“You don’t have to make light of it, Reid.” That surprised him. “I’m not—” “Yes, you are. You laugh, you make your little parentheticals. Believe me, I understand humor as a defense, but do you not think what you’ve gone through merits seriousness?” “I … no, I’m, I just, it’s absurd, right? To have that many bad things happen all at the same time like that?” “So you’re an absurdist? Like a Camus or a Beckett?” she asked this with a genuine curiosity, not any judgment, cataloging him in a mental index. “They, too, responded to a propitious amount of simultaneous suffering.”
