Tannin? Gross. Now I’m trying to remember why I thought the Wine Room was a good idea.
Bannister
We’ll pick somewhere else next time.
She slathered sunscreen across her shoulders, grateful for his easy assumption thatof course, there’d be a next time. She laced up her athletic shoes by the door.
Erin
Brainstorm after my run?
Bannister
Deal.
The traffic lights at Sand Hill Road and Junipero Serra Boulevard were both green. She locked her bicycle by the Stanford Dish gate, cued up a playlist while she swapped her helmet for a baseball cap and stretched a heels-and-Pilates ache from her hamstrings, then set off up the first paved hill. With Stars’ “Take Me to the Riot” in her ears, the incline melted under her feet. She waved her way past groups of panting hikers sheltering for water under the shade of a spreading oak woodland fringing the trail and drove herself hard on the flats near the Dish’s radio antennae where the device jutted against the blazing blue sky behind a row of cattle guards, before heading down the far slope, circumventing a thermoregulating rattlesnake, then powering up another incline to merge with the initial hill, sweating out her headache.
Where did Bannister and Bunsen run?
She’d imagined them in San Francisco because of their Crissy Field photo, though that beach was a destination for dog owners all around the Bay Area. They could be in any of the North Bay, East Bay, South Bay, or Peninsula counties. So:where?She wondered while she cleaned her hair out of the apartment’s shower drain following her post-run rinse, but when she settled down with a smoothie and elevated feet in the living room, she found Bannister’s list of suggestions for their meeting rematch waiting for her. There’d be plenty of time to suss out the specifics of his routes later.
Because he didn’t seem angry. At all. Last night’s blunder had been an honest mistake, and he didn’t hold it against her. He wasn’t that sort of person, and she smiled as she scrolled through his ideas, which included Haberdasher and Salt & Straw.
Erin
What’s the weirdest seasonal S&S flavor you’ve tried?
Bannister
Last summer’s cinnamon and vegan honey fried chicken.
Erin
What did Bunsen think about that?
Bannister
I had to shut him out on the patio until I was finished. But then I let him lick the spoon.
She huffed into her straw.
Erin
Very noble of you. But fair warning for next time: no one gets my spoon. Part of growing up with my brothers was fighting to the death for rights to eat the leftover cake batter or cookie dough in our mom’s mixing bowl. Spoons are precious.
Bannister
I’ll keep that in mind. I might not be able to resist trying to swipe it, though.
Erin
Evil!
Erin
Maybe that could be the conflict in my next short story. A shortage of astronaut ice cream.
They bantered back and forth about freeze-dried dairy deficits in space, and as she scribbled notes in her writing journal, a silly idea with serious ramifications took shape: divorced from their circadian rhythms, maybe a mission’s crew marked time by the content of their meals, a stabilizing influence that ruptured when one astronaut went rogue and began eating ice cream for breakfast. Philosophical questions about the preservation of social norms around food and community at the edge of the wild expanse of space were followed by a natural corollary: the preservation of humanity itself. Seeing “Pandora Rising” in print had been intoxicating. She wanted more.
