She lasted almost a minute.
"Page three hundred and twelve," she said.
He looked up. "What?"
"You've been on page three hundred and twelve since I sat down. You haven't turned it. You're pretending to read."
"I'm reading very carefully."
"Your eyes aren't moving."
"It's a dense page." He turned the book so she could see the cover. It was Moby-Dick, a Signet Classic, so worn that the whale on the front had been rubbed down to the suggestion of a whale, a gray idea of an enormity. "I'll have you know I've been on page three hundred and twelve, give or take, for about six years."
"Six years."
"Not continuously. I put it down sometimes. I put it down for most of 1985." He considered the page. "Chapter Seventy-Four. 'The Sperm Whale's Head, Contrasted View.' It's two chapters about a whale's head. One for each side. Melville was not a man who had someone in his life telling him to wrap it up."
"So skip it."
He looked genuinely shocked. "You can't skip. You skip, you're cheating. Then when you get to the end, you don't deserve it."
"It's a book. Nobody's checking."