"Aw, see," Cal said, smiling back a little although his eyes were on his lifting so he hadn't actually noticed River's smile. "And swimming's a lot nicer on the poor punching bag."

He tried to remember the last time he'd really gone swimming; he wondered if the tank that made Octopussy's Garden at the Sixty-Niners counted; if it did, that would be it. If it didn't, it would have been the Object's family's cabin in Petosky, where he didn't so much as swim as just hide his self-consciousness in the water as he failed to ignore the Object in a bikini.

Cal shrugged as well as he could in his current state of pumping iron. "It's all right, I guess," was his answer, while his mind was left wondering how he'd really feel about swimming after all the things he could associate with water, all sexuality and death and embarrassment.

But he didn't say no. Cal didn't say yes, either, though, for that matter. He simply rather sharply diverted himself away from any invitation from anyone on something that was, for most people, something simple but, for him, was one of the gateways into intimacy, put up a wall, and send his attention lightly over toward River's current position.

"Show-off," he muttered, slightly teasing, although admittedly a bit fascinated, definitely impressed.

Cal's grin at the bar holding his weights was a little wry, a little sad; it was unfortunate that River seemed to want some sense of finality to the whole thing, that he couldn't have just left it there and unanswered, just so he wouldn't have to give the inevitable answer.

"A no," he told her, hesitant and regretful but also relieved. "Sorry. I don't swim much any more."

"I don't really do much," Cal admitted. "This," he said, indicating his work out, "that play in town, work. I write a little. Nothing good or substantial. I smoke too much. Think too much."

There was a pause, filled to the brim with thoughts, especially for how short it was, that probably only made that last statement overly simplistic.

"That's about it, really."

The easier question would be what didn't he think about. Himself, the world, the people in it, his past, his present, his future. The call of the Muse and the cynicism of Fate, his mutated extra gene on a critical chromosome that left him either half a man or a monster of a female, of unfulfilled longing, perpetual longing, of red hair and blonde hair and brown hair, of fingers that itched to touch but resolved themselves not to. Of clothing that would always smell used and his naive forgetfulness of the dangers of cars and the people who drove them. Of Greek food and Greek tradition and Greek tragedy, of husbands who were brothers and wives who were sisters, matrimony of cousins and their manifestation. Of how he no longer had hair to nervously chew as he hid behind it, and, besides, it made his hair smell when he did that, and whether or not he smelled now and didn't realize it, of receding hairlines and waxing moustaches one minute and wishing he could grow one in the next. Of...

He shrugged a little again. "You know. Just stuff. Nothing interesting."

The giggling quirked Cal's eyebrow slightly, as did the statement matched up with her movements.

"So can be that which surrounds the mind," he mused.