![]() People usually want to know who you’d want as a dinner guest. ![]() Far above the roof rain clouds slide like ice floes.Ĭarol and Tom order coffee the next day at the Avondale Diner. He stirs in troubled sleep as the dark spills from his eyes and dreams of a place more real than the room where they sleep. The smell of rain miles downwind sifts into the room. He starts to nod off with the night tide. What was the cheese that makes you see things? Stilton? Wensleydale? What else had he eaten? Rye bread? He watches her breathe. Lit like a Joan Semmel nude with phone and charging block. Just enough blue light from her phone charger to see her wonderful form in the dark room. ![]() Carol’s breathing becomes regular and slow. As if someone burned his retinas with a laser pointer that made pictures. He still sees faces whether eyes open or close, though they fade. When he comes a flash of faces in darkness strike his sight. “I think the light changed and your eyes changed with it.” She stares. “Wow,” he says as regular time begins again. They smile at each other for a few moments. So many colors in her iris he first thought were green. It takes more time to properly study them. Then Tom feels others watching as he submerges into her gaze. Tom sees that her eyes are not green or blue but a color he’s never seen. Seconds slow to huge spaces of complete silence. Carol shifts uncomfortably as well…but they continue to stare into each other’s eyes. That he missed some whiskers when he shaved that morning. By minute two thoughts flit across Tom’s mind that Carol can’t possibly miss how plain, ordinary and asymmetrical his face is. I’ll set my timer on my smart watch.”Īt first it’s funny and awkward. “Can we stare into each other’s eyes for five minutes? It’s an old thing you read about in psychology and fashion magazines. “And this, the bronze, the tree, the storm…how rare. Above the atrium roof glass, thunder cracks as lightning etches fractal dendritic lines across the sky. Tom notes a bronze cauldron griffin head set on a pedestal by the peeling tree. The tree’s bark peeled off in great patches of gray-white wood beneath compels the mind to make ineffective attempts to find a pattern, a clue. They take two cocktails each to an inside table by a huge American sycamore tree under a large glass atrium. They drink the new cocktail devised by the bartender. They go to the Fairchild Bar late afternoon at the Temple of Zeus museum. Evidently, the money is better in advertising than ancient language.Ĭarol calls him the next day. The graphic artists conference was moved to the Four Seasons. They finish a comparison of Radiolab and 99% Invisible and other podcasts before Tom learns he’s in the Tristate regional classics professors conference that Carol helped organize. She untucks an Apple Pencil from his ear. The background music is Itzhak Perlman playing a Paganini piece. He doesn’t recognize any other graphic artists. He ponders this when he goes to a cocktail party at the Marriott bar. It’s like a geographical part of his childhood sinks into darkness. Like all kids that grew up in one area, wherever they go, they carry that neighborhood with them. She and he and a group of other kids spent their childhood in Galveston neighborhood. Still more than 300 deaths a year in a bathtub. They participated wholeheartedly in the annual Fantasy Fest, drunk and naked and partying. She’d moved to the Florida Keys with a sun-loving man. Martha Kirby, a childhood friend from his first-grade class, just died from slipping in a bathtub. They meet because Tom goes to the wrong party. Tom is a bit awed by her grasp of things so ancient with the familiarity of others who discuss the latest series they’ve binged on Netflix. She studies the primary meaning of words. Some local galleries display his oils and watercolors, but he makes steady money from coffee mugs imprinted with some of his best-known strips.Ĭarol Builderback is a classics professor who specializes in all the dialects of Attic Greek. He publishes an underground comic strip for years, but spends his days doing graphics for an advertising firm. Every time Tom and Carol fuck, Tom sees people.
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