Hope and Joy Are Leaving for the Coast

What?

I said, ‘Hope and Joy are leaving for the coast.’ They just gave their two weeks’ notice.

Oh. Hardly seems fair.

‘All’s fair in—’ Well, whatever it is we do here.

What do we do? Now, I mean?

I expect we’ll get by. We did before they got here.

I suppose.

Have you noticed that the sun is always shining through that window?

I don’t see the problem with that. Maybe I should friend them.

Befriend.

No, friend. Friending. To friend.

Sounds aggressive.

It’s an Internet thing.

Oh. Like pornography?

Sort of.

I see. It’s just that this window faces east, or west, so you’d think, given that the sun rises, so to speak, in the east, and sets, as it were, in the west, that at one of those points it would no longer be directly outside this window.

Oh. I tried to follow them, you know, and they blocked me.

Stalk.

No, follow. Following. To follow.

Another pornologism.

If you like. They won’t let me see their pictures.

It doesn’t bother you that the sun is just always there? Never moving?

We don’t know where it goes when we’re not here. Probably it goes somewhere else. I should think.

Well.

Where on the coast?

A house, probably.

You never know. Hope and Joy. Maybe they’ll live in a yurt.

Or underwater.

Underwater in a yurt.

Defeats the purpose of the yurt though.

Say that to the yurt.

I’m not cruel.

You may be. Now. Hope and Joy leaving.

Oh. Hadn’t thought about that.

Maybe I’ll take up boorishness. I’ve always wanted to try it.

I think you’d be a good boor. You have the body for it.

You think so? That’s nice to hear.

It’s still there.

Maybe if you don’t look at it it’ll move.

Like Hope and Joy. Do you think we didn’t look at them enough?

View.

Pardon?

Never mind.

Quite.

What did we do, before?

Stare into the abyss of our own mediocrity, I think.

Oh. I mostly remember there being a lot of paperwork.

That too.