The streetlamp cut a wedge out of the evening dark. They stood in its piss-yellow glow, soggy from a drizzle that had tried all afternoon to become proper rain. At four, they were almost a crowd in that small puddle of light, the smoke from their tobacco nearly mingling on nights when the air held still.
It was time. There was nothing left to plaster over, no one to pull their hands from the fire. That much was obvious. But when he stubbed out his cigarette on the lamp post, he caught himself twisting the hot butt into the metal as if it were an eye. The others did not look up. No point making it easier, really.
Nonetheless, he did allow himself one beat of respite. A single glance back, slipped deftly between two blinks. Because without it, he would never have been able to turn and walk away.
He no longer gave a toss about either of them, and since he didn’t smoke, he was damn well going to have a drink.
Four fingers of something respectable in hand, he strode past the warring men and bloodied animals on the hanging tapestries, to the far end of the echo-bound hall and the window, set into the wall like a well bored sideways. Outside, winter was vast — a grey, wide vacancy pressed up against the stonework, seeping through to goosebump his skin underneath layers of air and fibre. He set his forehead, hot and bare, against the rimed glass, until the chill pooled behind his eyes and murdered the evening.
She asks him why he was so gussied up in the photo. In all her years of knowing him, she has never seen him in anything less comfortable than chinos and maybe a jacket on a particularly strict day. For the life of him, in the middle of all this, he cannot remember the occasion and just makes something up. He would feel poorly about this for a long time afterwards.
No matter, already the photo has fallen from her fingers, which are waxy and unfeeling. The wind snatches at it like breath from the lips, tossing it goodness knows where. He hopes at least it ends up near the glove she dropped earlier, so that whoever finds one item would also find the other and know that they are together, that she is not alone, and neither is he.
Now he sings her a lullaby as that certain kind of sleep takes her in its fixed embrace, a ditty that he conjures out of the relentless snow and frostbitten sky, about how her husband, who does not share their ambition for height and vertigo, braves these shark-teeth peaks to bring her home to her children. They’ve only met a handful of times, but he thought well of the man, who loves his wife so well that he is willing, time and again, to surrender her to her alpine dreams.
He rests her head in the crook of his arm but does not look her way until he runs out of words. Ice frills her dark lashes and her eyes do not close completely, no matter how long he presses his bloodless fingers against them. Up here the night is sightless and deafened by the blizzard, but the air is too thin for him to scream.
***
Inspired by this.
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One day, he promised himself that he was going to run his hand up and down Harrington’s back until he gave up. Until they both gave in. Until they redeemed the hours wasted dangling themselves just out of reach on the sticky, killer days at the bureau, all the evenings (and nights and early mornings) they let dissipate in the slipstream of their duty, without a second glance.
They would set themselves up on either side of their desks, or across the bar, or at the very least over the teletype, fancying themselves generals at a chessboard, when they were really just scrabbling for safety like terrified children. Sometimes, he thought their circumstances had grown too urgent and their history too febrile for such cowardice, and that he could at least make up his mind to try. And yes, he almost thought he would, sometimes.
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***
Kind readers, we’ll be signing off for a few days over the holidays. Happy new year!
That was the second-to-last time she saw him before the seasons changed and their lives became a chain of long goodbyes. The time after that was less hectic, and they had more hours together.
But this was how she would always choose to remember him, open and energetic, wreathed with light.
