Killing Sarai

34

The woman waltzes over with a ceramic bowl filled with whipped potatoes in one hand and a plate full of fried chicken in the other and sets them down in front of us. A smaller bowl of corn and a basket of rolls follow.

Not feeling right about being first, I wait to see if Victor will reach for something before me.

"What would you like to drink?" the woman asks. "I have soda, tea, milk, lemonade."

"Water is fine," Victor says and then he looks at me, casually nods his head toward the food, giving me the OK to start filling my plate. "From the tap," he adds at last second.

I reach for the chicken first and pick up a piece with the tongs.

"I'll have water, too," I say, looking up at her as I drop a chicken leg on my plate. "Thank you."

She smiles sweetly and walks around the bar toward the refrigerator and begins preparing our drinks, scolding the little dog verbally to send it strutting out of the kitchen and away from us.

By the time she makes it back with our glasses, Victor and I both have put all of the food we want onto our plates.

She sets our drinks in front of us.

I thank her again and feeling better about 'going first' now, I pick up my spoon and start to eat, but Victor stops me, placing two fingers on my wrist and lowering my hand back onto the table. My face flushes and I lower my eyes, hoping the woman doesn't think I have the worst meal etiquette ever. I figure she must be the religious type, that we have to hold hands around the table awkwardly while she talks to Jesus and tells Him how thankful we are for this food and for the troops and all that stuff.

"Oh Victor," she says playfully, "you can't be serious."

He doesn't say anything.

I glance at him to my right, wrinkling my brows. Maybe he's the one that feels it necessary to pray.

Surely not....

The woman sighs and rolls her eyes a little bit as she reaches over and slides my plate away from me.

I'm thoroughly confused now. I fold my hands in my lap underneath the table because I'm not sure what else to do with them.

I turn to Victor, momentarily lost in the mysterious depths of his eyes under the bright light from the fixture centered above the table. I swallow nervously and come back to reality when I hear the woman's voice again.

"He doesn't trust anyone," she says to me as she scoops some whipped potatoes from my plate, into her mouth. She points her spoon at me and continues with her mouth full. "Never has. But it's to be expected." She swallows. "And completely understandable, being in his line of work and all."

Her eyes veer to Victor's and suddenly she changes the topic as if he gave her some private look of warning that I missed by the time I turned my head to see him, too.

"Anyway," she goes on, now taking a bite of my chicken, "you two can stay here for as long as you need. Spare room is at the end of the hall." She takes a bite of my corn and then my roll, finally washing the food down with her tea.

Then she slides my plate back to me. I take it hesitantly, fingering the edge of the plate and feeling uncomfortable about eating anything she just double-dipped her spoon in.

Victor slides his plate toward her next and she does the same to his food.

It worries me that in the home of one of his contacts he feels the need to have her eat the food first to prove to him that she didn't poison it.