15 December 1988

[noteful]

[Correspondance, November to December, 1988]

Meg steps into Marie-Laure and Sylvie's cafe a full half hour before she's scheduled to meet Dave there. She only has to wait five minutes for a table, and then settles into the chair that faces the door, so she can see, and be seen by, anyone arriving.

And because she has twenty-some odd minutes to kill, Meg pulls a notebook out of her bag and begins working on her packing list for her Christmas trip to see Kim in England.

It passes the time.

(And it needs to be done.)

Comments

[oftheaxe]

There's a number of answers to that question. Dave picks the easiest one, with a wry smile: "Because Vincent didn't."

[noteful]

"Ah."

She considered studying anything but medicine for a while, last fall.

Not for long, but for a while.

"Do you like it?"

[oftheaxe]

Dave hesitates.

"Some things about it," he says, after a moment, "but it's not the only thing I can imagine doing.

"How about you? With the biology?" Dave didn't hang out with so many premeds in undergrad - well, he didn't hang out with that many people, period - but they do have a reputation.

[noteful]

"I love it.

"Which I know makes me sound like . . . but I really do."

She's good at it and it suits her.

What's not to like?

[oftheaxe]

"I guess everyone has their - you know. Their thing," says Dave, Warrior of the Axe. "You don't really pick it so much as figure out what it is."

[noteful]

"I don't know," Meg says.

On the one hand, there are things that Meg is definitely more given to by nature than others.

On the other, that's getting closer to fate and the like than Meg is comfortable with.

"So what do you do when you're not being a lawyer?"

[oftheaxe]

"I play basketball," Dave offers.

He's pretty glad to have a nice normal hobby right now.

[noteful]

Kim mentioned that.

"I know very little about basketball, I'm afraid."

Except that it helps to be tall.

[oftheaxe]

"I'm not sure it's that interesting a game to watch. Fun to play, though. That's actually how I knew Paul and -

"Uh, I don't know if you ever met Kevin."

[noteful]

"Just in passing," Meg says. "Before . . . everything. When he was dating Jennifer, and I was visiting Kim."

[oftheaxe]

"That would've been kind of a long time ago, now," Dave says - sounding more startled to realize that than anything else.

[noteful]

"About four years."

Since she met Kevin.

Not quite that long since her sister went off to another world.

[oftheaxe]

"Yeah," Dave says, and takes a sip of his chocolate to take time to think of something else to say.

He'd vaguely known that Laine had a hot blonde girlfriend around that time, he guessed. She'd come to games sometimes. He didn't know her name; he just kind of figured the whole thing was typical Laine, at the time.

[noteful]

It was a different time. For all of them.

Meg turns her bracelet around her wrist.

"Anyway," she says.

"Baseball, I follow. And hockey, though that's more by osmosis than any real effort on my part.

"My boyfriend is a Canadiens fan."

[oftheaxe]

"They're pretty good," Dave says.

Dilemma: he could easily talk hockey for a while, but he suspects Meg's eyes might end up glazing over relatively fast.

"You ever go to the live games?"

[noteful]

"Sometimes.

"When he makes me."

Though her tone makes it clear there's not a whole lot of coersion going on there.

"It's more fun to watch live, honestly.

"And they're having a good season."

[oftheaxe]

"So they are. Damn French," says Dave, in a tone that makes it clear he's joking.

"Did you see in last week's game, when -"

Dave can, as it happens, talk hockey for a while. It's a nice, neutral subject that they're both reasonably knowledgeable and enthusiastic about - more than enough to fill half an hour or so, before they've both drained their drinks and are ready to be on their respective ways.