Dinner with Dylan

Summary

• The chapter takes place at La Cantina, a location that prompts the character Nora to reflect on a memory from her past, when she dined there with her ex-partner Dan before they moved in together. She recalls that Dan was quite rude to the service staff, a trait which Nora interprets as untrustworthy.
• Nora is currently at the restaurant with Dylan, who claims to love the place. She muses over whether there’s any place Dylan wouldn’t adore citing he could find beauty anywhere, even in a desolate field near Chernobyl.
• They discuss dogs and school over black bean tacos, with Dylan recalling Nora as ‘the girl who was good at swimming’. He reminds her of a school assembly where she received an award for her swimming abilities, a memory Nora has tried to forget as she believes this might have been the point when she began to dislike swimming and subsequently become more alienated from her peers.
• Dylan reveals that he used to see Nora often in the school library playing chess with the librarian, Mrs Elm. He mentions that he saw Mrs Elm in poor health recently, accompanied by someone dressed in a nurse's uniform entering a care home after being out on a walk. Nora had presumed that Mrs Elm had passed away and is saddened to hear of her decline.