Finn: First impression of me?
Alison: Well, when my sister said I wouldn’t just be staying with her but also her boyfriend, I started wondering which boyfriend you were.
Finn: You hadn’t heard from Evelyn for nine years. You couldn’t assume she’d met someone new?
Alison: I did eventually. First, my mind had to go through the monotone-voiced motorcycling nerd whose outgoing answering machine message was just jazz music and the Czech bum who kept insisting he didn’t have T.B.
Finn: She reconnected with the former just before she left.
Alison: That’s why I figured an idiot like her would still be with some creep.
Finn: There are so many health issues that can just hit you out of nowhere. Like, what if I get vertigo?
Alison: Well, you’ll tell me the room is spinning. I’ll tell you it’s not. Then we’ll just agree to disagree.
Finn: How’s the job hunting coming along?
Alison: No comment.
Finn: You haven’t even thought about it, have you?
Alison: I thought about it enough to decide not to do it.
Finn: If you won’t do it for me and our arrangement, do it to appease society. Joblessness is the new murder.
Alison: What’d you have in mind?
Finn: Wash dishes. Shelve books at the library.
Alison: You still want me cowering in the shadows, don’t you?
Finn: Movie theater.
Alison: Too bright and busy. Not enough corners to weep in.
Finn: Sparsely attended indie video store for hipsters who’ve sucked Netflix dry of French cinema and Hal Hartley.
Alison: Ugh. Fine.
Alison: Hey, just wondering, are you losing your mind?
Finn: What?
Alison: You have fans going day and night which was helpful in Summer, but it’s Fall now and I’m just checking if you’re crazy.
Finn: We’ve had this discussion already. I told you I just like to have fan time until it’s heater time.
Alison: Rather than accept you’re a power wasting d-bag, I’m going to believe you’re some spooky lunatic with a thing about fans.
Finn: The poor card stopped being cute months ago.
Alison: I get it. You’re that girl in Signs with the water glasses. This is how you keep the aliens out.
Alison: Ok. Nicknames!
Finn: What?
Alison: As bff’s or whatever you call this -
Finn: Not bffs.
Alison: We need a nickname as a whole.
Finn: You mean like Filison.
Alison: Jesus, way to be basic. Do you even care about us at all? Jazz it up. I’m talking Filibuster!
Finn: Ok, not bad. If this whole idea wasn’t bad from the start.
Alison: Do we have nicknames for each other?
Finn: Ragamuffin.
Alison: Daddy Starbucks.
Finn: These sound suspiciously like pet names.
Alison: Butch it up then. Machete and Skullfucker.
Finn: Who’s who?
Finn: What do I do with the juice from my canned pineapple now?
Alison: Oh, put it in a separate cup.
Finn: We’re still doing that? You told me yesterday that you don’t like the juice anymore.
Alison: Yeah, well, I found something else to do with it.
[hideous silence]
Finn: Are you going to fake a drug test with it?
Alison: It’s been over a year. How did people react when you first toyed with the idea of me moving in?
Finn: Oh, you don’t need to know.
Alison: I always knew. I just want it confirmed so we can laugh about it.
Finn: Toby said it was a sister rebound/Pygmalion situation.
Alison: Then eww/fuck him.
Finn: Anna said I should grow up and that young quasi-homeless roommates is so 90’s.
Alison: Right. Soul Asylum. Runaway train never going back.
Finn: No one liked your sister much and figured you’d be a chip off the ol’ bitch.
Alison: Also that I’d smell like Taco Bell, right?
Finn: Why do they call it “winning” on ebay? That says so much about life. It’s not a game of skill or chance. It’s just who has more money. “You have more money! You win! But you already knew that!”
Alison: I don’t know but God, I love the word “basin”!
Finn: And I always have to worry if the thing will even get here. I’m cursing the mail once I know it’s late.
Alison: When that mailman finally comes, I say we throw him in a basin full of poop.
