“So here’s something odd,” he said, the thin, crisp page crinkling between his thumb and forefinger as he flipped back and forth.
She said nothing, but waited for him to continue.
“All through, right?, God’s been looking at it and saying it was good.”
“….. mmm…..?” she said, tilting her head.
“But then there’s something God looks at and it’s not good.”
“….. right …. the snake and apple, obviously,” she said, not quite impatiently.
“No — that’s the thing — before that,” he said, “before they disobeyed, before everything went wrong…. Like: while everything was still perfect, something wasn’t good.”
“What?” she asked, despite herself.
“It is not good for man to be alone,” he read.
She looked pointedly around at the dorm room he shared with Adrian, wrinkled her nose, then chuckled. “Well, duh…” was all she said.
“No, but think about it. God created, it’s good, then he improved on that. There was a point when Eden was good, but not perfect. Maybe would have continued improving and improving.”
Her nose wrinkled again, perplexed this time, “By adding more and more sexes of people, that’d be weird.”
He laughed, “Maybe just more and more women for Adam,” he said, then, “No, I’m kidding, who knows how, but maybe…”
“So heaven, too?” she wondered “Is it like heaven is perfect, and everyone sees that it’s good, but then 10 billion years into it, God will snap his fingers and say ‘y’know what this needs?’ and add cushions or something?”
He smiled and shrugged, “Who knows,” he said.
After a pause he continued, “Maybe it’s too simple to think that what happens is that we’ll ‘return to Eden’ or ‘go back to what we were originally intended to be.’ Maybe it’s going to be better than that.”
She nodded and said, “Ok.” Then, “What are we doing for dinner?”
He laughed out loud then, and put on his James Earl Jones voice, “You humans!”