100 Proof

Overnight, she lost her name. It disappeared off identification and credit cards, from her stacks of mail, and off her hard drives. She stared at her palms, trying to draw it from her skin.

She embraced the beauty of loss. No one could interrupt her stretches of thought with a phone call—they no longer connected her to a jumble of numbers. Without a name, she could decide next steps from her heart, not her head. And the man yelling Hey, you! from across the street wasn’t rude. He was just seeing all she had become.

He had taken her so far into the emotional stratosphere she could barely breathe—the air is thinner there where love is new and sparkling with ice crystals that melt on contact.

That made the fall so much more terminal in its velocity, the earth coming toward her at such great speed.

If she could have looked behind her she would have seen his words—You’re beautiful—I’ve never met anyone so amazing—I never want to lose you—evaporating like skywriting.

Behind the house, a path of flagstones wound down the hill to the base of the yard. From there, her home loomed over her, and she could stand next to a small blooming tree and spot where winter weather had worn the grass thin. Back there, no one could see her from the street. She could worry her fingers there against the hem of her skirt, waiting to see if he crested the hill like he used to, if he followed her down the path with a hand outstretched, ready to take her back.

She asked him, once, why he’d never married. He half-smiled and shrugged.

The people you should be asking these sorts of questions are the ones who did get married, he said. They probably have more to say about the whole thing than I do.

But doesn’t it get lonely? she asked. What about all those nights alone in the dark?

Sometimes I’m lonely, he said. But I would rather be lonely than aggravated.

Time ran hard and fast—as if from a wide-open faucet—drops of it bouncing off the sides of the sink she had fallen into. At one moment, she thought it was Monday, then Saturday, then Thursday. She tried to look at her calendar, but it had plunged from her pocket.

She had lost all sense of agenda when she saw him form the words, when he told her everything hidden. Now, each moment, she vacillated between struggling against the flow and slipping into it, letting it carry her, her eyes closed, until she reached more solid ground downstream.

It was only once he returned to his office that he realized how quiet everything was. The season’s noise had receded, and now he was left with his coffee mug, his to do list, and the few emails that had come in while he was gone. While he was home for the extended weekend, the din of the holiday kept him from thinking—who knew his children played so loudly? But now, the silence of the office became its own cacophony, demanding answers to the question of why he was there, and when he’d be able to leave.

The sun seemed to slow down as it reached the horizon, as if it were reluctant to pass over that particular day. It spread heartbeat-red across the edge of the world, holding, holding, holding, like her breath as she watched, like her life as she waited, like her body, which she kept still as stone. Then it faded, the sky turning blue, then black above her. She had hope the light would return. She kept that hope inside her, ready to rise like the next day’s sun.