The refrigerator motor hummed, then stopped. Only then did the stillness of the room come clear. It was an hour that left the ears numb. Waiting for the sound to return in a moment, I felt the air of its absence settling into my body. Outside the window, the day was beginning to break.
I gave up on sleep and pushed my feet into my shoes. My hands were still clumsy with the laces. While I walked once around the complex, the streetlights dragged my shadow long behind me, and the sky was thinning, little by little.
Until one of us moved first, we stayed like that, still. The words I hadn't managed to say by day were still in my mouth, and it seemed the cat had agreed to hear them in my place.
The moment I opened the window, cold air brushed my forearm. My shoulders drew in. While I rubbed my arm with my hand, it occurred to me that the thing I'd long waited for didn't have to come today. The room was as quiet as that air. What I'd been holding on to, and what had been holding on to me, were both slowly settling. Outside, streetlights stretched far into the distance. Dawn wasn't over yet, but no one was passing beneath them. The wind blew in again and brushed my forearm.
A drop of condensation on the can ran down the back of his hand. He didn't drink. He simply sat still and watched the people passing. He met no one's eyes, and no one stayed beside him. The can was open, but what he wanted was not the can. And so I know. That there are nights when you want to sit somewhere. Nights of doing nothing, of no one looking for you, of waiting for time to carry you away; the can, as it cooled, waited through them without a word.
When I opened the can, cold metal touched my palm. The moisture beaded on its surface spread slowly between my fingers, and that coolness ran up to my wrist. The plastic of the chair had already gone cold in the night air, and the two colds overlapped as if they recognized each other. I slowly opened my palm and closed it again, and in that repetition, the night was coming, little by little, to resemble my temperature.
