‘Ya’ll just too fascinated with Floccinaucinihilipilification.’ Ben said as they judged the french fries. And it was true, in a way. Molly and Stan had known each other since the tennis academy¹. They met in the halls outside the locker rooms and developed an almost-unnatural friendship almost-instantly. Never once had they just enjoyed a thing. A thing, to them, was made to dissect, to deconstruct, to disassemble, to be swallowed whole and batted about between, respectively, the first two and back seven teeth so that the full of it would be balanced on the vitally important papillae and transmit the implicit flavors that would allow a judgement to be rendered, delivered, and ultimately spat in the faces of those with lesser and inferior tastes².

Ben was Stan’s roommate, but he never really understood Stan’s life. Ben had no idea why one Bill Blass Three Pen Set and one Bill Blass Pen and Pencil Set would illustrate something about the person who made the purchase³. Molly and Stan knew better. They knew all the secrets. They could look at a pair of shoes and know immediately if they were the very latest or the most recent. They could spy a Hello Kitty charm from across the room⁴ and they were both charter members of P.E.G.A.S.U.S. (People Engaging Great Attention to Seek Useless Stuff). P.E.G.A.S.U.S. met in the little wooden room above the dining hall and looked out of the window at the scorched field that used to be the start of pre-war New Hampshire. Passing remarks about the poor design of the newest basketball shoes were traded and then the meeting would vote to adjourn and have pizza and Coke Zero.

‘What would you have us do, Ben?’ Molly asked him. It had been so long since his previous line of dialogue that Ben had forgotten what he had said and could not immediately answer. Molly would not repeat herself⁵ and Stan was seemingly disinterested in the direction this specific conversation had turned. So the three just sat, quietly, not really paying attention to the special news report about the dwindling Atlantic fish population and the coming global eco-crisis that would result. They waited for someone to act so that someone would have something to judge, and as they hung on the desperate potential that was no longer immediately apparent and ignored the four Bill Blass pens and one Bill Blass pencil that were now somehow in the center of the table, none of them were able to shake the feeling that something really good⁶ was gone… forever.

1. Molly sold her prescription sinus medication in the same way she sold her love: to the rich and beautiful that were willing to offer her a sort of hiding place from her controlling parents.

2. This had always caused Stan trouble in life. When asked about his greatest (to that point) regret, Stan would remember when his then-living father had given him a pen and pencil set. It was from Bill Blass, and the father thought it would please the son. Stan nibbled on the end and tasted the metallic cinnamon and laughed in his father’s face, refusing the gift. Stan thought he was just being honest, and he was, but it was a foolish sort of honesty and it was poorly timed. He never had a chance to make amends.

3. Ben’s father was a sea captain who was in charge of the largest cruise ship the world had ever known. The ship was constantly in motion, back and forth, crossing the Atlantic, so Ben’s father was always needed and always hard at work. When Ben was “at home” on summer vacations, he would hit tennis balls off the edge of the ship in an attempt to murder as many fish as possible. He would be there for hours, day and night, sending hundreds of tennis balls into the ocean, one at a time. Ben’s therapist believed that this was the way Ben sought to take revenge against the ocean that his father loved more than his son. Ben thought it was just because he hated fish. They were slimy and the spines hurt his hand and they tasted bad and he wanted them to die. The crewmen never told Ben’s father what Ben did in his free time.

4. Stan had a secret collection of Hello Kitty memorabilia that was kept in a tin lunchbox hidden in his luggage and wrapped in a vintage Nick Cave concert shirt so no one would see. When Molly was elsewhere, he would take them out and appraise them. Stan did not tell anyone but he hoped to one day be an auctioneer and worked hard to speak quickly.

5. Molly never repeated herself under any circumstances. This led to a terrible incident where, as a child, she had been trapped in a well for two weeks, simply because she had exhausted every possible variation on ‘Help!’ in the first two hours and was unwilling to break her staunch artistic code. She eventually realized she could yell in Cantonese and, coincidentally, a family from Bejing was on a picnic close by. They only spoke Mandarin but since there was a voice coming from a well it was easy to figure the whole thing out and they sent the eldest son for help. Molly was rescued and began to study linguistics. The eldest son received a two pack of Bill Blass pen and pencil sets with a total of five writing utensils as a reward but they were confiscated when he returned to China.

6. Rest in peace, David Foster Wallace.

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