What
had happened to this evening? Both were still clenching this thought. Unable to let go, the way a person holds
onto a tissue until there's nothing left but shreds.
It had been alright at first, when they'd set
out at dusk, sipping scotch at the bar, the velvetsmooth scotch. A Friday night worthy of celebrating, a long week
for each of them, now ended, something else to begin.
Maybe it was their empty stomachs that caused the words to come on and move beyond--like exhaust--into the argument.
A collapsable argument about their lives, about the authenticity they accused each other of failing to acknowledge, and thus
falling into unnatural comparisons--children versus economic advancement, the present set against the future, forcing
Yesterday into the backseat, again.
"I'm tired," she says to him
finally.
But it is only because a stronger memory has made a leap. The
breath of her infant children, this time of night, when she would rise to feed them. Such demands so easy
to quell.
"Then lets go home."
"But I don't want it to start again."
"It won't." He says.
His voice pitched, a cloudless confirmation. "It's almost morning. Your mother will be making breakfast.
The kids will have cream-of-wheat smiles. We had a fight. So what. Let's go home."
She stops walking. The collar of her coat rubs her neck when she looks up at the street lamp.
"See the rain? It's still coming down. It's soft but it's there. Feel it?"
"I thought you were tired. I thought..."
"Let's
not."
"Let's not what?"
"Think."
Soon sirens blare from their almighty distances. Dirty water splashes off the
tread of tires. The paved streets and sidewalks offer out their fair terrain. So, it hadn't become what
the night was meant to be; a long-needed date by a young married couple. It was now just a rainy night, after
too much scotch at a bar, an argument to be forgotten, taking home unfamiliar pangs of hunger. Bearing heavy
eyelids.
They'd take it from here.
