here

    ‘ i owe her a favour. i owe her a few, actually. and i’m pretty sure she’s writing them down, somewhere, because she always knows exactly how much i owe her. ’

     ‘ i don’t – know. i figure we can settle on maybe for now and circle back if we feel like it. ’  he sticks out so sorely that he could be crashing, but there is a very real chance someone dragged him along as a plus one and promptly forgot they did.  ‘ – is it your birthday? her birthday? ’

     ‘ do you ever feel like, ’  he waves his cigarette around, almost knocking a snowballing clump of ash off the end,  ‘ maybe they had a point back in the – eighteen – seventeen hundreds, or whatever, and an image really does capture a little piece of your soul forever? a tiny, tiny piece in each and every frame? ’

     ‘ you tell me, ’  he deflects easily.  ‘ romance or horror? perhaps something more avant-garde. ’

     ‘ that’s actually – ’  he pokes his head up from behind a camera. they’ve just discarded the very well (and naturally!) lit piece of trash he’d been filming rising and falling with the wind.  ‘ – very stupid, i know. but – maybe it’s for the best. maybe you’ve just saved me from myself. ’

     ‘ don’t i know you from somewhere – ’  he squints, trying to reconcile two warring, blurring images. don’t feel terribly special, he could have used that line with just about anyone in here. c’est california.  ‘ this isn’t your party, is it? ’

a slow, tall shrug.  ‘ i think it’d depend on the movie. ’

     ' i don’t know if that’s possible. ’  like, have you met her?  ‘ she did invite me. just not to stay. ’

     ‘ i’d think you would, too. ’  he lets that float in the air for a second or two, before letting it evaporate:  ‘ i’m not staying here. ’

    ‘ same answer. ’

   he thought that was obvious:   ‘ for nora, of course. why are you here, if it sucks so bad? ’

     ‘ me? no. no, no. ’  he laughs, terribly good natured and friendly. it is absurdly clear from the very first moment of conversation that he does the heavy lifting in whatever relationship he and nora have.  ‘ do i sound like i’m from here? they have some kind of accent, surely. the locals. just to paint all the outsiders with a great big red ‘x’. ’

     ‘ to illinois? ’  you must really be something, huh.  ‘ it seems much too quiet a place for her. i guess this is the sort of place people mean when they call a town sleepy. i don’t know how she can stand it at all. ’

    ‘ i see. ’  he says in a way that could only be described as ‘knowingly’, though whether or not he knows anything or just pretends to is up in the air.  ‘ i didn’t know she was living with someone. though, it does sound like her to keep that quiet, doesn’t it? ’