The following day Mari was over. Not quite dinner time. Definitely past lunch. His schedule had creeped later and later...  an hour a week until eating dinner at 5PM began to feel out of place. Other people did indeed eat 

dinner

at five. Five was a fine time for dinner. For others. Not for him though. He felt that 7 was now early for dinner. Sometimes he'd not start the oven for the

frozen pizza

until it was past ten.

The Argentinian schedule he called it. He'd read a 

blog

post about some Polish software founder who had wrote about the peculiarities of Argentina from the perspective of a European. Like how the restaurants were closed from 3pm to 7pm. And how high-speed wifi was already in every cafe back when that wasn't yet the norm.

Mari was Argentinian. Had not been in the states long enough to adopt to the usual schedule. So he and her were able to have dinner together late. It made him feel a bit more normal. Having somebody to share dinner with while the rest of the city turned in for the night.

This particular night he felt so comfortable that he turned the oven light on, squatted down, and stared in.

"What are you doing?" Mari said.

He thought of pretending. Act like he was checking in on the pizza. Nodding his head before saying, "just checking in on this guy."

Instead he kept staring. "I do this sometimes. Stare at the pizza while it comes to."

She looked down from where she stood. Her standing height was nearly as short as him squatting. She then crouched down to stare directly into the oven.

"Do you do this more than sometimes?"

"No. I just do it sometimes."

Watching pizza made the time move slower. He liked that. The kitchen light lightly buzzed above.