reading always tended to fray Chris’s patience. So instead, she read people. Naturally inquisitive, she would juice them, she would wring them out. But books were not wringable. Books were glib. They said “therefore” and “clearly” when it wasn’t clear at all, and their circumlocutions could never be challenged; they could never be stopped for a shrewdly disarming, “Hey, now, hold it. I’m dumb. Could I have that again?” Books could never be pinned, or made to wriggle, or dissected.
