The Credits Were Still Rolling

Eleven-fifty-eight when the lights went down. We had gotten there early enough to have opinions about which seats were wrong, too close, too far left, the one with the slightly sticky armrest that Simone claimed and then immediately regretted, and then the movie started and none of that mattered.

I can't remember the last time I went to a midnight screening. Probably not since my twenties, and even then it was a different kind of tired, the caffeinated, determined kind. This was a choosing-it-with-full-information kind of tired. Simone suggested it two Tuesdays ago at the end of a climbing session, the same casual way she names things lately, no 'we should,' just 'there's a midnight screening on the thirteenth, if you want.' I said yes before I'd finished toweling off my hands. The not-thinking-about-it was the right move.

We stayed through all the credits. This is a thing I do and Simone tolerates, and she tolerates it by reading every single name in the art department out loud under her breath, which is somehow both annoying and exactly right. By the time we made it to the lobby it was past one and neither of us was in a hurry, which is its own strange gift, a Tuesday night that ran long and neither of us had to be anywhere fast.

still in the lobby. technically.

I got home at one-forty-something and sat in my jacket for a minute before bothering to take it off. The prints are still leaning against the kitchen wall. Gerald looked fine. The windowsill was doing its thing in the dark. I didn't take any pictures of any of it, which felt right. Some nights are already documented by the fact of having been in them.

the face of a decision we stand by