as soon as he said it he knew he shouldn't have. his lips had not yet done the pursing needed for properly enunciating his declaration's final syllable when her head turned slightly to the right, away from him in semi-profile; her left eye wide, her sculpted eyebrow doing that parabolic thing it does where it forms a crest just below the hairline and stays there until her thought is complete.
her eye was clear and unblinking as it gazed at him, not with confusion, or derision, or pity or love -- it just watched. an observant gaze. a calculating one. time seemed to suspend itself, and likewise his thoughts were suspended; a single maverick neuron, undaunted, found the trigger mechanism and fired itself, causing nate to wonder if this is what the pope goes around feeling like all the time. and god, wouldn't that be awful. (he had more thoughts along this useless and depressive tangent, but not until later -- not until we was alone, on his loveseat, with his heineken and his chips and pay-per-view "how to lose a guy in 10 days" playing on his tv and some of the other prickly accoutrements used when one is flailing about on a friday night, desperate to stave off the trainwreck of the obvious, that one has Brought This on Oneself.) this was not the first time nate had drawn a parallel between his life and that of the pope, and probably the terrorist neuron would've machine-gunned randomly around in his dead-calm skull, setting off a series of dietary- and self-love- and lust- and other monumentally fruitful pope/nate-related comparisons.
but her finger beckoned him back to attention. her left eyebrow's arch returned to its more obtuse position -- a mark that the deduction had yielded results. the edges of her soft mouth curled, softly. and she settled the matter:
"God, Nate -- look at your deadpan face. you so completely had me going. Shit."
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