The CBS Orchestra was playing. It was late.
Nathan lay on his stomach. His head was cupped in both hands and his elbows rested on his pillow. His pillow sat at the foot of the bed.
David Letterman always wore his suits long. He appeared to be wearing spats.
There were only a few inches of air and a slightly convex screen between Nathan and David. Nathan was close enough to see the red and green halos at the edge of each pixel. This was not an aesthetic decision. Nathan’s Sony earbud cables were short. And it was late.
The rooms only light came from the television, and almost no sound escaped the earbuds.
Nathan had been seeing David and Paul in secret for some time now. He was not ashamed, it was just late.
David had not become a friend, but his quirks had become familiar. Nathan could almost rely on them. It was probably unusual for a young man to spend late nights watching an older man sip coffee, draw attention to his hairline, and throw bits of cardboard around a set.
The CBS Orchestra played well. Paul was by all accounts both very nice and very talented. Still, he made Nathan a little uncomfortable. It was perhaps the way he unconditionally laughed at David’s jokes.
Occasionally, Nathan would wave his hand across the front of the television. It made a slow, even movement from the left side clockwise to the top, the right side, and the bottom. It didn’t quite follow the shape of a circle, nor did it quite follow the shape of a ‘z.’ Sometimes the screen would crackle warmly beneath his hand. This was comforting somehow. Sometimes it did not.
When tiredness began to take hold, David would bring out strangely dressed girls (one of which seemed to be wearing a grinder) to test whether things would float. This was accompanied by a strange feeling of losing hold on reality. Nathan also suspected that you couldn’t actually buy the board game anywhere.
David would often talk to celebrities. This was often uninteresting. He once spoke to Jeff Goldblum, whose glasses Nathan fancied.
After the top ten list was read, Nathan would either try to sleep, or fail to be sold kitchen knives, cleaning equipment, or singer-songwriter compilation cds.
