A Shrine to an Unknown God

STATE OF MIND

EZRA AND I SPEND ONE NIGHT at Dahlia's place. It feels like a lifetime, in the best sort of way.

In the morning, Dahlia and I rise early to go to the beach for a run. When we get back, she meets up with Marisol to "surf," which is this thing they do where they go out on long, pointed boards and stand up in the water. I keep guard over their things.

At noon, we go back to her house, where Ezra is waiting for us with food. Marisol and Dahlia throw baggy t-shirts on over the revealing little two-piece outfits they call bikinis. My clothes are left crusted over with sand.

In Dahlia's living room, there is a white wooden table in front of the sliding glass doors out onto the balcony, in full view of both the beach below and Ezra working in the kitchen. The three of us all sit there, and he passes out plates and sets three big glass bowls on the table. One is full of these thin, salty, yellowish crackers, the second a chunky white dip similar in appearance to the tzatziki I tried in Greece, and the third all these strange fruits that I've never seen before.

"What is this?" I ask.

"Potato chips," Dahlia explains. "Yo, Ezra, what kind of dip is this?"

"French onion," he replies.

"Literally fuck you," she says. "So that's French onion dip. Aggressively not vegan, but it's whatever."

"You need to eat some," Ezra insists. "C'mon, Dahls, you're breaking my achy-breaky heart. You're wasting away to nothing. At least have a little bit. For me."

"I'll have some plain chips and fruit, you asshole." Dahlia rolls her eyes. "Need I remind you of the McDonald's incident?" The story that Ezra proudly told us of the time he snorted cocaine in a McDonald's bathroom has become known as the McDonald's incident, and any mention of it gets him to quickly shut up.

"What is the fruit?" I ask.

"Um, the orange ones are mango and the yellow ones are pineapple," Marisol says.

"Fruit is such a sexy food," Ezra says from the kitchen. "Like, no matter what kind of fruit it is. It's always such a sexy time, eating fruit."

"I can't tell if you're using sexy in the genuine way or in the meme way and either way, I'm scared," Dahlia replies.

"And aroused?" asks Ezra, pulling a loaf of bread from the pantry. "By the fruit?"

"No normal human being is aroused by fruit, weirdo," Dahlia says, heaping a whopping portion of fruit onto her plate. "Fruit Boy. Hey, Antigone, if we all have superpowers like you were talking about last night or whatever, can that be Ezra's superhero name? 'Cause apparently he's weird about fruit."

"Was this, like, a hypothetical situation you guys were discussing?" Marisol asks, grabbing some chips and fruit and using a metal spoon to scoop some of the French onion dip onto her plate. "All of us having superpowers?"

Maybe it's better that this topic has come up again without me needing to guide them to it, and with Marisol here as well. Maybe, unprompted, one of them will give up something potentially useful.

"Antigone is literally a superhero already," Dahlia replies. "With her—ability to turn things into wine. I dunno, that could always come in handy."

"Emergency communion!" Ezra offers, grabbing two jars—one full of something reddish, the other full of a brown paste—from the fridge and setting them on the counter, next to the bread. "Jesus 2.0! That's her superhero name."

"And we were talking about that and how you're a little bit psychic and I was curious if any of them could do anything like that," I explain.

"Well, Dahlia's not just a little bit psychic," Marisol replies, shoving her mouth full of chips slathered in French onion dip. "She's a full-blown medium."