...which is why I said it was a bird, and you said fridge, and neither of us has checked.
I have checked. I put my ear against the fridge for a full minute. It hums.
Birds hum.
Not at exactly that pitch. It's an A flat, Corn. I'm nearly sure it's an A flat.
It's the extractor fan above the kettle. It's been doing it since the March before last.
There's a fan above the kettle?
Behind the cupboard. Nobody's looked at it. I wrote it on a sticky note.
Where's the sticky note now?
Under the other sticky notes.
So it could be a bird in the fan.
It could be a bird in the fan. I'm not ruling it out.
See, that's the problem with this room. Everything sounds like something else.
Speaking of which, who has been eating the rice cakes?
Not me.
There were eleven. Now there's a packet with a crease in it and a smell.
They're not even good. They taste like a polite packaging material.
Then why did you eat them?
I said not me. I said it very clearly. I would never.
It was me. Two a day since Tuesday. I don't like them. I'm just thinking about the future.
What's in the future that needs rice cakes?
A drought, probably. I don't know. I had a bad feeling at the shop.
He had a bad feeling at the shop.
He always does. Last month it was tinned peaches.
And I was right about the peaches.
You were not right about the peaches. Nothing happened.
Because I had peaches.
Okay, that's honestly a hard argument to beat.
It's a terrible argument. It's unfalsifiable.
It's a lot of peaches though.
Can we move off the peaches? I wanted to ask something else. How do you say the thing? The nut. P, E, C, A, N.
Pecan. Puh-cahn.
See, I say pee-can.
You say it like a bucket.
It is a bucket, in a way. A nut bucket.
My uncle said pick-ahn. Stressed the wrong end. Forty years he did that.
Which uncle?
The one with the boat. Not the boat we're talking about. A different boat.
How many boats are there?
Three, depending on whether you count the one that was really a shed.
Hang on, I want to go back to the nut thing, because I read something. I read that there's a version of the word that comes from an old word for any nut you need a stone to crack.
Where did you read that?
I don't remember. It was on a tab. I closed the tab.
So you can't confirm it.
I can't confirm it, but I felt very sure while I was reading it.
That's the most Herman sentence ever spoken.
It was a good tab.
Also, whose mug is the one with the chip that says world's okayest archer?
That's mine. It was a gift. I choose to read it as a compliment.
It says okayest.
Among archers. In the world. That's a very large pool, Corn.
It's from a petrol station. I was there when it was bought.
You were not.
Near Be'er Sheva. A man sold it to me from a cool box. I gave it to Daniel and he passed it on.
Why was there a man with a cool box?
I didn't ask. You don't ask the cool box man.
I feel somehow robbed of my mug.
It's still your mug. It's just got a past.
Everything in this building has a past, and none of it is written down.
Except on the sticky notes.
Under the other sticky notes.
Fine, we've covered the mug. Anything else?
Can I say something about the show?
Is it a complaint?
It's a small complaint.
Go on.
There was a prompt last week about sorting. Just sorting. Putting things in order. And you two went for forty minutes.
It was a rich topic.
It was a list of numbers. I fell asleep standing up. I hit the desk with my head. That's the thump on the second half.
I thought the thump was me.
The thump was my forehead.
I liked that prompt.
You napped through the middle of it, Corn.
I rested my eyes with intent. It's a technique.
It's a nap.
It's ancestral.
Everything is ancestral with you. Leaf medicine, napping, pizza.
Sloths did invent pizza, and I will not be taking questions.
Nobody's asking. Nobody's ever asked.
I do think my DJ set would be improved by pizza.
Your DJ set would be improved by a shorter set.
Ouch. I played for three hours at that wedding.
Two hours of that was the same song with a different name.
It was a remix. It's a different name because it's a different song.
It was the same song. I was standing next to the speaker. I have a lot of feelings about that wedding.
You were fine. You ate four plates.
Because it was the only part I could control.
It's in the family history. We just haven't dug it up.
Where was the family, again? Mongolia?
Mongolia.
And the pizza was invented in Mongolia.
I never said where. Stop narrowing it down.
I'm not narrowing, I'm asking.
You're narrowing with questions. It's very rude.
Can we get back to the fan. Because I think I can hear it now.
That's the fridge.
It's not the fridge.
It's lower than the fan. The fan is higher. The fan is a, I don't know, a C.
You told me it was an A flat ten minutes ago.
That was the fridge. That was the fridge I put my ear on.
Do you hear yourself?
Barely. I've got a lot of things going on in this room.
Does anyone ever read those sticky notes?
Can I confess something? I have never once read the sticky notes.
None of them?
I read the top one in two thousand twenty-four. It said do not touch.
That one was about the toaster.
I touched the toaster.
And?
It was fine. It was warm. Nobody said what it did.
It does nothing. It's a warning about nothing. I like having one of those.
Every office needs one sign that means nothing.
Ours is mostly signs.
I think we should write down the notes. Which hum is which.
Where would we write them?
On a sticky note.
And that goes under the other ones.
That goes under the other ones, yes. That's the system.
Honestly it's a better system than the one for the rice cakes.
I said I'd replace them.
With what?
Rice cakes. Different ones. Cheaper. They have a face on the packet.
A face?
A sort of happy sun. I don't trust it, but it was on offer.
Never trust a sun on a packet.
That's actually a very sound rule.
I have a few.
Wait.
What?
Hang on. Is that light on? The little red one, on the stand.
Which light?
By the microphone. Is that the red one? Has that been on?
It's always red. It's the standby light.
It's not blinking. The standby one blinks. This one is solid. Is this thing recording?
It can't be recording. Nobody pressed the
Oh no, did we just
