two boys reading each other in silence
they played rock-paper-scissors for two hundred clicks or more, not saying anything, engrossed in trying to locate patterns in each other’s rhythms of choices of shapes, which they both decided there weren’t any.
Context
On the same bus, the antidote runs quiet: Mario and slow, loss-sick Coyle play rock-paper-scissors for two hundred clicks "not saying anything," wholly engrossed in trying to read each other's rhythms — a companionship built entirely of attention without speech, two people reaching for the pattern in each other and content even to conclude there isn't one. Presence as the whole of the exchange, the book's endorsed technology of contact-without-conversation, offered here without comment.