Dr. Stud

“Fantastic.”

“You know, you don't have to have the last word every time,” she informs me.

I start to say something, but then don't. Instead I raise my eyebrows and stare at her meaningfully until she realizes she just had the last word. So there.

Silence falls between us, uncomfortable and dense. This house, along with the other nine just like it on this block, has been here for over a hundred years. Makes you wonder how many uncomfortable silences has fallen in this very room over that time.

I look around some more, noting the pictures on the wal

l, the wallpaper in the dining room. She has very good taste, combining things that are sixty years old with things that are eighty or ninety years old. It's a tough look to pull off.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Nine years,” she answers.

“Oh,” I reply, letting the silence fall again.

After a few long moments, she looks up again. “I won a prize. For writing. Right after college. A big one. So I bought this place.”

“I’m impressed,” I tell her honestly. These Greystones aren’t cheap. Must have been a hell of a prize.

“Yeah, so that’s why I would like to get back to that sort of writing. You know. The good stuff, as you like to say.”

I smile, hoping she’ll smile back. “It’s what you deserve.”

But she's not moving. She hunches around her mug of tea, scowling at the top of it.

“Looks like you have got a lot on your mind. Want to talk about it?” I ask her carefully.

She looks up again at me, almost started. Then, the usual screen falls in front of her face, concealing her emotions again.

“Talk?” she repeats, as though the concept is ridiculous.

“Yeah, have a conversation. People do that.”

She shifts, finally sitting back a little bit, perhaps relaxing just a little bit.

“Are we in a talking relationship? Is that something we do?”

“Well, we're never going to know unless we give it a try,” I shrug.

“You're serious,” she scowls, squinting at me. She looks me over for a long time, as though checking for signs that I'm not serious.

“Totally. What's on your mind? Something wrong? How's the book going?”

She perches her elbow on the arm of the chair and drops her forehead against her palm, slumping even more. Part of me is relieved to see that I have found a way in, danced around those defenses just enough. She's about to tell me something that's on her mind, and I have to admit that feels pretty good. Just a slight concession toward trusting me.

“The book is going… well, I suppose it's pretty good. There certainly a lot of it, anyway.”

“Already? That was fast.”

She smiles with her lips still closed, though there is a tinge of something else there too, almost like sadness.

“Sometimes things just go really fast. Like, you barely need to plan them. They shoot off in one direction like a runaway train.”

“That's a good way of describing us,” I smile. She smiles back, then catches herself.

“Us?” she repeats, quirking an eyebrow at me. “You mean our arrangement?”