Eugene sits with Nathaniel and Cook on the front porch of the coffee shop nestled into the side of Mt. Ajour. It is the first they have all hung out together since the incident. Eugene had suggested the meeting because he wanted to recount to his friends of his emotional diffusion: a return, once again, to the so-called real world.
Across the street a construction crew has been moving custom order boulders of various sizes to allow for an expansion of the park gardens. As a result of the logistics of the location more boulders are being moved back and forth to allow for the passage of another stone, or the personal and vehicles, than there are the right stones being moved to their precise and appropriate locations. It is, in essence, a puzzle to be solved in a narrow space. To make matters worse, because of the steep nature of the hillside there are several points where the boulders risk rolling off the ledges all together. Popping over to get some coffees, Eugene had heard one of the construction workers explaining to the cashier that one of the rocks had already escaped them.
“Took me a whole workday to get that sucker back up to the site.”
The occupants of the coffee shop are treating this event as a sort of intellectual game, indeed some of the students sitting nearby openly declare they had solved the puzzle.
“Well, I’m in engineering...”
“So...that’s the story.” Eugene concludes to Nathaniel and Cook. He had been trying to tell his friends of the passion that was his plight into the introspective abyss, but the excitement of the modest construction worker is stealing his thunder. He tries to convey the passion which came and went but they just don’t understand -- and hey could never convey it.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“So what about your story?”
Eugene shrugs.
“Man, that sucks it was, you know, anti-climatic.” Cook shakes his head slightly, content to leave it at that. His attention drifts back to a foreman who is now shouting about a missing set of chains.
“Yeah...” Nathaniel adds.
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