Fuck.
Of course, he should have expected the question. He'd left himself open to it by saying she was nice (or whatever it was he'd said a second ago; he'd already forgotten). And Cash wasn't the first person to ask something like this, but with anyone else over the past few days who had inquired Ford had been able to get by answering it with the timeless society skill of using a lot of words to say nothing at all. He didn't think that would work on Cash, who already seemed skeptical of this whole arrangement — but not skeptical enough to stop asking questions Ford couldn't answer honestly in a pub.
Maybe he could lie about it. He could answer aspirationally, he guessed, and maybe if he was careful the things he said would be as likely to be true as not. It wasn't as though he knew better, and it seemed unlikely that Cash would know her well enough to call his bluff. What would he say, if he were to describe in a vacuum a woman he might want to marry? Perhaps she likes poetry. Maybe she doesn't mind that a quarter of my friends are ghosts. She even tolerates Barnaby Wye. He considered this, trying to determine if any of these statements could be so violently false Cash was likely to hear about it — and it occurred to him that these were all watered-down descriptions of Tycho. Tycho wrote poetry and had ghost friends of his own and appreciated Wye's lyricism, and maybe anything else Ford could come up with to convince Cash he liked Miss Farley would also be a shadow description of Ty.
This realization made him feel things he didn't like. He drank.
"You'll meet her soon enough," he said, looking at his hand on the table rather than at Cash. "The wedding's only three weeks away."
Of course, he should have expected the question. He'd left himself open to it by saying she was nice (or whatever it was he'd said a second ago; he'd already forgotten). And Cash wasn't the first person to ask something like this, but with anyone else over the past few days who had inquired Ford had been able to get by answering it with the timeless society skill of using a lot of words to say nothing at all. He didn't think that would work on Cash, who already seemed skeptical of this whole arrangement — but not skeptical enough to stop asking questions Ford couldn't answer honestly in a pub.
Maybe he could lie about it. He could answer aspirationally, he guessed, and maybe if he was careful the things he said would be as likely to be true as not. It wasn't as though he knew better, and it seemed unlikely that Cash would know her well enough to call his bluff. What would he say, if he were to describe in a vacuum a woman he might want to marry? Perhaps she likes poetry. Maybe she doesn't mind that a quarter of my friends are ghosts. She even tolerates Barnaby Wye. He considered this, trying to determine if any of these statements could be so violently false Cash was likely to hear about it — and it occurred to him that these were all watered-down descriptions of Tycho. Tycho wrote poetry and had ghost friends of his own and appreciated Wye's lyricism, and maybe anything else Ford could come up with to convince Cash he liked Miss Farley would also be a shadow description of Ty.
This realization made him feel things he didn't like. He drank.
"You'll meet her soon enough," he said, looking at his hand on the table rather than at Cash. "The wedding's only three weeks away."
Set by Lady!