“Okay,” I said. Someone in the corner of the coffee shop starts playing a French horn and I try my best to ignore it. “Say Elon wants to hire someone with a Virgo sun and Capricorn moon. Virgo and Capricorn are both practical, hardworking earth signs. This is not a people person. I would suggest he—or she—is put on a team where they can mostly crunch numbers and not interact much with others. This is someone who is going to get the work done. The Capricorn moon will make them a bit rigid and repressed, so I will try to put them on a team with other, like-minded earth signs. Virgos don’t get along with Sagittarians or Aries, so I would suggest he or she is not on a team led by one of those signs.” As I say this, I wonder why this is not my actual job. I am so good at it.

“Fascinating,” my dad says.

“For the most part,” I say, “air and fire get along and earth and water get along. So I try my best to keep those matched for all the personal placements, from the sun to Mars.” The French horn gets louder, so I have to get louder too. “Of course, it’s not possible to have everyone perfectly matched, but I do my best.”

“What is the most common sign at SpaceX?” my dad asks.

“Virgo,” I say. “Then Pisces. Elon Musk is a Virgo moon, and they’re super efficient workers, so he likes to hire them.” I looked up Elon’s chart the other day. And whenever I look up someone’s chart, I commit it to memory. It’s not a choice; it just happens. I think it’s part of my OCD.

“I’m a Pisces, I think,” my dad says.

“You are!” I say.

“I don’t know much about it. What are Pisces like?”

“Dreamy, creative, sensitive, gentle,” I say. “It seems weird for SpaceX, because you would expect more robotic signs, but Pisces can be geniuses. Mostly because they’re so creative; they see things others can’t. This is super helpful in the realm of space travel.”

“Wow,” my dad says. “I think I missed the genius gene.”

“Oh please,” I say. “You’re a professor!”

My dad shrugs. “Your mother is a Taurus, right?”

I nod.

“What are they like?”

“Stubborn,” I say. “A bit dull.”

He laughs again, then his face gets all serious. “You know, your mother loves you very much,” he says.

“I don’t know that,” I say. “I don’t know it at all. All she does is radiate hostility in my direction.”

My dad sighs and the corners of his mouth turn. For the first time I notice that he has aged significantly in the past few years. There are small bags under his eyes, and I realize that one day, maybe not too long from now, he will die. I swallow.