The bus home: rock-paper-scissors with Mario

texture · 6-7 Nov YDAU

• When: night of 6 November into the small hours of 7 November YDAU — the warm bus back from Long Island (Denny's Mega-breakfast stop ~0030)
• What: On the ride home Mario Incandenza sits next to Coyle — "kind of mentally slow, especially after a hard loss" — and the two play rock-paper-scissors for two hundred clicks or more, wordless, each engrossed in hunting for patterns in the other's rhythms of choices of shapes, both finally deciding there weren't any. The novel's gentlest look at him: patient, unembarrassed, well matched with the Academy's kindest person.