5 Deserved Better

Chapter Two

7 lived in a walkup apartment over a homegrown deli native to the area. 5 had eaten there a few times - good pastrami - and the realization that she'd been just overhead was intriguing to him.

Her place was squished into two modest rooms visible from any corner. There must have been a bathroom too, but he couldn't fathom where it was hiding. She had a mint green refrigerator and a yellow stove. Her couch was a faded purple, and the neighboring chair was bright red. The whole apartment was like a patchwork quilt stitched together from the scraps of someone else's leftovers.

5 didn't sit. He was unaccustomed to house calls and unsure how to comport himself. She didn't sit either.

"What's your name?" she asked, and he silently kicked himself for not thinking to ask her first.

"5."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Is that a real name or just something you like to be called?"

"Neither," he admitted. "But I don't have another name so 5 will do."

She nodded carefully and he considered telling her about how he often wondered what their mother would have named him if he'd been around when those assignments were made. He would have liked Aiden, he thought. But he wasn't quite ready to unburden himself of family drama so he skipped the sob story and kicked back the question.

"You say we've met an infinite amount of times," she quipped. "Shouldn't you know my name by now?"

5 grinned.

"Met was probably not the right word," he amended his earlier statement.

"Then you creep up on me in every dimension?"

"Creep? No. And dimension? No. We call them timelines."

"We?" she queried in a tone that suggested she didn't fully appreciate his correction.

"The other..." he hesitated, not wanting to create a complete head explosion or commit an additional slight. He settled on, "time people."

"Other creeps?" she offered with a hint of a smile playing on her lips, so subtle 5 might have imagined it.

"Some of them. Not me."

She silently searched him, matching his gaze, yet managing to take him in top to toe. Picking him apart to piece him together again in a composition of her own design. He was sure then that he'd fabricated her smile from his own hope. Sensing the need to make amends he offered, "I started calling you 7."

"7?" she pondered it. "I like that."

"You do?"

"Sure. It's two more than you."

5 tried and failed to hide his pleasure at her response, so it ended up a cock-eyed smirk he wished by way of miracle seemed charming.

"What's your real name?" he tried again, and was not at all disappointed when she mastered an impressive degree of derision, looked him up and down and glibly said, "7 will do."

He took a turn about her living room/kitchen, intent on inspecting the piles of books occupying her desk.

"May I?" he formally requested before a more leisurely perusal. She nodded.

It was an odd collection, 5 noted as he traced a finger over their spines. Erwin Schrodinger. John Bell. Richard Feynman. Heisenberg and Asimov. Quantum physics. Atomic Physics. The Quantum Universe. A Brief History of Time.

"A bit of light reading?" he jested.

"I take classes nearby."

"What exactly are you studying?"