don’t get out of bed before nine, which’ll be noon for you.”
“I remember when you habitually got up at five.”
“Yeah, because you were up and active and eager at eight, and because I had people enforcing a tyrannical and unreasonable bedtime on my growing mind.” She smiles over her shoulder. “I keep different hours now.”
He lifts his head and smiles back. They’re falling more and more into sync lately; not enough that she’s worried the quantum entanglement is getting worse, but enough that she once again truly believes he’d be there to catch her if she fell. (Quantum entanglement is still their best way to describe the situation, despite carefully asked questions directed at the physicists they know. What they’re experiencing is, if not unique in the annals of human history, at the least unusual and bizarre. This has also made them cautious when it comes to looking for additional information. Exploring a strange phenomenon from the comfort of their respective apartments is one thing. Doing it from someone else’s lab is something else altogether.)
“And I’ve learned how to read a clock,” he says. “I won’t wake you up. Although I may scold you if you’re still awake when I’m going to bed. You have to sleep sometime, Dodge. Not sleeping is not good for you.”
“Says the man who stayed awake for three days reading and analyzing a bunch of books in ancient Sumerian. For fun.”
“It was fun,” he says, turning on the bed to face her. “I had a question for you, if you’ve got a second.”
“Is this ‘got a second’ in the ‘you can keep working’ sense, or in the ‘please cap your pen and give me your full attention, this is important’ sense?” Dodger keeps writing. She’s running out of room at eye level; soon, she’ll have to kneel, and eventually lie flat on her belly, numbers and figures unspooling from her pen, Scheherazade of the mathematical world. Roger rarely knows what she’s working on. The few times she’s tried to explain, he hasn’t been able to follow beyond the superficial level. He’s stopped asking. It’s worth it to see how happy it makes her.
“The latter, if you don’t mind.”
Dodger pauses. “Let me get this down,” she says, and writes double-speed until she reaches the end of the line. Then she caps her pen and turns, sinking to the floor as she does. It’s like watching a crane fold itself into its nest, an impossible amount of material compacting into something equally impossibly small. She cocks her head to the side, and asks “Are you about to ask me to move in with you? Because I think it’s a bad idea. I’ve been doing some research—not into the physics, just into the math—and I have concerns—”
“Many of which keep me awake at night, believe me,” says Roger. “I don’t want to get a place together for a lot of reasons. That’s one of them. Trying to explain you to any girls I happen to bring home is another.”
“Most people on campus believe I’m your sister. Not that it matters. Any girl worth dating would listen when we both told her nothing like that was going on between us.”
“I agree with you. But twenty years of romantic comedies do not agree with you, and they sort of make things complicated when, say, I bring a girl home and you’re just getting out of the shower, so the first thing she’s confronted with in my swinging bachelor pad is my wet, half-naked, redheaded sister.”
“Everyone knows redheads are insatiable sex machines,” says Dodger blandly. “With our freckles and our math and our eschewing dating because it takes up so much time that could be spent on doing other things.”
“Not everyone skips out on the dating part of their college experience.”
“Not everyone enjoys having free time.”
Roger shrugs. “We all prioritize what we enjoy. Can we get back on the topic?”
“I wasn’t aware we’d left the topic. I don’t know what the topic is.”
“You interrupted me before I could get there,” he protests. “It’s about my parents.”
Dodger goes still. Roger settles in to wait. He’s seen her do this a few times before: he understands what’s happening. Words aren’t her forte, exactly. She can carry on a conversation easily enough, and she isn’t stupid, but sometimes the subtler meanings of language escape her. When that happens, and she knows it’s important, she shuts herself down, blocking out all extraneous input, and digs straight into the issue. What is he really asking? Why