"Does your arm bother you?"
"No."
It wasn't the answer that shocked the Lab Coat Man, but the fact that he had replied at all. "Good! I mean… too bad! Good that you answered one my questions, but too bad that — wait, what made you finally answer one of my questions?"
Kurt pondered this for a moment. "I don't know. I just got bored."
The Lab Coat Man reached for his pen in order to mark an 'X' on his clipboard, stopped, and sighed.
18. One Too Many
"A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise…. Because
that is how life is — full of surprises."
— Isaac Bashevis Singer
Julia never lost that feeling of uneasiness, so she and Rhonda had left before the screening of "Bride". As Rhonda drove them past the usual road signs and over predictable bumps, Julia became aware of the magnitude of what had happened. She had lost her job and gotten a new one all in one night; she had felt something that she had always assumed was a figment of her uncle's imagination — possibly the first symptom of a mental illness; she had sat through one of the worst films she had ever witnessed without finding an excuse to leave. Everything that she had ever assumed about this dreary town, small in both size and its collective capacity to imagine, about her life, and just about everything else now seemed strange and unfamiliar. On top of this, Rhonda, after shifting into third gear, was running a hand up her thigh.
"Uh, I'm, uh… I'm straight," said Julia.
Rhonda muttered something and shifted into fourth, charging through the intersection of Central and Oak just as the light changed to red.
When Julia finally unlocked her apartment door, she found Cecil and two messages on the machine waiting for her. Cecil purred and rubbed her shins with his head. She picked him up and pressed play on her answering machine.