I rolled my eyes and turned around, walking away from him.
“But I still didn’t get to talk to you!”
“I’m not interested.”
“But you don’t even know what I was going to say,” he argued, strolling behind me after he caught up. “I find when I’m stuck on something, it’s always best to sit down with a good jar of pickled pig’s feet and think it over.”
“Do you just sit with them like friends or do you eat them?”
“A little of both.” I could hear the grin in his voice. “Yeah, I like to think of them as friends that took one too many shots at me, and they ended up dismembered in my jar.”
“For you to eat later? Remind me to never get on your bad side.”
“Now, that’s just silly, Rae. Why would I eat my friends?”
“Why would you think about boiling them?”
He frowned, draping his arm around my shoulder as we continued to walk. “Now, that’s a pickle.”
I heard a crunch and turned my head, watching incredulously as he chewed on a pickle. “Where did you get that?”
“From my pocket…” he said, eyeing me suspiciously. “I don’t have any extras, so don’t ask.”
“You carry around pickles with you?”
As if finally understanding, he nodded. “I see the conundrum. Carrying them in my pocket would be gross. All that lint and stuff. Yuck! No, I have them individually wrapped.”
I stopped, brushing his arm off me. “Wait,youhave them individually wrapped?”
He grinned at me. “Pretty ingenious, right?”
My mouth gaped the longer I stared at him. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. “For what possible reason would you need them individually wrapped?”
He snorted in amusement. “Like you’ve never craved a pickle.”
“No, I can’t say I have. And if I did, I would go buy them and then stick them in the fridge.”
He eyed me carefully, then took another bite of his pickle. “So, what you’re saying is you’re not a true pickle lover.”
“Actually, what I’m saying is you’re disturbing me.”
“Like…interrupting?”
“No, the other version.”
He nodded, scratching his head with a laugh. “Yeah, somehow it always turns out to be that one. I still haven’t figured it out yet. Anyway, I did actually have a point in coming to see you.”
“And that would be?”
He glanced around, then ducked his head so only I could hear him. “It’s about the not so new guy that used to be here, but no longer is.” Then he winked at me.
“That was quite possibly the worst way to make anyone nearby have to guess what you’re talking about.”
“I thought it was pretty clever. Anyway, I was thinking…what if FNG wanted us to believe he was on that plane?”
“And then blew himself up? I’d say he’s about as stupid as this conversation.”
I turned to leave, but he grabbed me with his pickle hand. I grimaced, wiping the juice off my skin. “Wait, I’m serious. Think about it. What if he wasn’t really on that plane?”