Chapter 164. She Acts, And Then Everything We Back Smoothly Into A Conversation

’You have to be the Maya he knows... The stable one... The one who didn’t just lose her mind in a cabin a few hours ago...’

’I’ll just have to act like I used to in front of cameras!’

She took a sip of water, the cold liquid sliding down her throat, but her mind was stuck on the heat. She could still feel the phantom sensation of Mike’s semen pulsing deep inside her, a heavy, warm weight that felt like a secret brand.

’God, it’s so heavy,’ she thought, a flash of panic rising in her chest. ’Is it still there?’

’Can they tell?’

’Can Marc feel how much of him is inside me?’

’Every time I move, it feels like it’s shifting... It feels like a physical manifestation of my betrayal.’

She glanced up, her eyes momentarily catching Mike’s. ’His face... I know it...’

He was watching her, a casual, relaxed expression on his face, but there was a terrifying intelligence in his gaze, a look that said, ’I know exactly what you’re hiding.’

’Don’t look at him, Maya! Don’t let him win!’ she scolded herself, quickly dropping her gaze back to the counter. ’He’s sitting in our kitchen, eating our food, acting like he’s just a friend, while he’s the one who literally broke you open.’

’You can’t let him see you flinch...’

’You can’t let him see that you’re still vibrating from his touch.’

The guilt was a physical weight, a crushing pressure in her lungs. She looked at Marc, his kind eyes, his gentle movements, and the way he cared for her so effortlessly, and she felt like a fraud.

’How can I sit here and talk about the weather and the grocery list when my body is still screaming his name?’ she wondered, her mind spiraling. ’How can I look Marc in the eye when all I can think about is the way Mike looked at me while he was filling me up?’

’I’m a liar... A beautiful, broken, disgusting liar.’

She forced a small, melodic laugh as Marc made a joke about the rain.

"You’re right, it was a bit much," she said aloud, her voice perfectly modulated and precisely "normal."

But internally, she was gasping for air. ’Stay in character... Stay in the light...’

’Don’t let the darkness of the cabin swallow this room... Just... act... normal.’

"Anyway... I heard that you’ve lived in a lot of places," Maya said, and it was not quite a question.

"Several," Mike said.

"How many?"

"Enough that I stopped counting the countries and started counting the qualities," he said. "What a place felt like rather than where it was on a map."

"What qualities?" Marc said from the stove without turning around.

"Whether it rewarded patience or punished it," Mike said. "Some cities are built for people who move fast, while others need you to slow down before they show you anything interesting."

"Which one is Erosyne?" Maya said.

"Both," Mike said. "In different districts."

Maya looked at him. "District 4 is slow."

"Yes."

"You live in District 4, right?"

"I do."

"And how about here? District 6?"

"District 6 is... well... fast," Mike said, "but it knows it’s fast."

"That’s slightly different from just being fast."

Marc set something down and turned around briefly to look at Mike.

"That’s a distinction I’ve been trying to make for two years," he said and turned back to the stove. "Nobody’s said it that cleanly."

"He should do a segment," Maya said to Marc.

"He should," Marc said. "But I can already predict his next answer is that... he won’t."

"Why won’t you?" Maya said to Mike.

"I don’t perform well," Mike said. "I’m better in rooms than in cameras."

"The camera is just a room," Maya said. "It just has a specific audience."

"The audience is the problem," Mike said. "Rooms don’t come with an audience’s expectations."

"A camera’s audience has already decided what they want to see before you open your mouth."

Maya looked at him with the slight adjustment she made when something landed with more precision than she had anticipated. "Uh-huh..."

"That’s why I always film before I know what I’m making," she said. "If I know what I want before I shoot, I’m confirming instead of discovering."

"That’s the revision thing," Marc said from the stove. "Applied to content."

"I told you years ago that’s what you were doing," Maya said to him.

"You told me I was being inefficient," Marc said.

"That too," Maya said.

Mike looked between them with the attention he gave to people who had been together long enough that their disagreements had become a form of communication, and the disagreements were about real things, which was rarer than it sounded.

’Good chemistry... sad that it’ll have to get destroyed by me soon.’

...

Marc brought food to the table, and they ate, and the conversation moved through the evening night the way meaningful conversation does when the people in it are genuinely present, without the particular strain of a meal where someone is performing for someone else’s benefit.

Marc ate with the focused efficiency of someone who took food seriously without making a thing of it. Maya ate more slowly and talked more, and occasionally Marc would add something brief and exact that redirected whatever the conversation was doing.

At some point partway through the main course, Maya said, "Bella’s piece..."

"The one about the market vendors in District 5."

"I’ve seen it mentioned," Mike said.

Maya looked at him. "You know her work."

"Someone at Valcrest mentioned it in passing," he said. "The framing of the shot was described to me."

"She shot from inside the vendor’s space rather than the street. That’s a structural choice that most people don’t make because it requires the subject to trust you first."

"She’s patient," Maya said. "She’ll spend two hours in a space before she takes out her phone."

"That’s not patience," Marc said from his end of the table. "That’s the method."

"Patience is waiting, and I can see that what she does is presence."

Mike looked at Marc.

"Yep," he said.

Maya pointed her fork at Marc without looking at him. "He’s been saying that for six months and wouldn’t let me put it in a video."

"It sounds like something that should be included in a caption," Marc said. "It’s not a caption, but it’s a distinction."

"It’s both," Mike said.

Marc considered this briefly. "Hmm..."

"Possibly," he said and returned to eating.

Maya looked at Mike. He could tell she was filing the exchange alongside the one from the park, the pattern he kept making without announcing it.

"The problem," Marc said later in the meal as he set his fork down, "is that the faculty’s output metric relies on citations."

"Papers that cite other papers create a cycle where the work loops back on itself and is mistakenly considered progress."

"The policymakers don’t read the journals," Maya said to Mike, in the tone of someone summarizing an argument she had heard many times.

"They don’t," Marc said. "The faculty knows this and produces for the journals anyway, because that’s what gets you tenure."

"So you have an entire research ecosystem that has optimized for the wrong audience."

"Kyle Hudson said something similar," Mike said. "Different framing."

Marc looked at him. "Hudson... oh! The guy from International Economics?"

"Yes."

"He’s correct," Marc said, responding immediately rather than waiting to be polite. "He presented at a faculty colloquium last month."

"The room didn’t know what to do with him."

"Why?" Maya said.

"Because he was actually asking whether the research mattered," Marc said. "That’s not a question the room was designed to answer."

Mike said nothing. He was noting the information about Kyle and placing it where it belonged.

"What would you change?" Maya said to Marc.

"Measure by uptake," Marc said. "Whether the work reached someone who could use it, and whether they did."

"That’s the only metric that matters if the goal is impact." He picked his fork back up. "Nobody will implement that, but... it’s the right answer."

"Why won’t they?" Mike said.

"Because impact is hard to quantify and citations are easy to count," Marc said. "Institutions optimize for what they can measure, not for what they said they were trying to do."

He said it flatly, the way someone says something they’ve thought through completely and no longer feel the need to argue.

"The university knows it’s pushing residents out of District 2," Maya said when the main course had been cleared and they were into the quieter part of the evening. "They’ve known for three years, and the response is always the community partnership framework."

"Which is?" Mike said.

"A committee," she said. "With a budget that covers two programs a year and a report with good photography."

"That’s not unique to Valcrest," Mike said.

"No," she said. "But Valcrest does it more articulately than most, which somehow makes it worse."

Marc said, "The residents in District 2 who’ve been there the longest don’t use the word gentrification..."

"They use the word ’replacement,’ and it’s more accurate."

"Why more accurate?" Mike said.

"Gentrification implies the neighborhood is improving," Marc said. "Replacement just describes what’s happening."

"The people who built the neighborhood are no longer in it."

"What replaced them is called ’improvement’ by the people who replaced them."

Mike looked at him. "You’ve thought about this."

"I make content about cities," Marc said. "If I haven’t thought about it, I shouldn’t be making content about cities."

Maya said, "He did a three-part series on District 2 last year, and two council members flagged the third part."

"For what?" Mike said.

"For being accurate," Marc said and went back to his coffee.