OK, what the fuck happened last night?
Paul had been asking himself that question for a while now. From immediately after leaving Hanrahan's bar, heading back to his apartment, up until this morning where it was still fresh at the top of his mind.
There had been work. The accident at work. But he had recovered? He had gotten home, something to drink, cleaned up, and then hunger had hit him. The bar was close by, did a decent shepherds pie, and it was familiar.
That familiarity had been nice, calming. He'd talked with Bill. Ordered the pie. Gotten a drink. Then that woman, Dana, had walked in. We had a bit of a chat and then things went sideways. Sideways in a good way, but sideways.
"I had struck out, obviously." He continued to deconstruct the events of last night as he stood in the shower, hot water beating onto his back. "She had turned me down, insinuated I could only get with farm animals, and then she changed her mind."
The why she had changed her mind still stuck out to him as weird. There had been zero lead up. Zero indication that things were going in that direction. But in the end, she had practically dragged him into the bathroom.
This train of thought continued to run loops in his mind the whole time he was getting ready for the day. It circled round and round as he got dressed, ate breakfast, prepped lunch, and threw on his backpack. The steps down to the street went by in a flash.
The outside air was strangely refreshing as he stepped out of his apartment building. It was as if he had a whole new lease on life in front of him. Or perhaps it was because he finally got some action last night. Perplexing action, but action nonetheless.
The perplexed feeling followed Paul the entire way to campus. Up the steps of the science building, dogging him with every step. All the way into the classroom for his first class of the day, Organic Chemistry. It continued to nag at him right up until he was interrupted.
"Well well well. Look who doesn't look like death warmed over today." Angela, Paul's co-worker and also classmate, grabbed a spot next to him in the lecture hall. "How ya feeling?"
"Surprisingly good actually!" Paul shuffled his backpack around to make space for hers. "Turns out that when you get drenched in plant goo, the cure is shepherds pie."
"I wouldn't have made that connection, not in a million years." She sat down in the chair next to Paul and started taking her notebook out. "I would have figured it was more like a shower in glyphosate."
"That stuff got banned for good reason." He dragged his own notebook out of his bag now that he had been shaken out of his contemplative fugue. "I don't want to turn into a walking sack of cancer, no thank you."
"Well you're looking better, which is good." Angela flipped open her notebook to a blank page. "You sure sound like you bounced back at least. Got some timbre to your voice."
Suddenly extremely conscious of what he sounded like, Paul cleared his throat. "Oh really? I can't tell."
"Well that has something to do with how close your ears are to your skull I think." She started doodling a little cartoon skull in the top margin of the page. "I believe it's because your vocal chords are directly impacting the ear drums."
"look at you being all knowledgeable." He twisted his torso, and laid an elbow on the desk. "You'd think you go to college or something."
"And people would think you don't." Angela finished the little drawing and shot him a look. "Mr. Fighting pandas as excuses for when you visit the bar."
"Hah! My bar trawling has no impact on the rest of my life." Paul lied. "Although, speaking of, something strange happened last night. I had ordered a pie..."
The door to the classroom opened and the professor entered in a flurry of coat, bag, and general busyness. "Right right, sorry folks, got caught up in traffic. We'll get started in a minute."
"Tell you later." Paul whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
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Later turned out to be lunchtime.
Angela had been hounding Paul about this mystery through two other classes. He had originally intended to give her a brief recounting of the 'encounter' he'd had with the Dana woman, but her insistence at attempting to drag the story out of him had made resisting a bit more fun.
"Come on." She spoke into the back of his head as they stood in line for the public microwaves. "We're science buddies, lab partners, dos amigos. Tell me already."
"Just building the suspense." Paul shifted his posture to the other side as everyone took a single step forwards. "Wouldn't want to ruin the surprise."
Angela loomed, she was good at looming. "If this is not like the absolutely best most amazing story you've ever had happen to you, I will hurt you."
"My stories are always amazing and always true." Another step. There were multiple microwaves. "It's just such a shame that you never believe me when I tell them to you."
"Oh yeah, I totally believe the time you took on the biker mice from mars and foiled their attempt to blow up city hall." She stared hard, attempting to bore holes into the back of his lying head. "You don't even know where city hall is."
"Big marble building, downtown, has those columns." Paul was confident.
"That's an old bank that is now owned by a financial services company focused on private high net worth individual investment." She stated with REAL confidence.
"Wait what?" He looked back over his shoulder as the line shuffled forward. "How do you know that?"
"Have you never been curious as to who owns our lab?" Their eyes finally meeting. "Ever considered why it was operated the way it is? Why nothing ever gets replaced?"
Paul turned forward and saw he was next in line for an open microwave. "I figured it was financial..."
"Yup, but it's not because it's a scientist being bad at finance. It's because it's finance guys being bad at science." Angela got her own microwave. "I hear they're just wringing every last penny out of the place before they close it all up, sell the building, Offload all the loans, then declare bankruptcy."
Two minutes twenty seconds on the timer. "Well huh, didn't figure you to be so interested in that side of things." Paul's beans and rice started rotating in the metal humming box.
"I got my sights set high is all." Her food starting spinning as well. "Girls go to college to get more knowledge. Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider." She sang.
"Hey, I resemble that remark!" He had to speak a bit louder over the microwaves hum. "Especially the going to Jupiter part." She gave him a disappointed look. "Two weeks ago, lovely this time of year, bit breezy though."
"It's a gas giant with wind speeds in the hundreds of kilometres per hour."
"Yes, breezy." Paul's microwave beeped and he extracted the hot container.
Angela's own meal beeped not too much later and she followed Paul as they both commandeered a table to eat at. There was a certain amount of stirring, blowing on the first hot bites, then chowing down on their packed lunches.
Paul had his rice and beans. A poor students special. Angela was doing better and had spaghetti in meat sauce. Not much better, but better.
