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Graham

The buzzing streetlight outside my window had been flickering for weeks. Nobody fixed it. Nobody ever did. The moths kept circling the glass like the light meant something, hitting it over and over until they dropped out of the air.

Down the block a dog barked, then another. Someone shouted for them to shut up, and the sound rolled through the neighborhood before dying off the way it always did. One by one the lights in the houses went dark, people turning in for the night, closing their doors on whatever they didn’t want to deal with until morning.

Maybe somewhere that meant peace.

It never did here.

I pressed my palms against the brick beneath the window and pushed, the chair fighting me the way it always did before finally giving in. Took a second to get my balance right, another to catch my breath. The world looks different when you have to work this hard just to see it.

I locked the brakes and leaned forward.

Only then could I look down.

You notice things at night when you don’t have anywhere else to go. When the only traveling you do is from the bed to the window and back again. After a while it stops feeling like being stuck and starts feeling like routine. Not better. Just familiar.

More goes on in the dark than most people ever see.

A waitress behind the diner, coat thrown over her shoulders, smoking like the cold didn’t bother her. Three pats on the pocket, checking the tips before she went back inside. Light bill due, rent late, same story different night.

Inside, a truck driver sat alone at the counter, staring at a candle stuck in the middle of a blueberry muffin like it was trying to tell him something. Forty-five years gone in a blink. Coffee in one hand, road waiting outside, another shift already breathing down his neck.

In the apartments across the street, people stood in their windows holding drinks they didn’t really want, looking out at a world they didn’t feel part of anymore. Lights on, lights off, shadows moving behind curtains. People doing the math in their heads, trying to figure out when things stopped feeling like a choice.

Somewhere a woman cried where nobody could hear her. Somewhere a man sat in the dark staring at a stack of bills like if he looked long enough the numbers might change.

Lives turn on small things. One bad night. One wrong turn. One decision you swear you won’t make again.

I know that better than most.

I was drunk. High. Angry in that hot, useless way that makes you think moving fast will fix something already broken. I had just walked in on my woman with another man. No hiding it. No shame. Just the truth sitting there under bad light like it belonged.

When I said something, she didn’t apologize. She explained. Told me if I’d been different she wouldn’t have needed anyone else. That was what I hated most about her. Not what she did. The way she never carried any of it herself.

So I carried it.

The family never saw me coming. A mother, a father, a kid in the backseat. I remember the sound more than anything else. Metal folding wrong. Glass breaking like it didn’t want to. After that everything got quiet in the kind of way that doesn’t ever really end.

You don’t get past something like that. You just get used to carrying it.

I leaned forward in the chair, careful not to shift too far, and looked down toward the corner. Took me a long time to learn how to sit still without tipping. From this angle I could see the sidewalk clear enough.

Trixie and Zoe were working their stretch of pavement again.

Trixie caught the movement first. She always did. She gave me that slow wave she’d been giving me for months, all practiced charm and tired grace. We both knew the rules. A smile, a chuckle, nothing more. She liked knowing someone was watching who wasn’t looking to buy.

She hadn’t always been out there. You could tell by the way she held herself, like she still expected better from the world even when the world stopped expecting anything from her. Once she told me she used to hate winter because it meant shoveling the driveway before the kids woke up for school. She laughed when she said it, like she wasn’t sure the memory belonged to her anymore.

Zoe stood a few feet behind her, lighting a cigarette with hands that never stopped moving. The flame pushed back the shadows long enough to show her face, then the dark took it again. Zoe didn’t talk much about where she came from. What little I knew came in pieces. Foster homes. Running away. Owing the wrong people money. The rest you could figure out without asking.

Out here nobody asks too many questions.

Not because they don’t care.

Because they already know enough.

Zoe looked up toward my window, the ember of her cigarette glowing bright for a second. Trixie followed her eyes and grinned when she saw me.

I lifted my hand from the armrest and motioned toward the building.

Nights get long when you’re alone with your own head. Sometimes it’s easier with other people in the room, even if nobody talks about why.

Trixie nudged Zoe and nodded up at the window. Zoe shrugged like she expected it, then both of them started toward the door without hurrying, like this was just another stop along the way.

It usually was.

I backed the chair away from the window and turned toward the table. The pizza box sat where I left it, heat still coming through the cardboard. Smelled better than it tasted. Always did.

I don’t invite them up because I feel sorry for them.

I invite them up because the night feels shorter when somebody else is in it.

The elevator buzzed a minute later, the old motor grinding its way up the shaft like it wasn’t sure it wanted to make the trip. I waited, listening to the building settle around me, the same sounds every night, the same routine, the same quiet.

The gate rattled open down the hall.

Slow footsteps.

Three short knocks.

Same as always.

I rolled forward and opened the door.

Trixie walked in first, dropping her purse on the couch like she owned the place. Zoe came in behind her, already looking around for the ashtray.

Nobody said anything for a minute.

I set the pizza on the table and opened the box. The smell filled the room, mixing with the smoke that never really left no matter how many times I opened the window.

Trixie grabbed a slice, blew on it, and laughed.

“Smells better than it tastes,” she said.

“Yeah,” I told her.

“It always does.”

We ate anyway.

Outside, the streetlight buzzed, the moths kept hitting the glass, and somewhere down the block a dog started barking again like nothing in the world had changed.

Up here, nobody asked about the past.

Down there, nobody asked about mine.

After a while you learn that’s about as close to peace as most people ever get.

For tonight, it was enough.