He should be ashamed, letting Jude push his buttons like a drunk mashing at piano keys, after all the times he told himself – if he laid eyes on Jude again, which he was never going to, so it was more like one of those abstract thought experiments than a serious resolution – that he could frame everything differently and do it better and somehow get on the same side of … whatever. The Situation. But here they are, fighting in a kitchen. Again. (Well, Near is fighting in the kitchen; can’t forget the Maginot line of not-tile vs. not-wood.) And nothing like shame has risen high enough above his frustration to make itself noticed.
Jude’s shoe lurches across the space between them.
That’s about right, isn’t it: Near may have raised his voice, he may have envisioned in vibrant detail hurling a variety of projectiles Jude’s way, but he has not in fact sunk to physical violence, a fact that provides a much-welcome toehold in the sheer cliff of moral superiority that he’s barely clinging to. Even though the lame throw plays out in semi-slow motion, he doesn’t step out of the way in time to avoid the shoe clunking against his shin before it falls to the floor, landing on its side like a dead plucked bird. He gives it a nudge with his own toe.
The last thing he expects is the hilarity that flash-floods up from nowhere and drags him away with it. Hard to tie it to a single thing, the shoe or the throwing of it or the thought of Jude limping across the parking lot half-shod or himself just standing there or the fact that Jude is here at all or how they met in the mall or how he’s put off a dinner date for this – but after a second or two, Near crumbles into spasms of genuine, unstoppable, breathless laughter.
Jude’s shoe lurches across the space between them.
That’s about right, isn’t it: Near may have raised his voice, he may have envisioned in vibrant detail hurling a variety of projectiles Jude’s way, but he has not in fact sunk to physical violence, a fact that provides a much-welcome toehold in the sheer cliff of moral superiority that he’s barely clinging to. Even though the lame throw plays out in semi-slow motion, he doesn’t step out of the way in time to avoid the shoe clunking against his shin before it falls to the floor, landing on its side like a dead plucked bird. He gives it a nudge with his own toe.
The last thing he expects is the hilarity that flash-floods up from nowhere and drags him away with it. Hard to tie it to a single thing, the shoe or the throwing of it or the thought of Jude limping across the parking lot half-shod or himself just standing there or the fact that Jude is here at all or how they met in the mall or how he’s put off a dinner date for this – but after a second or two, Near crumbles into spasms of genuine, unstoppable, breathless laughter.