“You could stop acting like a party with free drinks, good food, and interesting company is akin to getting your eyeballs scooped out with a rusty spoon,” I tell her, never taking my eyes from the bottles.
We exchange glances. Kat glares like she’d do the scooping herself.
“Excuse me,” someone says behind me.
I take Kat’s elbow and say some polite words and even manage a smile, then pull her away. At least she doesn’t shake me off, but she doesn’t exactly concede, either, as I guide her through a wide doorway and into another room. I don’t know the name of this one, either, but it’s got bookshelves and windows and more uncomfortable-looking chairs, a very large deer head mounted over the fireplace.
I wander over and stand in front of it, looking up into its glassy eyes, while she goes into standby mode or whatever the hell she does.
This is some of the dumbest shit I’ve ever done, and I’ve done some dumb shit. Lying to piss off Meckler was one thing, but trying to convince all my coworkers that Kat’s even human, let alone my date, is clearly beyond my powers of persuasion.
I stand there for a long time, staring up at a dead animal with my back to her. She’s so silent that I wouldn’t even swear she’s still there until she speaks.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” she finally says.
“Are you doing this so you can say I told you so?” I say in the direction of the deer, voice still low.
“Doing what?”
I turn my head and look at her. She’s staring ahead at an ornate bookshelf filled with perfectly matching leather-bound books that I’d bet have never been opened.
“This,” I say, pointedly looking at her. “Pretending you’re some sort of alien ice robot who’s never interacted with humans before.”
Kat snorts. It’s the loudest noise she’s made all evening.
“Sorry, did I tell you I didn’t want to come to a party and now you’re finding out why?”
“If you can’t manage more than two sentences, could you at least gaze up at me adoringly or something?” I ask. I can’t keep the sarcastic edge out of my voice. “Flutter your eyelashes and sigh when I talk. Something besides the laser glare of death, for fuck’s sake.”
I’m looking at the deer head again, away from her, and there’s a very long silence. When I finally look back at her, she’s openly staring at me.
“Doubt it,” she says. “I’m a shitty actress.”
“Yeah, you’re not acting human.”
“I have bitten zero heads,” she says, voice low and sharp, and she says it like she’s making a point. “That was the criteria. Bite no heads.”
“The criteria was act like my girlfriend,” I say, and glance back at the doorway, to make sure no one’s overhearing our very un-couple-like argument.
“That’s not what criteria means.”
I take a deep breath, because otherwise I might pull a bookshelf over and slam it to the floor.
“The whole point,” I get out, my voice low and dangerously soft, “is to convince these people that I’m the sort of stable, responsible man who a nice girl might want to be with, who’d make an excellent partner at a law firm sooner rather than later.”
We’re now face-to-face, three feet apart, her knuckles white on the stem of her wine glass, her eyes flashing up at me.
“Are you?”
“That’s not the point. The point is for them to think I am.”
“So you couldn’t get an actual person to date you and now you’re here trying to pass me off as the real thing and failing miserably,” she says, and for the first time there’s a slight tilt to her head, the tiniest angle to her shoulders. “Which makes it my fault and not because you have a shitty personality.”
I pause a moment, eyes narrowed.
“Did you just admit to being an android?”
That gets a long, still silence where she clearly thinks I’m insane and I wonder what the hell possessed me to say that out loud.