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arm against hers. Now that I’ve rebroken the ice, I knew I could rebreak the ice.
    When the read-through is over, Christine and I chat. We put away chairs together. I give her the rap about people not evolving pretty much exactly as Michael gave it to me the night before.
    “…And so it’s like we’re evolutionarily flat.”
    “Wow, that’s crazy.” She’s not betraying much. Her lips are pursed and that’s a good word for it, because they look like a purse, an upside-down pink purse designed
for a kangaroo rat or vole. “Don’t you think that people are evolving to become
smarter
?”
    “I think,” I pontificate, “that women are naturally selecting males who are more successful and rich, but that has not much to do with whether they’re smart.”
Heh-heh.
    “Oh, no,” Christine says, motioning with her hand for me to follow as she gathers her things. “Successful people are always smart.”
    “My dad’s pretty successful. He’s an idiot.”
    “That’s not nice. What’s he do?”
    “Divorce lawyer. What’s yours do?”
    “Executive ride supervisor at Great Adventure.”
    “Oh, well, that must be a great adventure for his career!”
    “Um…funny. He got fired, okay. He used to work for AOL—”
    “No! No…I was just, you know, trying to think of something witty to say, like a pun or whatever.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Sorry.” Pause. “I’m not a great conversationalist.”
    “But you were just having a conversation. We were.”
    “Yeah. Well. We’re not. Now.”
    “This is true.” Christine scrunches up her face. “You know what? I
hate
boys who are bad conversationalists.” She shakes her head. “It’s
insurmountable.”
    Dur
. Now she has her bag in her hands, but something’s missing from it that perturbs her. She bends over a theater seat looking at the floor. I want to find the missing item
desperately and be helpful. I think I’ve spotted it—a padded, white nub of material by her ankle. I reach down to pick it up; she leans back at the same time, sitting on my neck.
    “Ow!”
    “Hey!”
    “Gimme that!” Christine streaks down, pushes me away and grabs the item off the floor.
    “Sorry.”
    “Hgggg,”
she chortles, putting the thing in her purse. Then she looks at me as if under a new light (an angry light, not a good light). “Jeremy, you shouldn’t
touch girls’
stuff
.”
    “I was just trying to help.…”
    Christine walks away, so I walk with her; we pass through the doors of the theater together, separated only by the metal doorframe. “So I guess if your dad works at Great Adventure you
don’t have to worry about lines, right? I mean, lines at the rides. Not lines in the play. Heh-heh.”
    “Well…” Christine says. “First of all he’s a ride supervisor, not a ride operator. Which means he works in an office, not on the ride.”
    “Okay.”
    “But yes, they do have this policy, if you’re employee connected, where you walk up to the back of a ride and show them the special Great Adventure Friends and Family Card and then
they give you this slip of paper that tells you the approximate ride wait time—”
    “So?”
    “So don’t interrupt. So instead of waiting in line for forty-five minutes, you can do whatever you want for forty-five minutes and then come back and get right on.”
    “That’s awesome! How do I get one of those cards? Do I have to marry you?”
    Oh, shit. What did I just say?
    “Uh…” Christine looks at me like I grew out of the base of a tree. “You could develop leprosy and lose half your face—that would work. Then you could get a
handicapped pass.”
    We’re halfway down the hall, heading toward the exit. I’m thinking of some witty final statement to make up for the marriage thing (did she say something about leprosy?) when I spot
a figure at the doors: Jake Dillinger. He looks all Czechoslovakian-model-banging and student-governmental. He cups his mouth.
    “—Jeremy—” is all I can make from down the