Chapter 3: The Age Game
The fairy lights on Dee’s balcony blinked, a constellation of tiny, unreliable stars tangled in the black iron. She took a slow sip of pinot noir, the glass cool against her fingers, and watched the message bubble appear, disappear, and reappear on her screen. The nocturnal rhythm of them. It was her favorite part of the day now, this stolen hour where the city softened and her mind sharpened, focused entirely on the glow in her hand.
Her thumb hovered. The professional part of her, the part that dissected press secretaries and parsed legal documents for hidden meanings, itched at the edges of this. Movie business. Technical stuff. It was a non-answer. A polished stone with nothing underneath. But the other part of her, the part that had laughed until she cried at his description of a disastrous family Thanksgiving involving a deep-fried turkey and a frightened neighbor, told her to let it lie. For now.
Dee: You’re quiet tonight. Regretting the scar story?
Matt: Never. Just tired. The boring technical stuff was especially boring today.
Dee: Poor thing. My day was scintillating. I interviewed three city council members about zoning violations. The passion was… administrative.
Matt: I’m jealous.
Dee: Liar.
She smiled. The easy accusation was their language. It felt like home.
Dee: You know, for all your mysterious camera talk, we’ve never established basic facts. For all you know, I could be a 60-year-old man named Carl with a cat and a grudge against the modern world.
She sent it, a throwaway line, but as it delivered, she felt its weight. It wasn’t just a joke. It was a probe. A gentle one, but a probe nonetheless.
His reply came fast.
Matt: Then you’re a very charming Carl. And your cat probably has excellent literary opinions.
Dee: His name is Fitzgerald. He’s pretentious. You’d hate him.
Matt: I’d pretend to like him. For you.
The warmth that spread through her was stupid and immediate. She tucked her feet beneath her on the worn patio chair.
Dee: Your turn. Confess. You’re actually a 19-year-old film student, aren’t you? All this world-weariness is just very good acting.
There was a pause. Longer than usual. She watched the three dots pulse, stop, then pulse again.
Matt: Worse. I’m 40. Feels like I’m admitting to a crime.
Forty. The number landed, solid and specific. It conjured an image—not of a face, but of a sense. A man settled into his bones, past the frantic proving of the twenties, weathered perhaps by the compromises of the thirties. It fit the voice in the messages, the weary humor, the occasional, surprising grace note of regret.
Dee: A fate worse than death. I’m early 30s. So you’re officially ancient. Do you need help remembering your WiFi password?
Matt: It’s on a sticky note on my monitor. Right next to the one that says ‘Remember: You Are Mortal.’
She laughed, the sound swallowed by the vast hum of the city. The exchange had shifted something. The ground felt more solid. They had ages. They had decades of context. She felt a reckless urge to give him more, a piece of evidence.
Without overthinking it, she raised her phone, pointed it not at her face, but at her world. The glass of wine, half-full and glowing deep ruby in the fairy light. Her hand, curled loosely around the stem. And beyond, the dizzying drop to the grid of streetlights and moving cars. She captured it and sent it. No text. Just the image.
Her phone buzzed in her hand almost before she could lower it.
Matt: The wine looks good. The city looks small. Your hand looks real.
She stared at the last sentence. Your hand looks real. As if everything else between them was somehow theoretical. As if he needed proof of her physical existence in the universe. It was a vulnerable thing to say. It cracked something open in her chest.
Dee: It is real. Mostly used for typing and waving away bad ideas.
Matt: I’m tracing the lines on my screen. The one that cuts across your knuckle. How did that happen?
He was looking. Really looking. Not at a curated profile picture, but at the accidental geography of her. The scar was old, a thin white line from a shattered picture frame when she was nine.
Dee: A fight with a piece of glass. I lost.
Matt: I have a matching one. On my palm. From a bottle. Seems we’re both marked by breakable things.
The connection felt dizzyingly close. She could almost feel the ghost of his hand against hers, palm to palm, scars aligning. The professional voice in her head was silent. The curiosity that remained was purely human, and it was hungry.
Dee: Tell me one true thing about today. Not the boring work thing. A small, true thing.
Another long pause. The dots danced.
Matt: Today, between setups, I watched a sparrow build a nest in a corrugated pipe on the soundstage. It was using scraps of fake grass and a length of red thread from a costume. Everyone else was busy. I was the only one watching. It felt like a secret.
The prose in the message was effortless, cinematic. A tiny, observed miracle. Soundstage. The word stuck out, a piece of jargon that didn’t fit with ‘boring technical stuff.’ A soundstage was where movies were filmed, where actors worked. A detail. Perhaps meaningless. But her mind, trained to catch discrepancies, filed it away. Not with suspicion, but with a faint, thrilling buzz.
Dee: That’s beautiful. My true thing is less poetic. I successfully negotiated a lower internet bill today. The triumph was visceral.
Matt: A warrior.
Dee: A tired one. The administrative passion drained me. I should go.
She didn’t want to. She wanted to ask about the soundstage. She wanted to send another photo. She wanted to ask for his.
Matt: Okay. Sleep well, Dee.
Dee: Goodnight, Matt.
She put the phone face down on the small table, next to the empty glass. The fairy lights flickered. The conversation echoed. Forty. Your hand looks real. A soundstage.
Inside her apartment, her laptop sat dark on the desk. The cursor blinked in a blank search bar. The urge was a physical pull. It would be so easy. Matt. Movie business. Technical. Los Angeles. 40. The filters were right there. Her fingers actually twitched.
But she didn’t move. She let the mystery hang in the cool night air, fragile and precious. To search would be to end the game. And the game, the delicious, terrifying, slow reveal, was becoming the point.
She hugged her knees to her chest, looking out at the city that hid him. Somewhere out there, a man was perhaps tracing the lines of her hand on a screen, guarding his own secrets. The balance was excruciating. It was everything.