INT. My house in Athens - mid morning

EVIE cracks the front door to find a disheveled-looking COLUMBUS standing there. There are dark circles under his eyes.

Evie: What are you doing here?
Columbus: I just... Can we talk?
Evie: This isn't really a good time.

Columbus: Please. Just..a couple minutes. I need to sort though some things.

Evie: Okay, okay, come in. But..being here is just going to upset you more.

Columbus: OU sweatshirt? Go team.
Evie,defensively, tugging at sweatshirt: What? Aw, c'mon, you know I like vintage-looking bullshit.
Columbus: No, it's cute. Um, very college.
Evie: Did you just come here to make fun of me?

Columbus, massaging temples: No, no, of course not. (looking around) This..this is what you want?

Evie: It's what I want right now. It's...easy here. Peaceful.

Columbus: So everytime life gets hard, you leave?

Evie: You're not being fair. I'm just..charmed, I guess. Athens recycles, you know? It's refreshing.

ATHENS, shirtless with messy bedhead, ambles down the stairs, scratching his bare stomach. ATHENS regards COLUMBUS and EVIE intensely exchanging words and pauses.

Athens, concerned: Is everything cool here, babe?

Evie: Yeah, we're just..talking.
Athens, to Columbus: You hungry, man? I was just gonna scramble up some frit-ta-taas with the eggs and peppers I picked up at the co-op.

Columbus: No, I just lost my appetite actually.

ATHENS leaves, enters kitchen.

Columbus, to Evie: Frit-taa-taas.

Evie: Stop.

Columbus: That guy is an asshole.

Evie: No, no, he's...uncomplicated.

Columbus: He's an asshole.

Evie: Look, I told you I needed space. Can we talk about this during the holidays? You shouldn't even be here.

Columbus: Yeah. Neither should you.

END SCENE

I listened to My Aim is True and Armed Forces a lot in high school (usually through my walkman-to-tape-deck converter speeding down my street cause fuck was I ever late for school), but other Elvis Costello albums that are worth a damn I didn't discover until college. The first gift Nick ever gave me (we probably weren't dating yet) was a 45 of "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down". I think it followed a discussion of why Mr. Costello, as given to parenthetical titles as he is, would choose "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea" but not "I Can't Stand Up (For Falling Down)". Then we took a preemptive puff from our inhalers and rolled for damage. Ha.

The bonus disc on the Rhino rerelease of Get Happy! has "Girls Talk" on it, but it wasn't until this past summer that I discovered this song and played it and played it and talked about it and put it on compilations for people and decided it would be in the opening scene of my screenplay that will never be written. I'm sort of....excitable. You don't want to see me at Kroger went they have bing cherries on sale.

While digging for studying-conducive tunes the other day, I came across that 45 I've had for a couple years now and discovered that the freaking B-side is, has always been, "Girls Talk". I don't know why but I felt warm, full, in good hands. Sometimes it takes me a few laps to catch up with Nick and vice versa but in the meantime we do okay.

Here we are, doing okay.

As a recent alum of the sprawling leviathan that is (the) Ohio State University, it's not hard to find things to like about Ohio University. All of my classes are in one building. Which is right next to the library. Which is right next to the bureaucratic-jumping-through-of-hoops building. Which is all ten minutes by foot from my house. Ohio State hasn't even had a library for two years. A small, cozy, convenient campus is an alien concept.

Today I had to go to Payroll in order to drop off my direct deposit form. Because I haven't had a source of income since August 25th. And then I bought a bed. And then I bought a camera. And then I paid September rent. So when that stipend check comes on October 1st, I want it fast. I want to melt that stipend check on a spoon and shoot it up between my toes.

Payroll, however, is in some satellite building, a twenty minute walk east of campus into nowheresville. The building itself is oversized, utilitarian, over-air-conditioned: markedly OhioStatesian. When I turn in the form, the woman at the desk apologizes to me for "having to walk all the way out here." Are you kidding me? At Ohio State, I'd have to walk twenty minutes to four different buildings until I found the right office, wait for 45 minutes to be told I'm missing a form, then they'd have me sign away my first born and tattoo Carmen Ohio on my forehead.

This morning, I was doing research on the library computers for my assistantship, compiling articles about social media and the presidential campaign, occasionally pausing to wonder if maybe Barack Obama is courting my vote because he like-likes me. Should I ask him to homecoming? I bet he's been asked like a thousand times already. Then, in a room silent except for the mad clicking of keyboards, someone's phone rings, blasting their "MMMbop" ringtone. It continues ringing, unanswered, until finally a frat dude built like an ox stands up, holds up the phone like a trophy, puts it to his ear and says "Hey, Mom." The room erupts into laughter, and I think, "Holy shit, I'm at work right now." Vast improvement from being verbally abused and coming home smelling like shawarma.

Always good to be in the company of friends who laugh at my magnetized dick jokes.

It became official this weekend when I bought a bike to keep in Columbus: I'm a joint custody kid. This was my first visit "home" since I moved, but I didn't get a lump in my throat every time I remembered that my time there was finite. It just seemed like, "Well, I'd better get back to Athens eventually, that's the only way I'm gonna get any work done." It's not so bad, this sort of split residence. It mitigates the grievances I have with both places. Columbus is still without power. The city of Athens voided my parking tickets. See?

As I was driving back from getting my hair cut on Sunday, extinguished stoplights on High Street like pendulums, the whole stupid town felt like a museum to the years I'd lived there. I saw the shop fronts and the bus stops and neighborhoods through fresh eyes again. Each time I passed a friend's old apartment, I imagined their images burned into the walls there, like an old computer monitor. I passed porches I've cried on, yards I've laid in, intersections where I wiped out resplendently on my bike. I wasn't feeling wistful or overwhelmed. I was just remembering.

Brenda and Lara had their bon voyage party today. They're spending a school year teaching in Spain and France, respectively. The ghost of Hurricane Ike was an uninvited guest, causing tall backyard maples to genuflect and leaving most of Columbus without power. Being at a party during a power outage was a relief, in a way. You couldn't see anyone's face and it was completely acceptable to just stand alone, watching the sky. We took this photo with the aid of flashlights.

I've felt the impact of moving overseas (albeit only for a summer) and I'm still rattled from this regional move. It's not a cinch. They're gonna pull it off with grace, though.

Here is Ana, being socially magnificent.

About what I said about reining in this kind of behavior..

Man, after two teetotaling weeks in Athens, I'm a cheap date.