Out of Nowhere (The Immortal Vagabond Healer Book 1) by Patrick LeClerc Page B
Authors: Patrick LeClerc
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disliked him because he wrote about a sixth century Briton, a war chief, and didn’t get one damn detail right.
Not that I could have believably corrected him.
I kept my own fiction more vague and uninteresting but, unlike Malory, I made sure it fit with known facts and appearances. Over a brown ale and a grilled chicken pesto sandwich, I spun a tale of a middle-class upbringing: French-Canadian father, Irish mother, mediocre student, brief enlistment in the reserves and five years chipping away at a History degree while working on an ambulance.
The key to a good secret identity is to make it mundane enough that nobody feels the curiosity to dig deeper, but give it enough details to cover and explain what people do see. There were hundreds of people along the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border with the exact same story. It also covered any mannerisms I might have picked up in far too many years in uniform, or historical facts that seemed too obscure for a humble ambulance jockey to know.
‘So, why study history?’ she asked, smiling over the rim of her glass. ‘Seems like a strange choice for a medic. Why not biology? Work towards a degree you can use?’
‘I see I’ve given off the mistaken impression of ambition,’ I replied. ‘I’m too lazy for Med School, and have no desire to drag hoses or wipe other people’s backsides, so that’s firefighting and nursing out. Other than that, there’s no logical next step for a paramedic, so I study what interests me. History is just stories about people. People who lived a long time ago, maybe, but stories just the same. How about you? I confess, you’re a lot younger and prettier than I expected in an English Lit professor. Not that I’m complaining, mind.’
She blushed attractively. ‘I guess I like stories too. I always liked stories but in Grad School I realized what those stories could tell us about how people lived.’
Oh boy, I thought, if she really believes in the princess in the tower, best back away slowly.
She must have caught something in my expression. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the works actually show life as it was. That’d be like basing your opinion of our culture on Lifetime Original Movies and Danielle Steele novels.’
OK, maybe she was too smart for Malory.
‘What the works tell us,’ she went on, pausing to lick some errant sauce from her thumb and push my pulse up a few more points, ‘is what people wanted to read, to believe. To fantasize about.’ She smirked, looking at me over the top of her glasses with those big green eyes. ‘Don’t you wonder if people back in the fifteenth century fantasized about the same things we do?’
I took a breath, covering my agitation with a deep pull that emptied my glass. I wasn’t sure how much of it was deliberate, but she was pushing my buttons, playing me like an artist. Was she just flirting, or was she really interested, really giving me an opening?
I decided to push back, just a little. ‘Right now I’m having a good lunch and a good beer with an attractive, intelligent blonde. I bet most guys are fantasizing about being me.’
She dropped her eyes and blushed again. Bullseye. She was interested and, strangely, not used to being told she was beautiful.
In my experience, very pretty, articulate women don’t tend to remain available for very long, but she certainly didn’t act like she was in a relationship, nor did she exhibit any of the signs of the recently liberated. I had noticed the lack of a ring on her left hand, but that didn’t mean much. I could make a snide observation that it didn’t mean much these days, but it really never had when the cards were actually on the table. All that matters, all that has ever mattered, is whether she wants to play. Single, married, engaged or living in sin, a woman is either happy in her situation, in which case you won’t get anywhere, or she’s looking for something, in which case all’s fair.
Now, the existence of
Not that I could have believably corrected him.
I kept my own fiction more vague and uninteresting but, unlike Malory, I made sure it fit with known facts and appearances. Over a brown ale and a grilled chicken pesto sandwich, I spun a tale of a middle-class upbringing: French-Canadian father, Irish mother, mediocre student, brief enlistment in the reserves and five years chipping away at a History degree while working on an ambulance.
The key to a good secret identity is to make it mundane enough that nobody feels the curiosity to dig deeper, but give it enough details to cover and explain what people do see. There were hundreds of people along the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border with the exact same story. It also covered any mannerisms I might have picked up in far too many years in uniform, or historical facts that seemed too obscure for a humble ambulance jockey to know.
‘So, why study history?’ she asked, smiling over the rim of her glass. ‘Seems like a strange choice for a medic. Why not biology? Work towards a degree you can use?’
‘I see I’ve given off the mistaken impression of ambition,’ I replied. ‘I’m too lazy for Med School, and have no desire to drag hoses or wipe other people’s backsides, so that’s firefighting and nursing out. Other than that, there’s no logical next step for a paramedic, so I study what interests me. History is just stories about people. People who lived a long time ago, maybe, but stories just the same. How about you? I confess, you’re a lot younger and prettier than I expected in an English Lit professor. Not that I’m complaining, mind.’
She blushed attractively. ‘I guess I like stories too. I always liked stories but in Grad School I realized what those stories could tell us about how people lived.’
Oh boy, I thought, if she really believes in the princess in the tower, best back away slowly.
She must have caught something in my expression. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the works actually show life as it was. That’d be like basing your opinion of our culture on Lifetime Original Movies and Danielle Steele novels.’
OK, maybe she was too smart for Malory.
‘What the works tell us,’ she went on, pausing to lick some errant sauce from her thumb and push my pulse up a few more points, ‘is what people wanted to read, to believe. To fantasize about.’ She smirked, looking at me over the top of her glasses with those big green eyes. ‘Don’t you wonder if people back in the fifteenth century fantasized about the same things we do?’
I took a breath, covering my agitation with a deep pull that emptied my glass. I wasn’t sure how much of it was deliberate, but she was pushing my buttons, playing me like an artist. Was she just flirting, or was she really interested, really giving me an opening?
I decided to push back, just a little. ‘Right now I’m having a good lunch and a good beer with an attractive, intelligent blonde. I bet most guys are fantasizing about being me.’
She dropped her eyes and blushed again. Bullseye. She was interested and, strangely, not used to being told she was beautiful.
In my experience, very pretty, articulate women don’t tend to remain available for very long, but she certainly didn’t act like she was in a relationship, nor did she exhibit any of the signs of the recently liberated. I had noticed the lack of a ring on her left hand, but that didn’t mean much. I could make a snide observation that it didn’t mean much these days, but it really never had when the cards were actually on the table. All that matters, all that has ever mattered, is whether she wants to play. Single, married, engaged or living in sin, a woman is either happy in her situation, in which case you won’t get anywhere, or she’s looking for something, in which case all’s fair.
Now, the existence of
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