19. Time is a Liar

"It's like you climb in bed one night, and you wake up, open your eyelids, and then you get up, and then another set of eyelids pop."
"Pop?"
"Just about everybody reports the same feelings, uses the same metaphors, including calling it a pop."
"That's a new one."
"What they report is that their universe starts to feel like a big, largely empty high school gymnasium."
"I know. With merry-go-rounds."
"And gravity and everything else like before except the..."
"Time seems stupid to you."
"That's right, Sylvia."

* * *

"Do you feel heartattacky right now?"
"Oh please."
"I'm serious. Last time you tried this... and you weren't even bloody. What happened to you?'
Tom was solemnly opening the package.
Sylvia's vocal intensity was diminishing. "It's just you know how I feel about... I don't understand why it hasn't happened to me, so I'm naturally..."
Then the two of them sat quite still at the round kitchen table in Sylvia's dining room.
They peaked over the edges of the wrapper as kids before a glowing cake.