I relaxed into my chair. This guy was normal, if a little on the self-involved side. What was it that Mira had said? These guys, they couldn’t be that much worse than any of the other douchebags I’d been with, for free.

I sneaked a glance at Margorie. When I tilted my head slightly to see what she was up to, I couldn’t help but observe that she wasn’t trying to be subtle in the least. She had her entire body pivoted toward our table, and she was staring across the restaurant at us both. I attempted to signal her with my eyes: What? She bulged her eyes back at me. I didn’t know what to make of it. I turned my attention back to my date, but I kept sensing Margorie’s gaze on me.

Then my phone started buzzing. “Excuse me,” I said. I pulled my bag onto my lap and reached in, trying to silence my phone. Margorie was sending me texts. I shot her another look. She looked like she was about to pee her pants from excitement.

I peered into my bag and tried to read my phone screen. OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG, she’d written.

I was about to turn the whole thing off when the phone vibrated again in my hand. Another text: Do you KNOW who that IS?

I studied the man sitting across from me. At that moment, our food arrived, and I had another chance to shoot Margorie a warning glance. What are you doing? I mouthed to her.

I picked up my fork to spear a piece of tofu. “You never told me your name.”

He had taken a bite of his lunch at that same moment, so he held his finger up while he chewed. He took a sip of water.

My phone buzzed again. I peeked into my bag to read the message on my phone’s screen. THAT’S LEO GLASS!!!!!!!!!

“Leo,” he said. “Leo Glass.”

Maybe he was famous. An actor? An influencer? Maybe he was only Portland-famous, or famous in some way only Margorie would care about. Some sort of street artist or zine maker or pop-up restaurant chef.

Leo Glass was leaning forward, observing me with an intense gaze that threw me off guard. His eyes were blue, almost turquoise, but his pupils were so large—abnormally large, really—that his eyes appeared dark and alien rather than beautiful, the way you’d expect turquoise eyes to be. I couldn’t return his gaze.

A few moments went by as we both dug into our food. It was spicy. I had to keep wiping my nose with my napkin. “Is it authentic?” I asked. “The food here?”

“It’s decent,” he said. “It’s different.” He began to enumerate the differences between Bangkok street food and American Thai restaurants. Men loved lecturing women, treating a date like an opportunity to deliver a little lesson, bestowing these gems on me like a favor.

“If you were to order pad kra pao, for example—”

“Why are we here?” I blurted out.

Leo sat back. His eyes narrowed, appraising me. Then he reached into his back pocket and pulled out what appeared to be a small, round mirror. Glass with a delicate silver edge. Real silver, not stainless steel or aluminum. Like old wedding china. He touched a finger to it, concentrating, and then he handed it to me.

I held the object in my hand. It was heavier than I expected, and more beautiful, but it wasn’t a mirror after all. I peered into it and couldn’t see anything, not even my reflection. Just blackness. “What is it?”

“It’s a prototype.” Leo tapped a finger to the object’s surface, and it lit up with a picture as vivid as real life. It was a picture of me, sitting in the corner of the restaurant in the Valerie Hotel. I looked—well, I looked beautiful in that picture, like a woman in a painting, like if Edward Hopper and John Singer Sargent had collaborated to create this image of me sitting in that historic old hotel, with my pale skin and the soft ivory satin dress and the shimmering evening light that made my honey-brown hair look like spun gold. I had my face turned toward the window, and the soft gold rays of the setting sun illuminating my features. In this picture, I didn’t look sweaty and overheated from that dreadful walk in the unseasonably warm weather—I looked youthful and alive. I was even smiling a little bit, as if I’d been transfixed by some private thought or memory, as if whatever I was looking at outside caused me a secret delight.

I wanted a copy of it, a physical copy. I wanted to frame it and stare at it, this version of myself that didn’t really exist. The picture made me believe it could.

The image disappeared, faded to black. I handed the device back to Leo. “It’s just a picture.”

“Listen,” he said, “I’ve been looking for someone like you for a long time.”