Just then, a woman in a red velvet dress set down breath mints on the table and left everyone to their own devices.
I’m not sure this was the party I expected to attend, she said. I haven’t been to anything like this in years, and it’s a little confusing to figure out what to do first.
It’s just networking, he said. Say hello, offer a mint, and be clear about what you’re trying to accomplish. That’s all any of us can do.
Late that night, they turned on the blues. The good Scotch came out, the better red wine. It made no sense—everyone had had too much to drink before anyone got to that point—but they did it anyway, because they had all sipped from the fountain of life, and they were satisfied.
There’s healthy living endurance, and there’s party living endurance, the oldest one said. The question is which you’re going to choose.
The lightning was on its way for hours, racing out and back across the sky, carving veins through the clouds, but it was not until after midnight when it arrived.
This never happens here, she whispered, and she turned her head just enough to see his open eyes illuminated by a flash.
I know, he said. It has to mean something. There’s always an explanation, even for the strangest things.
She squeezed his hand three times, then, once to wish them safe, once to wish them well, and once to wish them love through storms.
She was far too old for growing pains, but one day, when she put on her regular shoes, the small bones of her feet rubbed together like baby birds ready to leave the nest. She bought a new pair of slingbacks, but soon her heel hung over the back of the shoe.
9, 9.5, 10, 10.5.
It makes no sense, said the doctor. There’s nothing about this in the literature.
At night, she woke up with her feet clenched, the toes of one wrapped around the arch of the other as if they were trying to hold themselves fast.
He asked her to run with him that afternoon, and she agreed, though she regretted it 16 steps in, already unable to control her gasping.
Why don’t you go ahead, she said, but he ignored her, or didn’t hear her, and they continued along the road.
Seriously, she said at a quarter-mile. I can’t do this. She slowed to a walk, and he turned, jogging backward with small steps.
I don’t understand the problem, he said. It’s just running.
But it’s too fast, she said. I can’t handle this pace.
They decided the rest that night.
She was both at the surface and higher up than she’d ever been, clouds so close she could almost scrape her fingernails through the wisps trailing below them. She felt as if she were beginning something new, yet old, something borrowed from a former life.
Is it time to turn around yet? she asked, though she was the only one there to hear it. She remembered someone telling her, once, that people talk to themselves more often at altitude. Have I gone far enough to learn my lesson?
She heard the child screaming down the street, a terrible tantrum echoing off city buildings and rising above the traffic noise. The cries rose and fell, rose and fell, and the NO NO NO NO ricocheted into her open window.
A coworker appeared in her office doorway. What is that horrible noise? he asked.
Wrath, she said. A little bit of fear. Early heartbreak.
That kid has serious lungs, he said.
She remembered a tiny hand laced with an IV, her infant’s gasp for just one more breath.
Yes, she said. Serious lungs.
100 Proof 