Contemporaneous: Chapters 33 – 34
33. I want to think I’m being magnanimous when it comes to Melody, but there she is, chatting gaily with Shia, them casting occasional glances in my direction, followed by the occasional giggle. This is like high school etiquette, although I never truly engaged in it, always feeling like I was on the outer of some joke. Most people wouldn’t have let it bother them. Psychos would’ve stewed and plotted carnage. I was somewhere in the middle, stewing but impotent. Can you believe he thinks he can teach me how to write good? I imagine Melody saying. Have you read his books? Shia would shoot back. Why would I bother?…
Contemporaneous: Chapters 31 – 32
31. Now that Lana is staying over Sunday unfolds differently, as I wake earlier, then make us breakfast, and we sit together and watch one of the morning breakfast shows. She asks me what I’ve got on for the day, and I tell her my Sunday usuals, such as washing and shopping. I can hear her thinking, wanting to do something together, and sure enough she suggests an afternoon walk to Peggy’s, a café that’s reached through a rural thirty-minute walk down by murky river or other. So that’s the day set. After I see her out for the morning, I shower, throw all my stuff into the washing machine,…