Kathy watches the screensaver on the computer monitor. It’s the one where little white pixels that are supposed to be stars fly by, pass you, to provide the illusion of traveling through space.
Very Star Trek. Very retro.
Jack is on his cell phone, surfing the internet or something. Here, but not.
The joint clip smolders in the ash tray just before him.
Zoë smiles and slowly twirls her costume-jewelry necklace. It looks cheap. It’s probably expensive.
I’m thinking about the way it used to be.
Define it. College. People. The world. Life.
Before all the bullshit.
Before we all started pretending to be adults. When the world was what we could see and we could see whatever our limitless imagination could show us.
Before the humanization of the god. Before the sins of the father. Before the destruction of the friend. Before the de-idealization of love.
When we lived in the present and not through retrospect.
Before the forced concepts of the real.
Before we decided we had learned as much as we would, could, satisfied.
Before all our minds were made up.
“Stop narrating,” Kathy tells me, unmoved from her reclined pose against Jack.
Maybe.
I jar. I question if she's actually said this or if it’s a phantom thought.
“Bad,” she points at me. Pseudo-stern and playful.
I’m sure she's actually speaking now.
“No,” she says.
Smile back. Notice that Zoë doesn’t get it. Smile wider. More sinister. She smiles at Kathy too.