Free Three Years with the Rat by Jay Hosking Page B

ring of froth and pushed the glass to the side.
    Grace said, “Jesus, it always surprises me how little you know.”
    I sat back in my chair and smiled. “Hey, come now. You should know exactly how little I know by this point. Anyway, your problem doesn’t seem so hard. It still sounds like an equation, something that’s already figured out.”
    Her second glass was somehow empty already. She reached across the table, took mine, and drank deeply.
    “Well,” she said, “you’re right. Somewhat. From air pressure to perception of sound is a relatively trivial problem, although it’s hardly ‘figured out.’ But here’s the thing.”
    Grace leaned forward and her hair swooped down the sides of her face. The light of the candle cast her eyes yellow-white and made the shadows on her face all upside-down. “We’re not interested in how objective things influence subjective experience. We’re interested in subjectivity on its own. And we’re starting with subjective time.”
    Her last word reminded me. I looked at my phone and said, “Shit. We have to go.”
    She got visibly excited. “See? That’s exactly what we study.”
    I stood and put on my jacket. She picked up the empty pint glasses to stack.
    “Like any other dimension,” she said, “objective time can be quantized, quantified. But when you look at subjective time, it seems to speed up and slow down relative to…”
    She trailed off. I zipped up my tattered jacket and looked to her. She still held the pint glasses, but her hands were shaking too much to slip the one glass into the other. She had focused all her concentration on the task.
    “Hey,” I said gently, coming around to her side of the table to take the glasses.
    “I’ve got it,” she said. “Just give me a second.”
    Finally she slotted one glass into the other, though the rattle was loud enough to catch the bartender’s attention.
    “Easy there on the goods,” he shouted over in a friendly voice. He pretended to baby the pint glass he was drying with a grey towel.
    She made a straight line to the bar and dropped the two glasses on the counter. She said something low and deep that I couldn’t hear, but the bartender’s face soured and Grace made for the exit without looking back at me.
    I quickly stacked the remaining two glasses on our table and brought them to the bartender.
    “Like I don’t have enough bullshit to deal with,” he said.
    “Watch it,” I snapped. It came out of me like a reflex. Over my first month in the city, the bartender and I had enjoyed a few good conversations, and so we were both surprised by my reaction. Quieter, I said, “Look. Go easy on her.”
    I put a few more dollars on the bar and walked away.
    The bartender shouted, “Why should she get special treatment?”
    I turned, ready to defend Grace, but he was looking at me kindly, without any intention of a fight. Because she’s my sister, I thought. Because she’s always been this way. Because I don’t know.
    I didn’t say anything. I walked away.
    —
    We struck east toward Nicole’s apartment. It was dark and dry and not cold. Grace smoked the end of a joint. Headlights blinded us and lit the pavement as we walked.
    “So, should I start calling you Shaky or Grumpy?” I asked.
    Grace dismissed me with a wave of her hand.
    “I’m serious,” I said. “Well, you know what I mean. What the hell was that?”
    “Are you planning on getting an apartment any time soon?” Grace’s dismissal of my question was obvious. She aimed the words at my feet. “You’ve been squatting for a month.”
    She was asking me to back off the conversation, and like a good brother, I did.
    “Not quite a month,” I told her. “But Nicole has said I’m fine to stay until I find a good place.”
    Grace snorted. “And how is our princess?”
    “Christ, what’s with you? You’re the one who introduced us.”
    “I didn’t think she’d start fucking my brother,” Grace said.
    I stopped walking. Grace