Dialogs

[Adam Deulane]

On the Existence of a Non-Subjective Aesthetic Reality
[Sometime a day or two following this conversation.]

“Do you think I'm...handsome?”

Nory looked up slowly from her geography homework. Adam was sitting at his desk with his face propped in his hands, staring at an open trigonometry textbook with a glazed expression. Nory didn't think she'd heard him correctly. “Do I think you're what now?”

“...I mean, Kateri, and Cee said...” He trailed off and his forehead creased with worry. He flipped a page forcefully in the textbook. “Forget it.”

Nory said nothing, and after a few moments of silence Adam glanced up. His younger sister had her hands clasped in front of her chest and was steadily inflating with glee. He felt a burst of panic and pushed his chair backwards. “I'm not--!”

“Are you going to ask out Ms. Rivera? Or how about the blonde English teacher? Or the gardener? Or that one lady who came to the parent-teacher night, she was totally into you. You'll have to get some new clothes, to start with. Blue is your best color, God how long have you had that button-up shirt, you'll need a suit jacket at least, maybe a nice black--”

“I'm not asking anyone out!” Adam nearly shouted. He hastily lowered his voice to an embarrassed hiss. “And you need to stop watching all those trashy movies. Your head's filled with enough garbage as it is. Kateri is about fifty years old and has a toddler.”

“Don't let her hear you say that,” Nory replied, still wearing an ear-to-ear grin. She had teleported from her usual chair in the corner to the side of Adam's desk, and she wrapped one arm around his shoulders. “And you're very attractive. I mean, you know, objectively speaking.” She tugged on a lock of his thick, wavy hair, though her motions were jerky because Adam was trying to shove her off. “You've got the whole—oof—cheekbones and blue eyes and stubble thing going on, plus that mathematician's physique.”

“Oh, like you're one to talk.”

“Consider it payback,” Nory said, draping herself across the back of his office chair. Adam pulled a lever under his seat, the back of his chair lurched, and she tumbled to the ground with a cry of surprise.

He rotated around to face her and glared. “I told you not to do that."

"Adam and somebody sittin' in a tree! Kay eye ess--ow! ...Fine."

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

On the Comparative Value of Time Spent Engaged in Recreational Pursuits
[After the Hammel Retreat]

More even than sleeping in a real bed, eating normal food, or even seeing her friends, when Nory burst into her room after returning from the Hammel retreat she went straight for her steroid cream. As fantastic as the retreat had been, her skin had not reacted well to five days of the various irritants of nature. Flaky red eczema had broken out on her hands, elbows and shins, and it was all she could do on the bus ride back not to scratch her skin bloody. With a gasp of relief, she fell back in bed and began smearing the lotion everywhere she could reach.

A half hour later and thoroughly moisturized, though still itching a bit, Nory strolled through the halls towards Hammel's administrative wing, texting as she went. The retreat was one of her favorite events of the year, and she hadn't been able to go last time because of her probation. But this year had made up for it, and she was looking forward to the blow-by-blow retelling for her friends who hadn't gone. Maybe in the spring she could arrange some sort of weekend trip...

She took a meandering route, trotting past the engineering lab, math tutoring center, and computer classrooms. All were empty, save a student or two. Adam must have gotten a better chair for his office, then. She arrived finally at his door, with the small placard and Do Not Distrub sign hanging on the doorknob. She pulled her sleeve over her sensitive knuckles and knocked, “Adam?” then knocked again after a pause.

“Come in,” finally came a muddled voice from inside. Nory pushed open the door. Adam was sitting on the floor and writing on a notebook in his lap. Scattered around him on the floor were papers, notebooks, and scholarly journals, gathered in grids. They continued up the walls as if they had grown there, taped in place next to the whiteboards filled with Adam's crabbed handwriting.

Adam looked up at Nory as if trying to remember who she was. He shook his head slightly and looked back at his notebook. “Ten minutes.” Nory, who had been expecting nothing less, moved a stack of journals and Cup-a-Noodle wrappers, sat down in his chair, and continued texting.

The papers rustled slightly in the draft from the door Nory had left ajar, Adam's pencil tapped, and Nory's phone chirped occasionally. She resisted the urge to scratch. Then, a long, languid sigh. Nory looked up to see Adam resting his head on the wall behind him, legs stretched out. A smile played across his mouth. He looked like he'd spent the weekend with a beautiful woman rather than stacks of peer-reviewed articles. Nory tucked her phone away and grinned. “Get a lot done, then?”

“Been working with number theory,” he said with a yawn. “Some of it might go into the paper. Ramanujan's work...” He sighed again and smiled at his half-sister. “It's beautiful.”

Nory rolled her eyes. “God, you are so weird,” she said as she examined one of the papers. But her tone had more admiration in it than anything.

Adam examined the bandage on her arm and the rashes on her hands. “How was the retreat?”

“Oh, it was awesome! We went hiking, made smores, I went on a whale ride, we went canoeing and I fell in the lake, then I cut my arm open. I got probably, like, ten hours of sleep the whole time we were there.”

Adam ran his thumb along the edge of his notebook. “That's probably about what I got, too,” he admitted.

[Adam Deulane]

On Grief

Pilot Ridge had an upscale Wendy's. It had padded booths, spotless tables, and large, glossy black windows. On January 14th, a Thursday night, only two customers occupied the bright, clean quiet.

Nory and Adam sat across from each other in the back of the restaurant. A burger sat in front of each of them, though neither had eaten much. She prodded at her french fries, and he stared at his soda with his head in his hands.

“Sometimes I still wonder,” Nory said quietly. “If it would have been better if she'd had a heart attack, or been hit by a car.”

Adam breathed out and closed his eyes. “I don't know,” he replied softly.

Around them, the restaurant slipped towards closing time. Together, they waited for the day to end.