The argument was about the Metro.

Specifically, it was about the B Line and whether the express pattern ran on weekend mornings or only on weekday peak hours. She said weekends. I said no.

"The express pattern only runs on peak-hour weekdays," I said. "On weekends you get the standard interval."

"I've taken it on Saturdays."

"On the B Line."

"Yes."

"In the morning."

"Yes."

"And it ran express."

She looked at me. The look she gave when a form cue wasn't being followed.

"It ran faster than the weekday schedule," she said.

"Lower ridership," I said. "Fewer delays. It runs faster on the weekends because there are fewer people on it, not because it's express. Express means specific stops only. You still had all the stops."

She looked at me again. Different look. The one she did when she'd checked twice and gotten the same answer both times.

"I've been taking this train for eight months," she said.

Eight months was the Amber timeline. The real number was closer to eighty years. I let it go.

"So have I."

"I know the schedule."

"You know what you've observed," I said. "What you've observed is consistent with lower ridership delays. The express pattern has a different symbol on the map and a different announcement."

---

She didn't do wrong. Not visibly. Nine hundred years of reading rooms meant she was already certain before she spoke. Her opinions on my squat form were correct. Her opinion of my coffee was correct. The chair, the glass of water, the drawer in the bathroom — all correct, without being told. She moved through the world like being wrong was something that happened to other people.

She was currently wrong about a train I rode forty-some weeks a year. She knew it. I could see it in how she held the argument. Not doubling down, not retreating. Just holding it. Not ready to let it go yet.

"Pull up the Metro website," I said.

She looked at me.

"The schedule is posted. Weekend service, B Line. If the express pattern runs on Saturdays you'll find it there."

She didn't pull up the Metro website.

She had a phone. She could've ended this in ten seconds. She didn't. I noticed that and didn't say anything about it.

---

We were in my kitchen. Sunday. She'd been at my apartment since Saturday evening. I'd made coffee. She was drinking hers with the face she made about my coffee. Tolerating it. The Metro thing had come up because she'd mentioned taking the train to West Hollywood that afternoon, and I'd mentioned the weekend interval, and she'd said the thing about the express.

"I've heard the announcement," she said.

"The announcement says *B Line* and the line number and the direction," I said. "Not *express*. The express announcement says *Limited Stop Service*."

A pause.

"It may not have said that specifically."

"No."

She drank her coffee.

I waited to see what she'd do with it. Nine hundred years, wrong about a transit schedule, and we both knew it. She could acknowledge it, dismiss it, reframe it, or pick a different fight. She hadn't done any of those yet. She was sitting with the fact of being wrong the way she'd sat with the fact that the feed had overwhelmed her on our first night.

"Weekend service is less reliable," she said.

"Correct."

"That's what I meant."

I looked at her. She looked at her coffee.

She hadn't said she was wrong. She'd found the angle that let her update without calling it an update. That was how she handled being corrected. Nine hundred years of practice at never quite saying the words.

"Okay," I said.

She looked up.

"The weekend service is less reliable," I said. "That's worth knowing."

She held my gaze. Something softer than usual.

"Yes," she said. "It is."

---

She took the B Line at two in the afternoon and I cleaned the kitchen and put the dishes away and thought about the Metro thing for a few minutes.

She'd been wrong. On my ground, about my train. She couldn't find a path to being right. And she hadn't walked away. She'd stayed with it until she found the reframe. That wasn't nothing. Nine hundred years hadn't required that kind of flexibility from her.

She came back at eight. She disapproved of the pasta I made on Monday — same flat delivery she used for the coffee and the shampoo and the Metro schedule. I listened. Some of them were right.

I hadn't said anything about the train.

She hadn't brought it up either.

We ate on the couch. At some point her tail settled around my ankle. She didn't seem to know she was doing it.

That was the end of it.