Balance

The city was settling down for the night. Despite it being the middle of July, there was a chill in the air. I zipped my sweater up the rest of the way and crossed my arms around myself, trying to keep in what warmth I could. It was a weeknight and I should have called it a night an hour ago, but the company was rare enough that I'd decided to make an exception. Besides, I'd been sleeping early lately.

    "You know, I used to stay out way later than this all the time. This used to be early for me. Weird."

    "What happened? You going soft already?"

    "I don't know. No one's around now that keeps the same hours as I used to. I've had to adjust to fit everyone else. It's lonely being nocturnal nowadays--it's not like you're around to do late-night stupid with anymore."

    "True."

We strolled along down the side walk towards our destination: to get a post-midnight coffee and to sit on some ridiculous stone bench at his request. I didn't question it. We had to weave our route through forests of scaffolding and then dodge around off-hour construction and traffic before we accomplished our mission of a warm beverage and a cold seat.

    "There's nothing wrong with it. It's perfectly good. But I don't know."

    "I know what you mean--it's good enough and it could work. You can make it work, but you don't really want to have to make it work."

    "Yeah."

    "Yeah, I know. We're the type that could make anything work. We can be stubborn that way. But then, with stuff like this, this is the kind of stuff we just want to 'happen,' right?"

    "Yeah. I mean, I COULD do it. I could wait. It really IS a good thing."

We sipped in silence. The coffee warmed my hands. The monument at our backs blocked the wind a bit.

    "Why are we sitting here again?"

    "It's a tradition."

    "Oh."

It dawned on me that it'd be a long time since I'd had any conversations like ours that night. I used to be able to have them all the time.

    "I've pissed in that bush so many times."

    "Great. That's just great."

We chatted sporadically a while longer before we got up and headed back to where we'd come from. There were few people on the street--the longest one in the world--save for the construction workers. We played a sort of backwards Jenga with our empty cups, balancing them on the overflow of garbage from the public bins--if the cup stayed on the pile, we technically weren't littering. After a few seconds and a light breeze, his cup became litter. But we'd crossed the street by then.