A fictionalized domestic satire.
Jessica had planned dinner with Ryan, and dinner had gone well. They had talked, sat close, and come home with the comfortable feeling that the evening might continue.
Ryan turned on his console.
Jessica showered and changed into the lingerie she had chosen earlier. When she returned, he was wearing a headset and explaining a complicated emergency to several people whose names appeared to contain numbers.
“Are we still spending the evening together?” she asked.
“Just one game.”
It was an answer with no recognized unit of time.
Jessica changed into sweatpants and made tea. She had not purchased a sexual obligation by arranging dinner or putting on lingerie. He could have said he was tired, distracted, or not in the mood. What irritated her was being left to guess whether the shared evening had ended while he continued participating in it only technically.
When he finally removed the headset, she said so. He had assumed the evening could contain both activities. She had assumed their plans included his attention. Neither assumption had been especially difficult to communicate; they had simply not done it.
The discussion did not require a verdict on all gamers. It required Ryan to stop using “one game” as an indefinite extension and Jessica to say what she wanted without staging increasingly elaborate hints.
Next time, they agreed on the evening before it began. The console remained in the house. It was, however, removed from the role of unofficial host.
