Training Max: Chapter 6

 

Before sleeping, however, his sleepy mind took on a final memory (that was always the anteroom to dreams); this time of what he said to Chris one hour before leaving for the barracks:

“Take a little break from your writing, baby. Your prose is becoming full of white blood cells.”

A pause, as always. Then, what the fuck is that?, she thought, with both endearment and alarm. Did he mean what she thought he meant, or that her prose was her way of slowly being vulnerable, attacking her own immune system, laying herself bare for the entire world to see?

Chris, not knowing how exactly to respond, chose to side with scientific facts (which she knew he hated, but proceeded to give him anyway, characteristically unsure of herself). “I actually was given a CBC by this physician, and he said that my white blood cell count is off the charts. I was on the threshold for leukemia, not like my mother.” (Her mother had died of metastatic breast cancer four years before – finally leaving her an orphan save for a sister that lived two hundred kilometers away.)

Not knowing what to do with this information, either, and not being able to judge whether she was being facetious or not, he decided to make light of the entire exchange, saying, “What, after sucking him off the way you wanted to do with the Scot by the beach?” He added, though, out of nowhere, perhaps, or as attempt to soften his blow, “I love your laugh, baby. I am definitely addicted to your voice.”

He had risked a little jealousy, knowing that it was a self-chosen battle, and one that he would easily win. After having declared that she found Cillian Murphy the most beautiful man on the planet, he agreed, “He is. I suppose.” 

He is a man who chose his wars carefully, jumping into situations he knew he was a sure victor. He managed to do this by being excellent at chess, a fact that worried her, for she sucked at it. Her brain gets bogged down by even the possibility of having ten ever-exponential moves ahead. She did not inherit the skills of her father, who, on a Commodore 64, beat the grandmaster level by learning the algorithmic style of the first two. In all of her forty-one years the only games she mastered were Animal Crossing and RAN, obsessing with them for a few months and then dropping them for a year. (In the latter, moreover, she had built her character to be an absolute tank that entire parties cannot kill her, and would just leave her behind. “Fuck,  it's the madam. It’s Solinari,” they would chat.)

He admitted to her of a man better-looking than him: and having won that little and almost insignificant battle against jealousy by not writing about it, he deigned to call her the next day. Seeing her always made him smile; and hearing her laugh a soothing peace to his rather bored soul.

“Look at you, you beautiful mess,” he said by way of greeting.

She laughed at that. He was glad to hear it.