“Oh no, I’d be a terrible choice with my skillset. I don’t think preserving the works of an obscure self-taught Italian artist will be top priority when we’re barricading ourselves against the onslaught of zombies.”
“We’ll probably need someone to rescue all the physical evidence of humanity when we don’t have access to Wi-Fi. And you can draw comics. You’re extremely vital.”
I’m confident those two words have never been said to me. In fact, I think I was specifically called nonessential when I was “exited” from a remote assistant job after a week.
“So you just want to…talk? On the phone?” Just bringing the device to my ear causes my heart rate to increase.
“Yes?” He pauses. “Is that okay? Should I hang up and knock on the wall instead?”
“It’s just…Usually I text? I’m better at conversations when I can overthink my responses before they reach the other person.”
“Oh,” he says, and he’s so accommodating I wonder if he’s about to offer to hang up and send a text instead. “Well, I like to talk. There’s less miscommunication when you can hear someone’s voice. Why decipher words on a screen when we could just have a conversation? And if we text, you’ll notice all the typos from my fat thumbs.”
He’s right to be concerned about the typos—that is the sort of thing that can give me the ick. On the other hand, now I’m thinking about his hands again.
“I stopped by your apartment today,” he says. “I lent your mom my ladder.”
“You didn’t knock on my door.”
“There was some very deep snoring coming from your side of the wall this morning,” he says—to my horror. “I figured you were still asleep.”
I fib. “That was Houdini snoring.”
“The truth is, I didn’t want to ambush you. See? Very casual.”
“Extremely.” I’m picturing that goddamn continuum again.
“I had a very interesting conversation with your mom,” he says. “She really seems to want me to meet a friend of hers.”
I pause before asking, “Are you going to? I mean, do you want to meet her? Because it’s okay if you do.” I’m aware of how fast I’m talking now. “You don’t need to feel weird about it. I’m sure Shawna’s a really nice person—”
“So you know Shawna?”
“Not personally,” I reply. I’m not even sure my mom has actually met her. “But I think you should at least have…like a conversation?” My voice rises at the end of that statement like I’m very much not sure I want them to have a conversation. “You probably have a lot in common.”
There’s a long silence. Maybe I’m listening too hard for sounds I want to hear, but I think he opens his mouth to respond and then hesitates.
“No one’s ever tried to set me up before,” he finally says. “Should I feel flattered? Or like your mom is worried about my ability to meet women on my own?”
“She thinks you’re a very nice man. And it’s a truth universally acknowledged that the very nice single dad living next door must be in want of a wife.”
“What?” he laughs.
“It’s a Jane Austen thing,” I mumble. “Did you ever readPride and Prejudice?”
“I haven’t. But I listen to the score from the movie sometimes.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. It’s very relaxing,” he says. “I have the CD somewhere.”
“The CD?” I laugh. “Okay, Grandpa.”
“Hey, someday when the streaming model collapses and you lose instant access to every album you love, I’ll be in here listening to my physical media with uncompressed audio and high bit rate.”
“And I’ll be in here,” I reply, “pulling up my ‘old man yells at cloud’ meme.”
He laughs and I feel that little spark of delight again.
