“Midnight Girl”

"What if we had never met," I murmured, tracing my fingers down her arm. "What if your car had broken down, or something, and you didn't get to the club that night?"

I was the existential one, always fantasizing about alternate realities and situations that could have happened, but didn't. I thought about regret and what it would be like if I could back in time and reverse things. I thought about poor farmers in third-world countries, and how every day must be tediously similar to the last for them, and I wondered if they didn't have the time for the sort of drama that we do. I thought about all this and more, sitting up late at night by the computer, fingers unmoving over the keyboard, inspiration coming to me in sporadic bits and pieces.

What she thought about, and if she even though, I never knew. She waited for me to surrender to my writer's block (if you could call it that, because I've heard that it's supposed to come and go, and mine is always there) and join her in bed. Then I would ask silly, what-if questions and she would smile a half-smile and not ever respond. Maybe she was content with what she had, or maybe she just didn't have an answer for me. It frightened me, this lack of emotion and interest in her, but something about it kept drawing me back to her, and her small, almost unhealthy frame that rested on the sheets, and her wandering hands, always somewhere on my body, and her hair that hugged the base of her neck, that I could never seem to stop touching. And no matter how many meaningless thoughts I was preoccupied with, I came to her every night.

And this night, she had something to say.

"Then I would have walked."

I masked my surprise by shifting my body, seemingly in boredom, but my insides were seething. What a thing to say! Another minute passed and I stole a glance at her, but her face looked as it always did: impassive, unthinking, and I wondered if I had imagined her response.

---

But as it turned out, she spoke more and more after that in response to my once-rhetorical theories, and every time, I was unsure of how to respond. I wasn’t used to this, and I hoped she would sense my discomfort and get the message.

Nor did she confine her remarks to the bedroom. A few days later, we were out late at night, looking through shop windows at the expensive clothes contained behind them. I wondered aloud how people could buy those clothes without feeling guilt for the millions of children that were forced to make them.

She said, “People don’t like to make themselves feel bad. They’d just as soon buy those clothes if the children were across the street, instead of overseas.”

I had never thought of it that way, and I felt strange all of a sudden. Jealousy, was it? I shook that thought out of my head and laughed a little. “Oh, you’re just being moody.”

She stopped walking at this and it took me a few seconds to realize that she was no longer next to me. Immediately I replayed my last words in my head to pinpoint their fault. I could find none, and I turned to face her as other people pushed past on the cramped sidewalk. Her face was, of course, expressionless, but I knew she was upset.

“Why do you always dismiss everything I say?” she demanded, softly, not noticing other women giving her looks as they struggled to pass her.

She was right. I did that, often. It was my natural defense, even though she wasn’t attacking me. And I thought about how I used to open up to her about matters that were without meaning, and now that she was making sense of real situations, I was terrified of her quiet intellect.

She refused to move, even as I motioned for us to keep walking. “It’s just… you never used to say anything, but you would just watch me and I never knew if you were listening or not. You were the first person I opened up to, because I knew you wouldn’t respond, so I couldn’t possibly be shot down. I’m used to that.” I should stop there, I realized. “I guess it’s just that old fear coming back.”

Even then I was expecting ridicule, but she did nothing of the sort. Instead, the most honest smile I’d ever seen appeared on her face, and she grabbed my arm and kept walking.

“You don’t know anything about fear,” she laughed, and I wondered what she meant.

---

She still wore that smile hours later back home. The smile made me more submissive than usual, and somehow she made it quietly clear that she held all the power now. It occurred to me that I didn’t want to know what she had meant earlier.

Afterwards, I clung to her rather pathetically, but she didn’t seem to mind. Her face was serene and she stared straight up at the ceiling. The reemergence of her normal demeanor calmed me somewhat, and I finally spoke up.

“Maybe…I mean, we don’t’ need to be afraid anymore.”

She waited a long time before responding. “You’re right,” and I sighed internally. And then, “I was seeing someone else.”

I understood but my fleeting imagination denied it: What does that mean? Before we were dating? During? Who was it?

But I only said, “Was?”

She turned to face me, unafraid of my reaction. I quickly tried to compose my face.

“I didn’t understand you, and all of your questions. So I ran away, I found an old friend and we messed around. I thought you didn’t notice me, because your words were so far removed from this time, this place.” She gestured around her. “And then, that night, when I finally answered you… I did because I realized I was wrong. You did give a damn about us, and you remembered that night at the club.” I thought I saw her eyes get wet, but her voice sounded the same. “I was wrong.”

She broke off, and I searched for a response. I wondered vaguely if she thought I was silent because I was angry, but I had already forgiven her, and I think she knew.

Slowly, she drew me to her, as if I were the one who had committed the atrocity; the one who needed forgiveness. In retrospect, though, I guess that was true.

We lay awake like that for some time. My arms were wrapped around her skinny frame and rested on her stomach. I couldn’t hear her breathing even though I felt her chest moving slowly up and down. My throat was dry, but I took a chance.

“I-”

“Don’t say it.”

Outside, the birds began their shrill morning ritual of scolding everyone out of bed. It must have been five in the morning already.