Words: 254.
Prompt: The Eastern Market, and Marjorie and Magister begin their first real date. I may continue this.
Marjorie had told him she had gotten tired of the museums and of listening to him expound on every antiquity and display; he had told her he didn’t expound, they just brought back memories. She didn’t want to hear him hyperdrive down memory wormhole again, then, she said. The Mobius was not a wormhole, he said. We’re going somewhere outdoors today, she said. Somewhere that’s only in the present. Oh, everywhere has history, he replied. Shut up, she told him. Eastern Market. We’re going to Eastern Market. Has that burned yet? he asks. It has, she said. They’ve set up in a temporary hall across the street. That’s a shame, he says, the fire. Adolf would hate to hear that that had happened to his building. Adolf? she queried. Cluss, he replied. Adolf Cluss. He designed the Market. He loved red brick, Adolf, I told him it was— No, she says. Ix-nay on the ostalgia-nay. We’re going to Eastern Market, and we are going to look at the crafts and the art and the vegetables and you are going to say nothing about the distant past or future. Is that understood? He shrugged at her, slipped his hands in his pockets, and leaned back against the pole he was using for balance as they rode, both of them standing. It’s relative, he said. Wrong answer, she said. Here and now, you and me, a farmer’s market, and that is all. I have my marching orders, he said, and she took that for agreement.
