The Call That Ran Long

July fifteenth. The holiday was two days ago but the quiet it left behind is still in the apartment.

I called home on the fourth, not in a planned way, more in a I-have-forty-minutes-and-the-neighborhood-is-still-setting-things-off kind of way. It went longer than I expected. It always does. There is something about a holiday that makes distance feel more literal than usual, like the miles are suddenly a measurement you can feel in your chest instead of just know in your head. I hung up and sat there for a minute with the phone still in my hand, not quite ready to put it down.

right after the call. before she put the phone down.

Simone texted around eight asking if I wanted company. I said sure. She showed up twenty minutes later with a bag of chips and no agenda, which is the exact right thing to bring to a night like that. We sat at the kitchen table and didn't talk about anything important, shift stuff, a reality show she's watching, whether the chips were good or just okay (the verdict was: aggressively okay). She didn't ask how the call was. I didn't explain. The work supervisor question is still sitting somewhere in the back of my head, unanswered, and I could feel it there while we talked around it, but neither of us brought it up. That felt right too.

the chips were a diplomatic gesture. she didn't say anything else about it.

I looked at the windowsill before I went to bed. The five things are all there, the bowl, the card, the two photographs, the small object Carol sent. I've been looking at them a lot lately. Not in a searching way. More like checking that they're still in the same order. They always are.