The One-Drink Agreement

March twenty-fifth. The original plan was one drink. I want the record to show that I genuinely believed us when we made that agreement, standing outside the community center after Tuesday's session, still in climbing shoes that I'd already changed back out of. One drink. Reasonable. Responsible. Very much the kind of decision two people with early-ish mornings make.

It's a bar two streets over that I've walked past probably forty times without going in. Small, wooden, the kind of place that has been there long enough that the tables have a shine from other people's elbows. Simone had been before, of course she had, and ordered without looking at the menu, which I find deeply impressive every time. We ended up at a corner table and I cannot tell you exactly what we talked about for two hours except that it covered the outdoor area (briefly, still not back yet), the supervisor schedule in its current form, and something Simone said about a question being different from an opinion that I've been turning over since. She does that. Says one thing that recalibrates the whole conversation and then just, moves on.

Simone's listening face, which is doing a lot of work here

We ended up on the sidewalk for what I told myself would be five minutes and was closer to twenty-five. The bar light came through the window and caught the side of her face while she was saying something I can't remember now, and I thought: this is what happens when you actually go somewhere instead of agreeing in the abstract to go someday. We said goodbye at the corner. I walked home. The apartment was quiet. Gerald had grown another inch since I'd last looked directly at him.

The part of the night where you stand on the sidewalk for another twenty minutes

I think what I like about that bar, and I'll go back, I already know I'll go back, is that it doesn't require anything of you. It's not a scene. It's just a room with good enough light and enough space between tables that no one has to perform being relaxed. We got one drink each. Then another. Technically the agreement held in spirit. I'm choosing to believe that.