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Mordred says that Lev is supposed to go off his medications and tell Mordred if he's not feeling well and needs to taper down more slowly.
Obviously, the thing this means is that Lev is supposed to taper down as quickly as possible and hide the tremors and headaches and sweating and light hypersensitivity from Mordred so that he isn't upset by them.
Lev manages to do this for almost two days.
"Okay. Uh. ...Do you want to go to the library or something? We can get books?"
"Sure! If you want to! ...I mostly haven't, uh, been out. Anywhere. Since we got here. I went out walking at one point."
"Oh. We can go to the library and maybe get lunch? At a lunch counter? I haven't been to the library in ten years."
Oswald does not know why he is drawing attention to his problems while Lev has much worse problems right there. On the other hand, he doesn't have to figure out how to care for himself if this is for Lev instead.
"Yes, definitely, let's go to the library then."
Lev is not supposed to have preferences but he is so bad at not having preferences in libraries.
He pulls book after book off the shelves and asks Oswald if he has read them. His to-be-read pile grows. His favorite authors have so many more books out!
At every single book, Oswald says, "No, I haven't, please tell me about it!"
Lev is really hesitant and keeps apologizing and saying "sorry, I know this is really boring."
"I don't know if you've noticed this about me but I'm a boring person. I like boring things. I balanced ledgers for a living and I honestly enjoyed it."
Lev lights up about books.
He bounces excitedly while he explains that the British had problems establishing chiefdoms among the Tiv. They are an egalitarian people who believe that power comes from a substance that grows around your heart, and people can become more powerful by eating other people's hearts. Witches are, apparently, very fond of this. So every time that the British made someone a chief the Tiv concluded that they were evil cannibal witches and killed them. This seems like a silly belief to white people but it's important to look at the role this plays in Tiv society. People are naturally powerhungry, so of course they try to get power, and you can't maintain an egalitarian society if everyone is constantly backstabbing each other for power. So the Tiv decide that people who seek power are witches and this dissuades them from seeking power. Every society is functional in its own way, if you think about it. Lev is very offended by how anthropologists tend to think of primitive people as being stupid and superstitious instead of understanding why they do what they do and how it makes their society work. Some primitive societies are much older than ours, you know!
He's so wonderful and passionate.
Oswald is also supposed to be getting books. He gets one of the books lev points out that looks maybe moderately accessible and something dry and practical on music technique.
(He is pretending to himself that he is going to be motivated to think about his hobbies.)
They go back to Oswald's room and Lev chatters about books and they sit on Oswald's bed and without Lev really noticing they wind up cuddling while Lev chatters at him about books.
The hotel room is kinda depressing.
For Oswald. It is depressing for Oswald. Because he had briefly existed in a disconnected fantasy world where nothing was real and now he's back in his life again.
But Lev somehow hasn't vanished and he's still full of color and light so that part is still good.
Oswald gestures around his nearly-empty hotel room.
"I don't have other plans."
On Friday Lev steals a candle from a store and announces that he is going for a walk and goes where no one can see him and sings the prayers by himself and-- it shouldn't be comforting, he does not believe in a God who is watching out for him. But for the past ten years he has had his choice of the Southern Baptists or the United Methodists and he has had Dr. Keaton explaining to him that he shouldn't mind, it's not like they're not the same God, Jesus died for him too, and-- it is good to have something that is his.
When he closes his eyes he can almost hear his family singing around him. That shouldn't make him feel better, he hates his family, he moved to Los Angeles as soon as he could to get away from them. But the thought of Jews throughout New York singing the same prayers gives him some feeling he is having a hard time naming.
A few days later, Mordred says, "So, uh, I don't super know how to bring this up, but do you want to go to synagogue since they have those in New York?"
"I don't have opinions about it? It just seemed like it might be something you'd care about."
It is frustrating but, honestly, not that unexpected that Mordred keeps pretending that he doesn't care what Lev does-- Dr. Keaton did the same thing, it's a way people act when they don't want to admit to themselves that they want to control you. But Mordred wants him to go to synagogue and listen to him read out loud and read about anthropology, and that's... a very good set of things to want. Lev hasn't met anyone else who wanted things that matched up so well with-- Lev flinches away from "what he wants"-- what it is easy for him to give.
"Sure, I can go."
Mordred doesn't know how to get it across that he actually for real doesn't have an opinion on whether Lev goes to synagogue and just wanted to make it clear that it was fine if he wanted to.
Lev very cleverly does only the Jewish things he wants to do anyway. He orders meat without milk and watches carefully for Mordred's reaction. He lights candles in Mordred's room and sings.
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