The laptop beeps three times, then another three. All the lights on the keyboard are on, but nothing shows up on the display. Alex sighs, rubbing the area between her eyebrows, a habit she’s picked up mostly so she can cover the wrinkles with her fingers. She needs a new laptop; she’s known it for a while, but they’re so expensive and even if she did buy one right now it would do nothing to give her access to anything right at this very moment.
Next to her, Masako’s flipping through a really stuffy book on basketball theory that Alex had tried to read once while she was at work and hadn’t gotten through the first chapter (it had, however, been slightly better than the motorcycle encyclopedia). Her eyes are sharp in concentration, her hair falling down from where she’d tucked it behind her ear, swinging inches above the page. She bites her lip, an unconscious habit that she claims she doesn’t do, and then Alex remembers what she was about to say.
“Masako?”
“Hmm?”
“It’s not working again.”
Masako folds the page of the book and tucks her hair behind her ear. “Let’s see.”
She leans over, frowning at it. Alex doesn’t see what’s different about the position or the way she’d pushed the button from the last time Masako had fixed it for her, but evidently there’s something. Masako tilts back the screen and pushes down slightly with her fingertips, not hard enough to make it dig into Alex’s thighs. Then she hits the power button, and the screen lights up. Carefully, Masako lifts her fingers and tilts the screen forward again. Alex holds her breath—it could still bluescreen out. It doesn’t. The normal startup screen appears, and she types in her password.
“You have all your files backed up, right?”
“Yeah.”
Masako nods and straightens up; her hair’s come untucked again and she sighs as she puts it back.
“You should have gone into IT,” says Alex.
That gets a laugh. “Is that a comment on my teaching skills?”
“Course not,” says Alex.
She picks up the laptop, holding it straight and setting it down ever-so-slightly on the coffee table like those movie spaceships that align perfectly with the landing pad. She’s half-expecting it to screech and freeze the way it so often does when she accidentally knocks it with her elbow, but her desktop background still stares perfectly back at her.
Masako’s still waiting for an explanation, book still closed and face expectant.
“It’s kind of similar to that motorcycle stuff, all that…you know, hardware.”
She waves her hand vaguely; it’s not like she has any words to express the sentiment in any language.
Masako shrugs. “It’s simple. Just learn what works and remember it next time. It’s like anything else.”
It’s not, not really. Alex has never been good at fixing things; even owning a car as long as she has she’d almost always rather call the mechanic and pay the fee. She’s tried; Masako has even tried to teach her a few times (and it’s never gone well, probably the cause of half of their avoidable fights) and she should know that for Alex, it really isn’t.
“Maybe it’s something innate. My parents aren’t good at that stuff, either.”
“That’s probably because they never learned,” Masako says. “Maybe that’s why you aren’t, either. You didn’t learn when you were young and didn’t turn on that part of your brain, like learning another language.”
“Which I did as an adult just fine, unless…”
“Okay, bad example. Sorry.”
Masako genuinely does look apologetic, but it’s the kind of thing Alex wouldn’t take to heart even if she didn’t know Masako as well as she does. She reaches over and squeezes Masako’s knee, and Masako’s face eases up.
“Anyway, I don’t see how it’s innate. It’s not like we co-evolved with computers,” says Masako.
“But then how are some people more talented at some sports than others? We didn’t co-evolve with basketballs, either.”
“Interest? There have been multi-sport athletes in the past. Maybe they just focus on what interests them and thus excel at an earlier age.”
“Yeah, but that’s not even most of the talented sportspeople.”
“You can break it down, though,” says Masako. “Distance runners have stamina; shot-putters have a different distribution of strength than, say, hockey players…the talent isn’t for the sport; it’s for the components. Maybe you’re good at basketball because your ancestors could…I don’t know, accurately throw rocks at predators.”
Alex snorts. “Now who’s reaching?”
Masako catches her smile and shrugs. “I don’t know. Whose idea was this again?”
Alex hums but doesn’t say anything, and Masako doesn’t push. Alex leans back against the couch cushions and looks at Masako looking at her. Masako’s still smiling, lips parted ever-so-slightly, hair still tucked behind her ear and over her shoulders, revealing the expanse of her neck, the mole on the side that vanity makes her hide but only when she notices it’s there. Alex won’t tell her; she’d like to keep looking.
Masako’s stopped looking at her and is staring into the space behind her, probably still thinking about talent, athletic skill, or maybe her mind has gone back to motorcycles or computers. Actually, that’s more likely; whether she’ll admit it or not she’s mechanically-minded in a way Alex isn’t, sees things in terms of piecing parts together and building an ordered, sound foundation.
The computer beeps and its screen turns dark; Alex starts forward but catches herself when she sees the power light fading in and out. It’s only sleeping, still working as far as she knows. Masako picks up her book and opens it again.
“I’m glad you’re a teacher, though,” says Alex.
(Were she not, they probably wouldn’t have met, and even if they had there would probably have been no second or third meeting, no gradual opening up to each other, no them. Masako catches the sentiment like a bounce-pass, leaving one finger between the pages of her book and reaching over with the other hand to pat Alex’s thigh.)
“Me, too.”
Alex flops against her and closes her eyes. Masako shifts her weight to accommodate, grumbling under her breath in a way only she can make sound affectionate, and Alex smiles.