“Thanks for you patience, Rhoda. I hadn’t expected to interview for several days and still not be done. Question four: is one sense more highly developed than another?” I ask.
“I think I hear quite well. In crowds I never have trouble hearing voices I focus on. I see some people cup their ears in a market to hear better.” She demonstrates. “I never have to do that. Same with kegshops.”
“I do that in bars all the time.”
“Bars?”
“Uh, what you’d call a kegshop. I hear everything fine. I just can’t sort it out.” I check my notes for the next question. Something ought to be good in here…”Here we go. Do you usually notice problems around you?”
She looks at me then cocks her head slightly, so I repeat the question. She interupts, “I heard.” She shifts her weight in the chair to sit straighter. Her finger tip strokes the contour of the dagger’s sheath, but she never looks down. “No. No, not really.” She nods while answering negatively, so I know she’s partly lying.
“That can’t be true.” I call her bluff but lead in with some flattery before she can deny it again, “A smart woman like you can certainly sense how others feel and guess something of their motives or intentions?”
“I want to say yes, but I don’t think I’m good enough at that yet to sure.”
“OK. Fair enough. Would you say you are an optimist or a pessimist?”
“Pessimist for sure. The youngest sees too much coming down not to think it’ll be bad before it gets good. If it gets good.”
“Are you more interested in the past, the future or living in the now?”
She puffes air like she might blow away a fly. “Right now’s fine for me.”
“How do you decide if you can trust someone?”
“We share the same mother.”
I leave the air quiet. I don’t glance to my notes. I pretend she has more to say…and she does.
“I suppose their are other people I trust in different ways. Or maybe should trust more, but for now family will do just fine.”
“OK. That usually works out to be true.”
“You don’t think?”
I shrug. I don’t want to give away that I’m thinking of some authorial way to fuck her over now that she’s said that. “I think everyone has their own agenda. I think that in families that’s usually down the same sort of path, its easy to be trusting. There’s not much conflict, but I also think in families it’s easy to take minor differences of opinion too personally. Actions you might forgive your friends for you won’t family.”
“OK,” she says. She doesn’t believe me. Crap, this’ll be too easy I think.
“Are you a deliberate, careful speaker, or do you talk without thinking first?”
“I say what I feel. Sometimes I temper that. I’m told I should try harder, but can’t understand the point of it.”
506 words on day 594