Nelson’s word for yesterday was ‘practical’ and today’s is ‘commitment’. I think his sister has an agenda… I had intended to use the words in my writing, which I have not, yet. What’s practical about an alien commissioning a supersized surfboard?! And commitment.

“Is it ‘practical’?” Julia, my not so silent partner. asked me from the doorway of the workshop. It was very late and she must have just got home from her evening class.

I was modifying three of the blanks I use for surfboards and the jig, too, so it was a legitimate, if loaded, question. The hulking alien menace had gone hours ago but promised to return. I had his ‘digits’, so he told me, and a deposit, which I was currently burning through.

“Not really; I’ve got my supplier looking into a custom blank, thicker and longer, but it will take a little time. I have to make the board thicker anyway, so I’m making a surfboard sandwich; these two butted together over this one like so-”

“It’ll break.”

“And then I’ll know how not to kludge up a board for a big boy… correction, I’ll know one way not to, anyway.”

“As long as it’s paying- it is paying, right?”

“Yes,” I ground out. “But it’s not about-”

“It suggested you couldn’t make it a board?”

“You keep saying ‘it’. Do you have a problem with his money or with them?”

Is Julia racist/species-ist?