He opens it and begins to pour into water cups. I assume that’s because they were closest, but I don’t know anything about wine, so maybe they’re the right glasses for this wine. “It’s not even noon.”
“No drinking before noon is a silly rule made up by Big Sobriety.”
I gasp a laugh, shocked that he made a joke. “You’re funny when you want to be.”
He frowns. “I was serious.”
When I squint at him, the corner of his mouth does that thing it does when he can’t hide his thoughts—a tight flick upward. He’s laughing on the inside, and he can barely contain it.
I grin at him, and he can’t hold back his smile any longer. Eventually, we take the food and the wine out to the balcony, and we eat at the small table out there with the sun moving across the railing. The pasta is very good. The wine is extraordinary.
We eat for a while in the easy quiet that’s been developing between us over the past weeks—the kind that doesn’t require filling, that doesn’t have any social anxiety in it. I’ve never really had that before with anyone, and it’s nice.
“Crazy to me that a forced letter of recommendation got me here.”
“Barely forced. I thought he might piss himself if he didn’t have a reason to leave me.”
“I would have paid to see that.” Just the thought of Reggie that scared is enough to make me smile. I’m not sure what that says about me. Does that even matter? I’m so far down the rabbit hole with Dario that things like morals feel vaguely optional instead of principles to live by.
“I’m sure I could get him to reenact it for you.”
“No, thanks,” I say, chuckling. “You are remarkably comfortable with blackmail. Has anyone ever told you that?”
He shrugs. “A psychologist or two. Blackmail gets a bad reputation because most people don’t use it right. But it’s a tool. Like a hammer.”
“You know what they say about hammers, right? That if that’s all you use, every problem looks like a nail?”
He noodles on that for a brief moment. “Guess I’m a carpenter, then.”
I snort at the thought. “You’re in a surprisingly light mood today. Any reason why?”
“Rough morning at Marco’s.”
“And that put you in a good mood?”
He nearly smiles. “I’ve often found that when I’m prone to dark thoughts, letting my outward self indulge in whimsy keeps me from saying those dark thoughts out loud or acting upon them. A distraction technique. Usually prevents me from acting irrationally.”
“You? Irrational? No!” I hope my sarcasm cracks through his thick skull.
He pauses, and I can’t tell if he’s considering what I just said or if he’s too lost in his own thoughts to notice my sarcasm. Dario’s brain moves a dozen levels at a time, and sometimes I struggle to keep up. I’m not sure if that’s because he’s so much smarter than me, so much crazier than me, or both.
He continues, “Which is not to say that all of my dark thoughts are irrational. Most of mine are not. They’re deeply rationalbut unacceptable to traditional society. So, avoiding acting upon them prevents me from unpleasantries like ostracization and prison.”
“By that logic, society is irrational.”
That gets a genuine laugh out of him. “Haven’t you noticed?”
“I mean, some parts are?—”
“Humanity is busy drinking, dosing, and fucking their meat sacks into oblivion, like they’re actively searching for the self-destruct button. They pollute their air, water, and land for the benefit of pieces of paper in a rancid contest to see who can collect the most of it. The powers that be pit genders, races, generations, sexualities, and religions against each other, all in the hope that no one notices that the powers that be have been doing this for thousands of years in order to manipulate people into giving them more money, land, resources, privileges… yes. Society is irrational. By design.”
I don’t know why I feel the need to defend society. But I find that I can’t. “For a man who does some questionable things, I can’t question that logic.” I clink my glass to his, and we drink.
I’m not much of a drinker, but we’ve nearly finished the bottle when my mind floats in wine. “None of this is what I thought my life would look like when I was twenty-one in a business school classroom.”
“What did you think life would look like?”
“I almost finished my degree,” I say, which isn’t something I’ve said out loud to very many people. “I was good at it. Really good at it, actually—I know that sounds like something people say, but I mean it with specifics. Financial modeling, market analysis,and strategy courses. I was the person people wanted to work with on group projects. The one people copied answers from on tests.”
