“In what way?”
“I never liked sweets. Especially chocolate. Hate it.” I shake my head and hold back my tongue, as though I might accidentally taste it on the air. “It has such a nasty aftertaste.”
“You poor thing.”
I stare up at her. Her voice is perhaps softer, but still very straight and stable in its pitch. I can’t tell if she’s making a joke.
Her eyes, finally dim again, catch mine. She just smirks at me. The gall!
I… I like it.
Not the time. I shouldn’t be letting my feelings push into romanticizing this. She’s recovering from actual grief, not making herself the target of my advances.
But… the matron’s works always play back. Back and back. And, they’re so obviously true. Of course the Great Ring planned everything. Of course itplanned out the best possible world. So of course everything that happens is making that best possible world.
Yet, it feels dramatically wrong to ever apply. Why couldn’t the Ring plan out a world that didn’t need premature death? Maybe it could’ve planned out a world without death for anyone? If I were the Ring, I’d give everyone the gift of necromancy and immortality, no strings, no—
I bite my lip before more blasphemy crawls out of my head. I love the Ring. It’s infinite in a way I can’t understand. I couldn’t replace it.
The music from the radio stops.
“Two tickets. Which…” Vincenza turns away from the sales booth to me. “They have a romance and a horror. Which one?”
“Is the romance straight?”
“Mmm… two men.”
Eh. I canreada romance with two men, but they’re always so visually uninteresting in movies. “Horror.”
She hands over a couple crescents. “The Silent Factory.”
“Here you go, Ma’am.” The clerk hands over two thin pieces of paper and a menu. “That’s just the one on the left.”
“Thank you.” Vincenza tosses me the menu and drives forward. “You can look at it.”
Popcorn, pizza by the slice, cheesy tortilla chips, and… other stuff. I don’t really feel like checking; I’m just vaguely aware that I’m not able to get myself to try any exotic foods, like ‘potato fries.’ Very strange.
I put down the menu. “Do they deliver the food to us?”
She parks us next to a post. “Luckily. I hate being forced to get out and walk while other people are driving in. What are you getting?”
“Well, I, uh, liked to get cheesy tortilla chips… Could we maybe split a slice of pizza?”
She leans over to scrutinize my menu. “‘Cheese flavored…’ Would you mind if the pizza wasn’t authentic in its topping?”
“Cheese flavored? Is that cheaper?”
She looks back at the item’s listing. “Slightly.”
“Oh—uh, you can get the cheaper option for both, then. I don’t want…”to burden her.
“Okay. I’ll ask them to give us thin slices.” She reaches out the window to pick a speaker off the post, clicking a button in the side.
Seconds pass before a crackly voice says, “hello, spot seventeen-D. I’m free to take your order.”
“Salted popcorn with extra butter flavoring and nutritional yeast, cheese-like tortilla chips, the single slice of cheese flavored pizza cut in two, and crushed red pepper flakes.” She pauses. “And a cherry seltzer.”
“Wait, make it two!”
