She’s walking home at one a.m. with a cheap plastic spoon in one hand and a small carton of caramel ice-cream in the other. She just tried to share it with a friend who wasn’t home. Wasn’t last time either, maybe three times the charm. Earlier she’d been at a dinner party. Her friend Aiden’s birthday. Some new people there and one or two she’d known already. Conversation was amusing and animated, a nice change from the long hot day. It’s summertime and the weather is oppressive in her little box of an apartment. Someone had brought unusual little gyroscopic toys that lit up and were hard to hold. No batteries needed nor included. She can still acutely feel the muscles in her right arm, how they feel overly used somehow. She was the last to leave, as usual. Staying behind with Aiden and Nicole. Doing dishes and explaining finally the break-up of six months ago. A new thing to attempt. Setting one piece in front of the other to create the path she walked. She looks embarrassed at some of it, but not overly. Her friends curled on the couch across from her are happy together, happy to have her here, glad to listen. It was the sort of chatting after the party that should have had a bottle of wine or a carafe of coffee. They should have been sitting there adult, sipping from glasses while softly laughing in love at themselves.
She’s walking now, alone in the soft night. A Gibson bit about Tokyo crosses her mind as she walks up the hill on fourth street. “It never gets dark here. Even when you close the door, the light blows under the door like powder.” She agrees completely. Happens in her room all the time. It never gets properly dark in the city. All the extraneous lights. Half of these and we would still be safe. Across Clark now and up a block, next to the school. There’s people talking in the darkness. They’re up at the top of the elementary fire escape. It’s funny where people will go to talk at night. Different places than during the day. Little hidden places, like attempting to be alone with your friends with walls of privacy made of invisible velvet. She’s counting her fingers. July, August, September, November. Five years is an eternity when you’re twenty-two. It’s practically one quarter of your life. It’s not real. Four months though. Four months is real and it’s no time at all. Especially if it’s not really waiting. If the other is there every day, eager as well. Days fly past, utterly meaningless. She’ll tell him this when she logs on at home.