"Of course you will."
"I told her I'd be there. She started sending me pictures of venues and I made the mistake of having an opinion about the lighting."
"You rated the lighting?"
"I rated the lighting. She sent me nine pictures and I gave her honest feedback on every one and now she wants me to come early and help with the setup." He is grinning as he pushes hishair back off his face. "I told her I'm a hockey player, not a wedding planner. She said those are the same skill set."
He shifts on the couch and looks at the book in my hand. "What are you reading?"
"A novel about a man standing in a rail yard."
"That doesn't sound like a novel."
"That's why it's good."
"How long has he been standing in the rail yard?"
"Two hundred pages."
"Is he going to leave?"
"I don't know yet."
"You are the most patient person I have ever met." He shakes his head. "I would have left the rail yard by page twelve."
"That's because you stop reading everything by page twelve."
"Fair point. I still say if the rail yard hasn't declared its intentions by page twelve, the rail yard is wasting your time."
"The rail yard is not wasting my time."
"The rail yard has definitely been wasting your time and you are defending it." He is laughing now. "This is who you are. You are a man who will sit in a rail yard for two hundred pages waiting for a sentence."
"And you're a man who would rate the rail yard before the train arrived."
"Is there a train?"
"I don't know. I'm on page 212."
"I’m calling it. There is no train." He pulls his other leg up and settles in for the debate. "I'm telling you right now. There is no train. The man is standing in a rail yard with no train and you have given this book days of your life."
"If there's no train, that's the book."
"If there's no train, that's a crime."
I get up and go to the kitchen to warm up the pork shoulder from last night. He sits across from me at the table and rates the reheated pork a seven-five.
"Seven-five is generous for a reheat," I say.
"Reheated protein always loses half a point for texture degradation. But the seasoning held, so the seven-five accounts for both the loss and the recovery."
"Texture degradation."
"It's a real thing. The fibers change. You know this."
"I know the food tastes the same."
"The food does not taste the same. The food tastes adjacent to the same, which is a different category."
