Alone with You in the Ether

So anyway, is she hungry?

God yes, she’s starving. Is he going home now?

Yes, he’s going home, will he see her there?

(She waits for a second, half a heartbeat; the time it takes to let a smile flicker.)

Yes. She’ll see him at home.

THE NARRATOR, THE AUTHOR: Aldo and Regan hang up in the same moment without saying goodbye, because they do not need to. They have each unlocked a hidden door today, and though hers is different from his and vice versa, the contents within it are no less valuable from one to the next.

Her showcase triptych, ultimately reviewed as, “visually pleasing if a bit lacking in narrative clarity or substance,” is not nearly as good or as valuable as either of them is willing to believe. Her clinical mood disorder does not disappear because it can’t and “healthy” for them will always be a relative term. There are still bills to be paid and things to be said and they will argue in shades of purple as early as tomorrow, but they are different now; changed. After they hang up the phone and he wipes a bead of early summer from his forehead while she adjusts the slightly sticky strap of her purse, he will take a right onto Harrison Street while she takes a left onto Michigan Avenue and both of them will opt to walk briskly, as if they have places to be, which they do.

Because when they embark, they will have each turned a corner.

And everything will be as it was, only very slightly different.

As a reminder: if he graphs it, it’ll just be a perfect circle.

Cycle.

It’s a circle, Aldo.

Okay fine, she’s poked enough holes in his theories for one day, he accepts.

He concedes, just like that?

He accepts, yes. Just like that.

Okay good, she’s too tired to keep explaining anyway. It’s been a long day.

Has it? For him, too. Oh and he saw her art, by the way.

What did he think?

He thinks he always knew she was an artist.

(Groan. But fondly.) First of all, she’s only an artist because he said she was an artist.

Does that mean he’s a genius because she said he was a genius?

Look, whatever they are, it’s irreversible. She is this version of herself because of him, and vice versa. There’s no changing that now.

Yeah?

Yeah.

You’re sure?

Yes.

Okay, good.

Really?

Yes.