It’s snowing on the streets, as we head to our rendezvous. It’s cold! I’m lucky I have the thick skin of a Scandinavian, W. says. Thick skin, to keep the Viking warm during the long winters.

There's blubber under my Scandinavian skin, W. says. I'm as warm as a walrus, no matter how cold it is, he says. As warm as a sperm whale, diving beneath the Arctic ice. I am insulated by my fat, just as my head is insulated by my stupidity.

A fathead, that's what I am, W. says. But perhaps you need a fat head to dive into the depths of thought. Perhaps you need a kind of insulation, to respond to what must be thought. Perhaps only the fathead can think, W. says. Only the whale of thought, who can dive deepest!

Well, he'll dive with me, W. says: a whelk on the side of a whale.