100 Proof

On some nights, the air grew heavier around her the later it became. As the clock hands circled toward dawn, the world stretched out under the weight of it all, all the people she loved pressed further and further away. It was as if she sat in the center of some ever-widening map of relationships, the roads growing longer until the night ended.

She had forgotten how to convert the late-night load to something more modest, something that could be tucked in a corner, or under a bed. That’s why the phone, ringing at that hour, startled her so.

All too often, she found herself editing in her sleep, redacting words and adding new clauses to whatever stories spun through her dreams. She knew she needed to make changes, but didn’t know why they had to happen at such inconvenient times, when she would much rather be swimming through worlds that lacked language as her hair spread across the pillow. Instead, she tinkered. Instead, she played with puzzling sentences.

The city pushed back the mist the next morning, the sun emerging like a starlet through a fog-filled stage. She watched it all happen from the window high above the street, her breath clouding the window when she leaned too close.

Come back to bed, he said from the shadowed corner of the room.

Soon, she said, though she knew she wouldn’t. She didn’t know how to tell him she’d reached clarity. She couldn’t explain the view—she only knew she was the only one of the two of them who could see it at all.

It was a relief to ignore other breakfast options, to decide on a bagel with lox, tomato, capers, no onion.

What kind of bagel do you want? asked the clerk.

The question paralyzed her. Plain seemed too harmless, Everything too much. What kinds do you have?

Plain, Onion, Wheat, Cinnamon Raisin, Poppy Seed, Everything, said the clerk. Her hand hovered over the cash register keys. Customers shuffled back and forth in line.

Plain seemed too harmless, Everything too much. But Cinnamon Raisin was the only obvious discard.

Poppyseed, she said. It didn’t feel right, but neither did anything else.

Sometime before lunch, she took his hand in hers. You’ve bitten your nails to the quick, she said. Such a bad habit.

After lunch, when the paramedics tried to revive him, she again took his hand in hers. This time, it was so much colder than before. This time, she said what she wished she had earlier, what she had really meant.

I’m worried about how stressed you’ve been, she should have said. I love you.

When he came around, she felt her heart two-step, its quick quick, slow slow rhythm turning her in circles. She knew better than to tell him—he was more trouble than a last-call drink, and smoother than a slow country waltz.

She did the best she could to keep her eyes from him when he circled the floor with other women. She chose not to tell any of her friends, no matter how much whiskey she kicked back. She consoled herself, some nights, with the thought that a dancehall secret is better than none at all.

He wondered how wind might shift the direction of things, sculpt paths differently, smooth the world’s edges. It seemed the only fair trade, he thought, as he walked headfirst into the pressure of air. If his eyes had to dry out until they ached, there ought to be a benefit, even if the change took years.

He was open to carving. He was open to gust-hewn paths that didn’t yet exist in this town where weather arrived brutishly, without apology.