Page 29 of One Adult, Please

"Dessert armory," I repeat. The words feel good. They feel like putting on a shirt that fits better than the one you were already wearing. "That's... yeah. That's what that is."

"Obviously." She turns back to the gangplank and resumes her descent.

Joel's still at the mainmast. He watched the entire exchange. His face didn't change. But there was a micro-calibration in the way he's standing.

They've known each other for a day. Maybe less. And he already translates her in real time. Like he's installed a Grace-to-English filter and it runs in the background and costs him nothing.

They've built a system. In a day.

I want in.

I was fine alone before the outbreak. I've been fine alone during it. I'll probably be fine alone after it, if there is an after, And if there isn't then I'll be fine alone in whatever this becomes. Alone is my operating temperature.

My apartment had one chair. One plate. One fork. Because that's how many of those things I needed and I don't buy things I don't need. Data entry teaches you that. Everything has a field. Everything goes in a cell. One chair, one plate, one fork, one person. The math is clean.

But Grace said "we're keeping the park" and some cell that's been empty got a value entered into it. I don't know what the value is yet but it's there and it's not going away. The math isn't clean anymore and I think I might be okay with that.

Which is new.

"Beck, are you coming?" She's at the bottom of the gangplank.

Joel's behind her, already on the dock, wrench in hand, scanning the perimeter.

"Coming." I grab a tote bag, one of the ones she brought, canvas, turquoise, Wondie giving a thumbs up.

I clip the axe to a loop of ride-harness webbing on the fish vest with a carabiner I took from the rock-climbing exhibit. I look like the final boss of a game that couldn't decide on a genre.

The funnel cake stand is called Ye Olde Funnel Forge, because everything in Mythic Frontier is "Ye Olde" something, a naming convention that I'm sure someone in marketing was very proud of and that someone in historical accuracy was very upset about.

It's tucked into the corner of the castle courtyard, between the blacksmith exhibit and a face-painting booth that still has a laminated menu of options taped to the counter: butterfly, dragon, superhero, princess, skull. The skull option seems prophetic now.

Grace approaches the fryer with the reverence of a pilgrim approaching a shrine. She sets the friendship paddle against the counter.

"Okay," she says. "Funnel cake protocol. What's the batter situation?"

"Dry mix in the storage cabinet. Bags of it." I open the cabinet under the counter. Stacked bags of funnel cake mix, the institutional kind, just-add-water. "We've got enough for hundreds of cakes."

I turn up the burner and watch the thermometer begin to climb while Grace investigates the dry mix.

"Hundreds." She says this number like it's a unit of hope. "Hundreds of funnel cakes, Joel."

Joel's standing at the edge of the courtyard, watching the perimeter. He turns his head enough to acknowledge her but keeps his eyes on the sightlines. "I heard."

"Hundreds of funnel cakes is a civilization. That's infrastructure. That's culture. You can build a society on funnel cakes."

"You can't build a society on funnel cakes," Joel says.

"Name one society that wouldn't be improved by funnel cakes."

Joel doesn't answer . I think it's because he can't. She's right. She's always right. She's right in the wrongest possible way and it's starting to make me dizzy.

I show her how to mix the batter. She asks questions. She holds the measuring cup with both hands because funnel cake batter is precious now and I'll defend this position academically.

"You pour in a spiral," I say. "Start from the center, work outward. Keep the stream thin."

"A spiral. Like a snail."

"Sure. Like a snail."