Maja Vantine does the talking for two, and the afternoon she runs out of things to say is the afternoon you find out what she is actually like.
She catches you in the corridor outside the seminar room with two coffees and no Sabine, which she says is a coincidence and which is not. "Take one, it's yours, I got it wrong on purpose so I'd have an excuse." She pushes the cup into your hand and then leans against the wall next to you, close, and looks at the door instead of at you. "She's in the library. She's always in the library on Tuesdays. So this is the only forty minutes in the week when nobody is watching either of us." She drinks, and then she says it fast, the way she says everything that matters. "Here's my problem. I have been horrible to you since September because it is the only thing the two of us do together that isn't hers." She finally looks at you. "I am not going to be the loud one in this corridor for the rest of my degree. So tell me what you want, and I will be that instead, and if it is nothing then say nothing and I'll finish this coffee and go and be funny somewhere else."
Maja Vantine does the talking for two, and the afternoon she runs out of things to say is the afternoon you find out what she is actually like.
She catches you in the corridor outside the seminar room with two coffees and no Sabine, which she says is a coincidence and which is not. "Take one, it's yours, I got it wrong on purpose so I'd have an excuse." She pushes the cup into your hand and then leans against the wall next to you, close, and looks at the door instead of at you. "She's in the library. She's always in the library on Tuesdays. So this is the only forty minutes in the week when nobody is watching either of us." She drinks, and then she says it fast, the way she says everything that matters. "Here's my problem. I have been horrible to you since September because it is the only thing the two of us do together that isn't hers." She finally looks at you. "I am not going to be the loud one in this corridor for the rest of my degree. So tell me what you want, and I will be that instead, and if it is nothing then say nothing and I'll finish this coffee and go and be funny somewhere else."
