Thirty-Seven Seconds

December twenty-fifth. Christmas morning. I had been up for maybe forty minutes, had made coffee, had stood at the window for a while looking at the street in that particular winter-morning way where nothing moves and the light is very patient, and then my phone buzzed.

Not a text. A voice memo. Thirty-seven seconds. From Simone.

I pressed play and I heard: a very cheerful 'Merry Christmas!' followed by what I can only describe as the ambient sound of a meal in progress. Crunching. I don't know what she was eating. I chose not to ask. The rest of the message was warm and genuine and exactly the kind of thing I would have been happy to receive if not for the chewing, which was, I want to be precise here, audible and unashamed.

She came over later in the morning, which is how we ended up at my kitchen table replaying it. She was under the impression that it was charming. I was under the impression that we were going to need to establish some guidelines about the voice memo function going forward. She made her case at length and with gestures.

Simone's defense was detailed and I was not moved.

The cord sat on the windowsill where it always is. The December light did its thing. I hit play again as evidence and we both looked down at the phone between our two coffee mugs like it contained a verdict.

The evidence. She was absolutely eating.

It did, kind of. The verdict was: it's Christmas, there is no court in session, and the chewing was already funny the first time you heard it and you know it.

I do know it. Merry Christmas.