a meeting

i can actually cook fiddlehead ferns

he flies her out with his business travel rewards points. her whole grilled fish arrives already soggyskinned, so she takes her time on the picture. the hotel is in an office park (he has three roommates). the view from the bed is a billboard for a plastic surgeon.

he shows her “drive” (2011) first. she calls him by his username once. when he wakes up in the middle of the night she is on her phone. sneaking a glance he feels relieved to see she’s reading a pdf of a biography of wittgenstein. but she has never been on libgen in her life.

the grocery store in the morning is two tiers above his usual. he lets her think it’s his usual. the fiddlehead ferns she picks up are two tiers above what she normally cooks. she lets him think she can cook them. rotisserie chicken in bed. the face looking in on them seems more beneficent in the afternoon light. still, she finds herself sometimes turning from him to her phone with the impulse to dm him.

on the strength of this weekend they fantasize for months about dying old in the same bed. never mentioning the fantasies, they speak to each other less & less.