“Did you see that?” Adam said. “Him coming for her?”
“Not that kind of seeing. I just understand enough about people to know what that means.”
Trey met her at six, and he was paunchier than she’d remembered, his high school brawn run to a little fat. He shoved a gift into her hand, a brown paper bag with a quart of cheap vodka in it. She thanked him simperingly and tucked it in her knapsack. “It’s a nice night. Let’s get takeout and eat it in High Park.”
She saw the wheels turn in his head, meal plus booze plus secluded park equals pussy, pussy, pussy, and she let the tip of her tongue touch her lips. This would be even easier than she’d thought.
“How can you tell the difference?” Arthur said. “Between seeing and understanding?”
“You’ll never mistake them. Seeing it is like remembering spying on someone, only you haven’t spied on him yet. Like you were standing behind him and he just didn’t notice. You hear it, you smell it, you see it. Like you were standing in him sometimes, like it happened to you.
“Understanding, that’s totally different. That’s like a little voice in your head explaining it to you, telling you what it all means.”
“Oh,” Andy said.
“You thought you’d seen, right?”
“Yeah. Thought that I was running out of time and going to die, or kill Davey again, or something. It was a feeling, though, not like being there, not like having anything explained.”