He had a reputation for being clumsy. Lisa wondered if he cultivated it, it was a good disguise, she thought. He was more calculating than it first appeared, and she seriously doubted he did anything without thinking it though first. And that included spilling the half-bottle of red wine in her lap. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" he chirped. He offered to help her, asking the waiting staff for a cloth and said, "Of course, I'll pay for the dry cleaning. I'm such a clumsy idiot. I hope you'll forgive me."
Lisa smiled and said all the right things. But she was aware that his little intervention had stopped the conversation dead.
No one was talking about the fraud she'd uncovered.
Everyone was joking and saying, "What are you like, Mikey! You're such a clot!"
But Lisa thought he had done it deliberately. The way he manoeuvred himself to be in the "wrong place" at the right time, the way he had moved and "accidentally" knocked over the bottle.
It seemed like a coordinated move, to her.
...
