Annabel Porter took a small step forward, her navy blue sneakers squeaking as she moved. For about twenty minutes, she had been inching along the rouge, velvet ropes, waiting for her turn at the bank teller’s desk to deposit the check Jim had given her. Annabel didn’t mind Jim helping her pay for her degree, or for encouraging her to go back to school, or that he was an assistant professor at the university she now attended. What bothered Annabel was what Jim had said to her as he pressed the check into her open hand.
“I hope you’re having fun.”
Each time Annabel remembered Jim’s words, they seemed to increase in curtness so much so she could now no longer recall their original tone. She wasn’t taken back by Jim’s words, but now, hours later, she couldn’t stop thinking about them. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she rolled the word “fun” around her tongue like an ice cube, melting until it disappeared.
“Un, deux, tois, quatre, cinq…”
Annabel turned around. Before her stood a woman, nearly sixty years Annabel’s senior, peering at her through large, rose-tinted glasses. She lifted her hands as she spoke, saying it was easier for her to count in her own language. Annabel nodded, staring at the small but numerous wrinkles around the woman’s thin lips, her lipstick bleeding into the tiny grooves. As the woman continued counting her money, Annabel thought back to what Caroline had told her in the library.
Caroline had invited Annabel to study with her for their British literature mid-term exam. That night, though, Annabel barely read a word of Beowulf. In truth, she took every opportunity to study Caroline. The way she ran her nail-bitten fingers through her salt and sand hair, the way she clapped her hands and threw back her head when she laughed at Annabel’s jokes, how when she smiled, her damasked cheeks created delicate crow’s feet around her oceanic eyes. The epitome of an English rose in bloom, Annabel thought. As they packed up their pens and notebooks, Caroline turned to Annabel.
“Did you know,” Caroline began, “that lips can be read like palms?”
She shook her head, feeling her heart increase in pace and her cheeks flush as Caroline traced Annabel’s lips with her finger.
“Did you know,” the woman continued, “that during the war, that’s how spies were caught?”
Annabel apologized as she returned to the present moment. What had she said about spies? The woman explained that when suspected spies were captured, they were repeatedly forced to count aloud. When they finally spoke in their natural language, their cover was blown, they were caught.
“Red-handed,” Annabel said.
“Red-tongued,” the woman replied.
As Annabel imagined pink taste buds branded by a hot iron coil, she remembered how in one swift move, Caroline had placed a hand behind her neck, pulling her close. Annabel received Caroline’s gentle kiss, tasting her soft, thick lips before kissing her in return.
Taking another step forward in line, Annabel’s eyes widened. Was that it? Was that what Jim had meant by “fun?” Had he seen her and Caroline that night? Hadn’t he told Annabel he was having dinner with his department head? Was he following her? Annabel felt her palms go cold and clammy. She wasn’t hiding that night from him, she just wanted to make sense of it first before telling him. If Jim asked her about that night, what would she say? It was just an accident. Was it an accident? She was sorry. Was she sorry? It wouldn’t happen again. Would it? Annabel’s mind raced as she moved to the front of the line.
“Next?”
The Waiting Line by Rachel J. Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
