Date

When did you begin Living For The Weekend?
she asked, fingers on the stem of her wine glass.
He answered, I’m not sure, staring over the lip
of the veranda at the city below. The light
was blue, the plate white. The sun had just sunk
behind the edge of the building.
A waiter punched in a tab by the glass door.

He remembered he was considering the question
but he couldn’t remember what it was. Everything ends
all the time, he thought: a door closes, then opens;
windows shutter and sigh and wonder, maybe,
what’s the point of any of it. He wondered whether
the door downstairs revolved. He couldn’t remember.

She was looking down at her phone or maybe her pasta.
She wondered why she asked such a question, where
it came from. They’d been quite before, a natural
lull in the conversation. Or at least
she thought it’d been. Now she was thinking of it
she wasn’t so sure. Interest faded from her
like the light from the darkening sky, like
the water from a leaky bucket.

                                The waiter
came over and asked if they needed anything.
His mouth was full of whatever he’d ordered
but he nodded and said Great thanks. She caught
his eye and smiled. He smiled back with
his mouth full of something she couldn’t translate.