Roderick's phone rings. He answers: "Hello!"
"Hey, Roderick, it's your Dad."
"Hi, Dad."
"Whatcha doing right now?"
"Reading Hobbes' Leviathan for Mr. Parvalescu's Foundation of Politics seminar."
"Leviathan? That's a large book."
Roderick chuckles at his Dad's clever play on words.
"Oh, yes, it's a real monster."
Roderick chuckles at his own clever play on words, then inquires: "Are you at home?"
"No, I'm in Minneapolis, for a trade show." Mr. Smith has deviated from his usual practice of traveling only to cities that vaguely evoke real cities but are indefinite as to actual location.
Roderick ponders what he knows about Minneapolis. Cold winters. Big mall. Losing sports teams. Even the Asian girls are buxom. "Is it nice?"
"It's okay. The trade show is in the Hubert Humphrey Center. Here in Minneapolis, they revere the memory of Hubert Humphrey. Everywhere else, he's just a loser."
Roderick ponders what he knows about Hubert Humphrey. Ran against Nixon in 1968 and lost. That's it.
At dinner, Roderick sits with Lily Chang so that he can admire her decolletage and discuss politics, but mostly to admire her decolletage.
"Why are women in Minneapolis so buxom?" he inquires.
"I don't know", says Lily, between bites of chicken wing. "Maybe because of the cold weather?"
"Good explanation," says Roderick, nodding. Great explanation, he thinks. Either it proves conclusively the importance of natural selection in the evolution of species, or it proves that there really is a God, or both.
