Doing sixty downtown, she’s going to be late for work, but the view reminds her of other cities.
How the lights and by-ways of freeways work, how it’s strange now to see them in movies.
I was there, she thinks, and that place, and that one. She can’t see a street she hasn’t walked on.
The lights of the car behind them catch her eyes in the mirror and she turns her sight to the driver.
A man in an orange hoodie picked up a sodden page of junk mail from the street and lay it across his shoulders like a cape, then rushed us. Dominique cried out, “hey look, there’s superman.” and I smiled, but didn’t feel like laughing. I was too tired, too worn by my day. I should have been home hours before, but the circumspection of social maneouvering left me outside. We had just been at a half-empty nightclub, trying to dance to eighties music. Dominique knew all the words. I didn’t. I barely recognized the music and none of the clientele. The rules of the dancefloor were strange, with not enough people to keep any cohesion to the space. Without warning, one might find themselves suddenly surrounded by the small group of japanese tourists or being threatened by the tiny elbows of the tottering girl in the corset who was trying very hard to be something. What, I couldn’t say. Only with Rick and Dominique was I comfortable. I sat on the side for a little while, watching everyone and feeling slightly too cliche to actually be doing what I was doing. I pulled out my book to write in, but decided instead to pull out my camera and threaten Rick with pictures. I shouldn’t be writing what my brain was trying to think.
Vast layered conversations spanning six topics at once. She should find partners who speak like her.
“I swore I wouldn’t do this again, but I think I’ve figured out why I’m going through with it.”
She’s referring to three people. She’s referring to keeping a secret and possibly telling lies.
She’s explaining why and who and when without them.
“I wasn’t raised to believe in anything. I never expected to encounter something sacred.”
Words, meanings. The resolution of a two puzzles pieces finding conclusion.
He replies, “Religion was never something I had a use for, but sometimes the vocabulary is right.”
Confirmation, a deduction of between the lines.
The same path, but one person facing backward, one person blind.