The Conjugation Detective Asks You About Your Day
You have already met The Conjugation Detective. They smile and say it’s good to see you again and ask what you thought of Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Vatican City. You tell them you that you haven’t been to any of those places and that you were just about to say that you just saw them in Baltimore, Oxford, Charlottesville, and Boston in the 1980’s. In fleeting fragments and fleeting moments, you say. Like someone was relentlessly changing the channel well before you were able to get a sense as to what was truly going on. They laugh and tell you that you must be mistaken. They ask you if you’re having a nice day. You look around at where you are as if the answer might be able to be found there.
You recall that you’re standing in a museum exhibit dedicated to Choose Your Own Adventure novels. The gallery is relatively new and modern — white walls, clean windows, and light on light on light. The pages of the Choose Your Own Adventure novels are placed in small wooden frames and centered often by their lonesome as tiny points at the center of not so tiny walls. You recall that you were just on the verge of trying to see if there was anything here on the novel Rayuela by the Argentine writer Julio Cortazar. Maybe If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino. This isn’t the answer to the Detective’s question, but, in a way, it kind of is: you’re having a nice time. Here’s the material proof. You’re in a museum looking at something interesting on a nice day. You are enjoying yourself.
You turn to mention this to the Detective, but — of course —