Then we talked about what the hell I was doing here, and what the hell she was doing here, and she said, If you want to kiss me, do it right now, and I almost did, and of course then I wanted to tell her things, but I couldn’t possibly tell her everything that had happened to me, and so she looked at me and said, You know this has nothing to do with the game, or even the words of that poet, which struck me as odd, that she wouldn’t say her name, and so I told her—to my eternal regret—that I had something to show her, and she followed me, up and out of that dark place into the dim blue light of Iron Mountain (it must have been twilight) past the hotel and the open greenspace with the wrecked stone statues of Lake Superior maritime victors and martyrs and into the parking lot where I unlocked the frosted-over car and found The Orchard just where I had left it, in the back seat.

“Game Theory: Brigit Pegeen Kelly”, Nicholas Rombes