Page 25 of The Lies We Play

“Yeah.”

“For how long?”

“Depends. Three days. A week. Longer if the schedule gets ugly.”

I look back at my book, though the page has become decorative.

A week.

That is not personal. It is a schedule. It is his job. Professional athletes are not ornamental roof fixtures placed in my life for conversational balance.

Still, the thought does something unpleasant in my stomach.

“So you just get on a plane and go be violent in another city?”

He laughs once. “Basically.”

“Very normal profession.”

“Says the person voluntarily taking chemistry.”

I roll my eyes. “I am suffering from intellectual advancement.”

“Well, I’m suffering for more ice time.”

“At least yours comes with applause.”

“Sometimes booing.”

“Still audience participation.”

He looks at me then, and I feel it more than I should. His attention has a temperature. It makes the air between us seem smaller.

“You’ll survive while I’m gone,” he says.

I don't like that he knows what I asked underneath the question.

I don't like that, I asked it.

“I’ve survived many things,” I say, which is supposed to be light and lands a little too close to honest.

His face changes.

Barely.

A softening around the eyes. A pause in his mouth.

Then he gives me the mercy of not following it.

He points toward the bridge. “Look.”

I close my book because I have lost the battle, and everyone knows it. “At what?”

“The lights on the bridge. The middle ones.” He stands and walks closer to the parapet. “One of them blinks about every fifteen seconds. Bulb’s going.”

I slide off the parapet and walk to where he stands.

The air is cooler here, closer to the edge. The city is spread below us in gold and glass and tiny moving lives. The Hudson is dark, cut by reflected light. The bridge holds itself over the river, bright and indifferent.