The Things We Carry

Elena stood on the balcony of her apartment, nursing a whiskey she'd promised herself she wouldn't pour tonight. Below, the city flickered with the kind of indifferent beauty that made her feel small. Behind her, the TV played dead air—the cable company had cut her service an hour ago, along with her corporate email and her sense of who she was supposed to be.

The knock came at 11 PM, which she knew because the microwave clock glowed accusingly from the kitchen. When she opened the door, Marcus stood there, holding his hat like a question he didn't know how to ask. They hadn't spoken since the incident at the Christmas party, since she'd said things she couldn't unsay about his promotion and her stagnation and how success was just failure with better PR.

"Heard about the layoffs," he said, simply. "I thought you might need someone to bear witness."

She almost laughed. Marcus with his careful language, his therapist's vocabulary. That was the problem with being friends since college—he knew exactly where to plant the knife, though she knew he didn't mean it that way.

"Come in," she said instead. "I have whiskey and not much else."

They sat on her balcony in the unseasonable warmth, watching the traffic flow toward destinations they used to believe in. Marcus talked about his divorce, which surprised her. Elena talked about her mother's dementia, which surprised them both. They were passing each other their vulnerabilities like contraband, dangerous and necessary.

"You know," Marcus said, setting his hat on the railing. A breeze caught it, and for a second she thought it would tumble into the street. He caught it with reflexes that had always been faster than hers. "I never got that promotion I was supposed to take from you."

She turned to him, really looked at him for the first time in months. "What?"

"They gave it to someone from outside. Cheaper. I was going to tell you, but then you said that thing about success being failure with better PR, and honestly, I thought you already knew." He laughed, a soft sound that carried years. "God, we're terrible at this."

"At what?"

"Being people." He finished his drink. "At thinking we know what's happening in each other's lives. At believing we're the main characters of everyone else's story."

Inside, something in her chest loosened. The cable would stay disconnected. The emails would remain unanswered. But here, on a balcony in May, with whiskey and an old friend who hadn't actually betrayed her, she found she could breathe again.

"Stay," she said. "I have more whiskey."

Marcus put his hat back on, tilting it at an angle that made him look twenty-two again. "I'd like that."