[60--Jane]

Dinner was not what I was expecting, which would be leg of freezer-burnt lamb, with mint sauce and some inedible root vegetable that people with taste buds no longer ate.

It was tagine, a Moroccan lamb stew with fruit in a savory sauce.  I would have licked my plate except I'd already eaten it.  The stew was served on pita bread, with no flatware. 

It was eaten with the hands.

I ate it up, with cous-cous and tabouli salad, made with garden fresh onions, tomatoes, and parsley. 

It was served with hot chai and coffee.

"Uncle," I cried, after swallowing the last bite of succulent lamb on my plate. 

"But you can't.  We haven't had dessert."

"Dessert?  How could I possibly eat dessert?"

"It's lemon sherbet for dessert.  Made with fresh lemon and zest and sprinkled with candied orange-peel and allspice."

"You sound like an advertisement."

"I suppose I do.  But you will never find a more loyal partisan to her chef than I."

"Really?"  I was intrigued.  "Well then, in that case, bring it on."

"O John," she hollered back to the kitchen.  A man dressed in chef whites burst through the double doors carrying a tray laden with two big parfait glasses and several smaller attendants.

He came to the table and set the big ones in front of us with great ceremony.  It was a scoop of the palest yellow, with the promised orange-peel and a clear syrup drizzled on top.

He placed several smaller dishes, one containing a tiny amount of clear sorbet, the others laden with chocolate treats.  One had slivered almonds, another fine-chopped cherries.

"You are insane, sir," I said and looked the chef in the eyes.

He had Jane's kind eyes, and her plain, unflappable demeanor.

I was shocked speechless.

"Close your mouth, dearest," Jane said to me with a wicked smile.  "Even here, you might draw flies."

"Fruit flies," I answered flippantly.  "Do you have any victims who lived?"

"John specializes in desserts."

"I can see that," I said looking down.  "Do you have any others siblings?  One who's an endocrinologist, or possibly a dentist?"

"Jane is my only sister," he said in a mellow voice that was Jane's but in a lower register.

I'd ridden around the block in that car before.

"What about brothers," I inquired, "or bristers."

"Bristers," they both exclaimed at the same time. 

"I have a friend.  I guess you could call him my boyfriend, except he is neither a boy nor my lover."

"Intriguing," Jane smiled.

"Anyway, he has a sister, who looks like his twin but isn't, and she calls him her brister." 

"How terribly cute."

"Except again, none of the pronouns I've used for him are correct.  I prefer to use the word 'hit' to describe Topher."

"Clever.  Do you not know about 'se'?

"Apparently not.  What is that?"

"Se is a pronoun, it means he/she.  There is also ser and sers."

Other right words?  I didn't know what to say.

"Are you," I asked her, but she touched my hand ever so gently and spoke.

"No.  I am a girl, and John is a boy.  We are, as you may have guessed, fraternal twins."

"But why," I began again, but what came after that?

"Many years ago, we were both lost, looking for love where it was not, or forbidden to be.  We both had our fair share of flings, with both boys and girls.  We picked up those words, living on the West Coast, and many others."

"Other other words?"

"Yes.  Shi/hirs/hir, shi/shirs/shir, ce/cers/cer, take your pick."

She pronounced the last as she would have in Esperanto, like the 'c' was a 'ts'.

I felt, somewhat inexplicably, betrayed.

"Or if you're from Seattle," she continued down memory lane, kicking my inner linguist in the stomach with every word, "ze/zers/zer which have since, it is my understanding, transmogrified themselves into zi/zis/zir."

"But, I though I invented the right words.  How come I've never heard of them?"

"Because, you are from the Midwest, are you not?"

"Uh-huh," I replied as if to prove it.

"I dare say, living in a desert, you could not expect put a shell to you ear and hear the ocean."

"I don't know what to say."

"In a vacuum, you would naturally invent your own words.  You are a born linguist, if ever there was one.  I've seen your Peace Corps records.

"But there are many, many words, dear.  I have only given you the ones derived from the Boston Correspondence. 

"New England has her own, with regional variations. They say Ouren where you would use hits, I'm guessing."

"Yes," I answered, astounded.  "How did you guess?"

"Old English pronoun devolution isn't complex.  There are only one or two common methods of reconstituting lost form in Modern, and they are suggested by previous evolution.

"Progessing, we have the many many forms derivative of Crozat's neutral pronoun thon, itself a contraction of 'the one'.  St. Louis is on the edge between North Midwestern Queer and South Midwestern Queer, but I believe most Family there would use di/dir/don. 

My neatly constituted world just came unzipped, and the teeth had all come out, and were lying loose underfoot.

"Where did you learn all this?"

"From Noam."

"Noam Chomsky?"

"Do you know any other Noams?"

"No."

"The very one.  You and I share a passion with him.  I assume you have the brains God gave a mouse and are headed to MIT as soon as you're done with the Peace Corps."

She made the words Peace Corps, somehow sound like discarded condom.

"What's wrong with the Peace Corps?"

"Nothing.  It gives foolish and hyped-up youngsters a chance to serve their country.  It's a damn sight better than joining the War Corps."

...

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Can your brother make cotton candy?"

"My brother can make anything, except conversation."

"Can I ask him to make some?  I kinda promised that kid today cotton candy, not thinking how difficult it would be to get here."

"He could do that, but you can get cotton candy on the Promenade, that's Level 93."

"Wonderful.  Do you take Earth money up here?"

She almost spit coffee through her nose.

"What?"

"I mean American money."

"Of course you do, dear.  I must get you to Dr. Chomsky before it's too late."

"I should get to that, before it's too late.  What time do we start in the morning."

"You don't, dear.  I am done with them, the ones who speak your languages anyway.  Mister Lars Swenson has some 'splainin' to do, though."

That was, perhaps, the only word in the English language properly possessing an apostrophe on each end.

But was it proper?  Great, was I losing my linguistic sense of right and wrong now too?

"Their depositions are in your room; I expect them to be translated and in my in-box by 07:30, by the way.  Once you're done with that, you're done here."

"What?  Then I should go!"

"Nonsense, dear.  We never sleep in the sky.  Don't you know that?"

"But I'm not from the sky," I protested.  "I need sleep."

"You need to relax.  Do you get dropsick?"

"No.  Judge Garr harked his guts all over me on the way up and I was fine.  I love the feeling of weightlessness."

"Then you should go to the Deck and fly."

"Deck?"

"The Airlock.  It is zero-gee.

"Yes, I know.  I flew a little bit, getting here."

"Skylarking is against the rules.  You should go EVA...nothing in the world, and I mean that exactly, is like a spacewalk."

"I would love that.  I find I like the sensation.  But for some reason, I can't move right up here.  I feel too heavy."

"That's inertia.  Many groundhogs forget when they first get up here that you are weightless, not massless.  Galileo's Laws still work up here."

"Oh."

I suppose that made sense.

"Would you really like to do that?  A spacewalk.  It would be a piece of cake for me to arrange."

"I'm flattered, but I think that's a bit too much to ask.  Besides, my sister would never forgive me."

"Why?"

"Because she's a ballerina, and she'd break both my legs for a chance to even be here.  I bet she wouldn't fall."

"Probably not.  Dancers and martial artists are often more aware of their bodies than most."

"She has a boyfriend, Sonjin, and they dance like faerie folk."

"I would very much like to see that.  Not enough culture up here, if you ask me."

"So I'm done here?"  I hadn't gotten used to space, but I very much wanted to stay longer.

"Yes, I'm afraid so.  I understand if you'd like to call it a night, but I haven't felt so, I don't know, giddy maybe, not since I was your age.  It's been wonderful, having you."

"Yes, I've had a wonderful time.  Thank you so much for everything.  I really must be getting on.  I have so much to do."

"You do not think," she asked me as I was getting ready to go, "that you are getting out that door without a hug and a kiss, do you?"

"I hug I'll grant you, but I don't kiss."

"Not even air kisses?"

"Especially not air kisses.  And not goodbye—until we meet again."