December xx^th
8:07 pm

“This is a fucking disaster,” Miranda, uncharacteristically of this hour, stood at her desk, staring outside through the windows of our office, “And I’m putting it lightly.”

“It can’t possibly be that bad,” I sheepishly remarked, following her gaze outside while stuffing my bag with the night’s parcels, “It’s just snow. I think it’s quite nice if anything,” and it reminded me of home, but I decided to omit that part.

“There has been no snow in the country – hell, this entire hemisphere – for two decades. Twenty God-forsaken years, Xxx!” her face looked sharper than usual, eyes wilder, which made her seem both more endearing and terrifying at once. “Last time it snowed, I wasn’t even in primary school!”

In the few days after that terrible wind swept the Capital, a snowfall followed. It came quietly as if creeping up through the otherwise mostly dry continent, waiting for the right moment to strike. The day it did, it was both peaceful and unrelenting, darkening out the sky and posing quite the problem for the public infrastructure and regularly opened businesses alike, forcing people to scramble inside and take their chances with travel. As I’ve remarked, I thought it was quite beautiful – I haven’t seen snow since I left home all those years ago – but Miranda, of course, had a more practical stance, now busy calculating potential delays and changes in the delivery schedule so that we can still hit our daily quotas.

“Okay; okay. You are right; this isn’t that bad,” she puffed on the lock of hair sticking out around where her bangs, cut too soon, normally would be, as she lowered herself to her desktop computer, “It seems like most lines are running, but that hardly matters – you’ve got four deliveries, majority within Zone 1, relatively detached from trouble and reachable by foot. Your lucky day.”

It was, actually: not only did all my deliveries end up in mostly close proximity to one another, but it was also one of the few days when demonstrations seemed to have taken a bit of a pause. Instead of enveloping the entire city sprawl, as they had begun at that point, the unexpected arrival of snowfall forced the coordinators to move their efforts to the key districts – the Old City and the Government Sector – both of which I was to avoid that night. I felt almost guilty celebrating it quietly in my head, as by then, even my personal attempts to stay out of it all became replaced with well-meaning yet ineffective sympathy for the protestors. Nonetheless, the practical side of me, one that agreed with Miranda at least on some things, was quietly jubilant that the weather was all I had to brave through.

“What’s Archie’s route like tonight?” by that point in December, coincidence or not, the two of us found ourselves aligned schedules-wise quite a bit – the nights I’d be out, he’d be right there, too. Many times we shared a short, mostly silent walk from the office to the station, or would even bump into one another midway through the shift, exchanging a glance of silent acknowledgment from across the street. And not that he was any less insufferable – he always was, and nothing could change that – but our incidental (as per Miranda) exposures to each other made him more tolerable and, on a rare night, even pleasant.

“Slightly less good – at least in my books; he’s got a trip around Government Sector and then a few addresses further East, almost near Barking,” she sighed, rubbing her eyes, “Don’t know what I worry about more – the delays he’ll have on the tube or that he’ll be around those… crowds.”

“You know, maybe these assignments really are random,” I smiled at her, but Miranda only looked back at me gravely, evidently unamused. I wiped the grin away, fixing my bag, “Well, I’ll be off. See you in the morning?”

“I’m gluing my ass to this seat until after sunrise with this weather, so you sure will,” she threw back, reaching for her thermos, evidently upset with the need to bring it in the first place after her favourite coffee spot closed due to the weather. I almost wanted to ask if she’d like me to get something for her on my way back before realizing the terrible cruelty in suggesting something I’d, realistically, deliver to her in the early hours of the next morning. Pushing the thought back into my mind, I stepped into the alleyway and lit my one cigarette for the night.

With the familiar switch of the lamp above, as I began pulling out my S-Pad, another hidden blessing of the snow became apparent: the trash of the alley was now covered with a nice, picturesque white blanket, almost paradoxically warming the scenery in the process. Snow, however little of it I’ve seen in my relatively short life, had a sense of serenity to it, of still, quiet, unusual peace. Controversially (or so it seems, from whenever I would bring this up in conversations), I even enjoyed the feeling of frost biting at my cheeks, nose, and ears. Altogether, this made the otherwise mechanical going through the motions – fiddling with the cigarette, scrolling through the addresses, stretching my legs – all the more enjoyable than usual. For just a minute or two, my routine made me feel cold, and that made me feel more alive than ever.

As per Miranda’s assertion, I really did not have much variety that night: the four addresses were quite close to each other, primarily to the West of the Old City, except for one up in Shoreditch, a trendy district above our office, in its closing stage of gentrification. The other two would take me to the cultural landmarks of the city, towards Chinatown, and around the famed theatre district, undoubtedly busy with tourists and gawkers alike despite the weather. The final address, up in Bloomsbury, was also only an earshot away from there, giving me an overall comfortable, mostly walkable spread.

As I pondered the route, the door behind me creaked. Unexpectedly, Miranda, wearing only her office suit, emerged from it, holding a compact black box in her left hand. 

“What happened to ‘gluing my ass to this seat?’” I half-smiled, but Miranda, pan-faced, clearly was not in the mood to entertain my banter.

“Just got word that the protests might be… more of a problem than expected,” she sounded almost automatic, as she often did, the stone-cold professional ever-present. But underneath it, grim notes lingered, slipping ever so often through into a vowel or a particular note, alongside her underdressed shivers. She motioned gently with her free hand towards my almost burnt-out cigarette. I obliged, suppressing the reflexive desire to make a bantering dig into her. In a single inhale, it was gone, discarded underneath Miranda’s boot, “Boss doesn’t want to take any chances, so we’re implementing protection measures for riskier outgoing deliveries, starting with you, until further notice,” she extended the box to me, clearly weighted down by it, “Take this.”

“I thought you said I had a regular route tonight?” I hesitated for a moment, staring at the box, unsure of what to make of the sudden, by Miranda’s standards, alarming outburst. Nothing good could have been inside.

“Yes, well, that was five minutes ago. Just take the bloody thing,” she raised her hand further up, almost begging me to take the box off her hands. Without much to go off further, I took it, feeling the weight shift from her hand to mine, “Now open it. I’m on the clock, and so are you,” I obeyed, crouching myself down and balancing the box on one of my knees, opening it with a click.

A gun. Well, a pistol, if you want to be a prick about it. Slick, black receiver, morphing into the uncaring plastic of the handle, with a barely visible iron barrel poking through at the tip. So simple, you forget how deadly it is.

“Where did you get this?” was the first thought that jumped to my mind. Gun laws were such that no one except the police had a permit for anything other than a hunting rifle in the countryside, and no one (and I really mean no one) could own anything at all in a dense urban area like the Capital.

“Does it matter?” it didn’t, not at that moment, “Pick it up. I’ll walk you through handling this thing.”

“No,” I said after a moment of hesitation. Whatever you may think of the kind of work I do, guns were a hard, hard line to cross.

“What do you mean, no?”

“I can’t take this.”

“You can, and you will. I am not risking you getting cornered out there.”

“Miranda, for fuck- We’re a delivery company, not a mafia!”

“Adapt and overcome,” she said, terrifyingly nonchalant.

“What happened to tasers?”

“Same thing as to the pepper sprays – they became obsolete once someone already pulled a gun at a festival!” she sighed, frustrated, rubbing her temples, “Look, I don’t like this any more than you do. But you are an employee, and it is my- no, it is our responsibility to ensure that you’re safe out there. As it stands, the city is becoming less and less safe. Boss knows it; I know it; even Archie knows it. This is the only option available to us right now that ensures that you can protect yourself, if necessary. I am not asking you to shoot on sight, God fucking forbid, if anything I am begging you to stay out of trouble. But I am asking you to keep this on you in case of emergencies. That’s all.”

I never really bought this argument of gun possession equating to safety. While there were stories of successful home defences and even on-the-street incidents that were successfully defused with a gun, equally as many (if not more) were stories of bloodbaths and massacres; it was one of the reasons why the government, even before its cascade into whatever the hell it was nowadays, passed the restrictions. Beyond all else, the fact that a gun was now in Miranda’s possession – and soon, in my hands – also meant that it was likely either unmarked or had a forged serial number. Either meant nothing but bad news should worst come to worst.

“What if I say no?” I didn’t like this one bit. In the climate we were inhabiting, a loaded gun in the hands of a policeman was already a disaster waiting to happen, a cruelty to be dispensed, a terror to be asserted. In the hands of a civilian like myself, well, you can guess for yourself.

“You can’t – not while you’re an employee,” she wasn’t subtle, and she knew I couldn’t afford to be unemployed right now.

“Can I at least keep it inside the box?” I accepted defeat. Sometimes, the best way to argue with Miranda, just as it was with my mum, was not to argue at all, let her have it her way – at least insofar as I would allow. No clause existed saying I had to use a firearm – that much I knew; and if one was made five minutes ago, it would never be a reason to pull a gun out.

“Sure, might even be for the best, as long as you can be fast with getting it out; that’s up to you,” after another moment of hesitation, I closed the box with two clicks of safety catches and shoved it – just barely – to the bottom of my bag, “Do you know how to use it?”

“A gun’s a gun, Miranda,” clearly, it wasn’t that simple in her expertise, as my answer seemed to have startled her. It happened every so often whenever someone said something she didn’t expect or if you interrupted her going through the motions unexpectedly. On second thought, that answer was somewhat irresponsible, so I added, “You forget where I’m from—they bring firing instructors to fifth grade as a mid-semester afternoon treat.”

“You people are fucking crazy; thank God for that,” a wave of relief noticeably went through her, “I do want you to know that I am not a fan of this plan either.”

“I know. I believe you,” and I did, at least partly. I knew the pragmatist in her was still very much alive and kicking and very likely was the one behind sealing the deal with the plan, but I also knew that Miranda didn’t like unnecessary risks. Be it pragmatism or basic human aversion, there’s no way she signed off on this easily, “I’ll see you in the morning, yeah?”

“Sounds like a plan. Safe travels,” she smiled meekly, hurrying inside to escape both the cold and the potential consequences of the new policy, be what they may, at least for a night longer. It was time for me to hit the road, all the same.

8:50 pm
The walk took me a while longer than expected, and it was closer to nine when, after turning the corner of Liverpool Street, passing by the bustling railway station and the edges of the Old City, I finally saw the lights and billboards of the main roundabout of Shoreditch above the Old Street station ahead of me. That place always was somewhat of an enigma to me: all at once, it was the go-to for a night out with its sprawling nightlife and occasional offers to buy coke (so they’d censor xxxxxxx but not coke? Ha! Suck on that, powers-that-be!) during later hours; a bustling hub of artistic and networking opportunities; a mesmerising, if not somewhat pretentious and facetious, disarray of noises and lights around every corner that would fill your head at every hour of the day; a steadily uninhabitable hub only for those willing to cough up absurd money to live here; a contradiction of the highest order; a historical yet trendy, evolving centre of the “East Xxxxxx” before you entered the so-called ‘ends’ of Zone 2. Not to mention, a place where silence was borderline unattainable, so also a peace for the mind of yours truly.

I paused at the roundabout for a moment to take it all in, pausing my music in the process. A large white archway, in the middle, supporting the blue screens of advertising screens that seemingly turned towards you under whichever direction you looked at them, stood quietly above a makeshift park garden, scantly filled with a handful of people walking their dogs underneath some sort of a protective transparent bubble. They seemed at peace, despite the snow, the cold, and the rush of cars all around them – I could only guess that the bubble covering the park was to thank. I’ve heard of this technology before: they got their start in agricultural irrigation, to preserve some particularly demanding crops, until some genius figured that people might appreciate noise cancellation and the right levels of warmth just as much as plants. And so, for under a year now, they started installing them in select park areas (purely coincidentally, I’m sure, all those parks seemed to have been selected next to high-end developments and particularly expensive apartment complexes, as if the rest of us didn’t get cold every so often or didn’t want the break from the noise). To the right, the illusion of peace was ruined with groups of people (some, clearly, clocking out of their shifts) raiding a local bar with a bright neon sign above the entrance with some sort of a new comedically uncanny beer mascot. Further down, more and more bars and restaurants lined the streets, as the evening took hold of the city, beckoning for entertainment, alcohol, and good times – anything but the reality of the snowy world outside. To the left, just off the side of the road, the petrol station hummed busily with a steady stream of cars either gearing up for the daunting travel downtown or taking a well-earned break after getting out of it, enroute to the relief of the suburbs. An occasional cab whizzed past, their drivers cursing the bicycles and motorbikes that seemed to have run the red light regardless of whether it was their turn to go. A distant colleague of mine – a food delivery courier, with teal and orange backpacks – was the latest target for trying to get across the roundabout a second too early. Only the buildings – be it the expensive high-rise of glass and shiny metal at the end of the main road, or the grey and weathered four stories that were steadily losing their ground, pushed further and further east – stood around with seemingly no interest in it all.

As much as it was an assault on the senses – and don’t get me wrong, the Capital was exceptionally capable in those – I couldn’t help but smile. But, of course, I was on the clock, with only so much people-watching allowed. Pulling out my phone, I double-checked the directions to the address, and resumed following the yellow arrow running up and to the right, away from the noise and the messiness that life – especially in this part of the Capital – was.

9 pm
The GPS eventually led me to a quaint street just underneath the other major station in the area for overground trains, opposite some historical marketplace (which, despite being covered entirely with a glass roof, was dead silent, weather forcing vendors and shoppers inside). Brandishing modern – and even occasionally colourful – upscale buildings all the way down the road, it wasn’t difficult to think you were downtown, in a borderline upper-class area, even as the locals, dressed from head to toe in vintage outdoor fashion, would tirelessly insist that they were, in fact, regular members of the working class. After all, what snob would spend their evenings in a pub – the only source of life at this point in the workday – even as it stood opposite of the local HealthFoods and would serve you the latest poison that were the IPAs (I never understood them, and I never will compromise on belief that they just don’t taste all that good) for a price of an arm and a leg. Admittedly, I could have just been too judgmental – I had neither the time nor the desire to spend my time around places like that, so who really knows what was happening in the minds of those people; that I was willing to entertain. The IPAs, however, still tasted like piss.

As the whispers, shouts, and lights from the pub evaporated into the air around me, the glassy door of building 148 greeted me – beautiful as it was impenetrable. On the inside, atop the warm wooden stairs leading deeper into the building, a bunch of packages (mostly from A-Z, our direct corporate competitor) were stacked up – clearly, my more personal style of deliveries was not the norm. With a small video panel above the mechanical buttons, the automatic doorman beckoned to call up the needed resident. Above, neatly tucked into the corner of the glassy archway, a barely noticeable green light of the door camera flickered, looking at me with its mechanical gaze.

I decided then that it was best not to linger. Pulling out my S-Pad to confirm the address, I quickly dialled the required apartment on the first floor, sending it. Ring.

I could feel the green mechanical eye zoning in on me.

Another ring.

A wind went through the street, somewhat pleasantly shaking me to the bones.

Another ring.

Then,

Nothing. “The occupant is currently unavailable. Please try again later,” a mechanical voice echoed.

I dialled again. Another ten or so seconds. The green of the camera’s eye. The wind through my body, slowly shifting into the undesirable territory.

Nothing. “The occupant is currently unavailable. Please try again later.”

I dialled again, more impatiently this time. I sensed another glare in the corner of my eye: a police car, standing quietly on the corner by the pub. Right next to it, a policeman, clad in dark blue turtleneck-like armour, clearly looking directly at me, waiting for one wrong move, an excuse to investigate. By his waist, deceptively quiet yet unmistakable, a gun – not too dissimilar to the one tucked in my bag. I could feel my hands sweating, tightening the grip on my bag; my foot, tapping harder and faster on top of the snowy pavement.

Nothing. “The occupant-”

“Who’s there?” a grim, somewhat slurry voice broke through the intercom, thank fuck.

“Delivery.”

“Just leave it at the ent-rance, there’s a slot under the doorman.”

“No, sir, I need your signature on this one.”

“What kind of a- oh, wait,” the voice stumbled over itself for a moment, “That delivery, right?”

“Right,” whatever ‘that delivery’ meant, I just wanted to get off the street.

“Okay, yeah, lemme buzz you in. First floor,” the intercom went dead for a second, followed by the buzzer of the door. Without a second thought, I slipped into the shadows of the front entrance.

I quickly made my way up the nice but largely unremarkable stairs (except for the fact that the passage itself was extremely narrow) to the floor above, stalking my way to the apartment in question. There was an air of silence to it – even the fluorescent lamps, tucked away in their circular pockets high above me, somehow did not in so much as hum but rather just hung there, encasing all below in their yellow glimmer.

Approaching the door numbered 11, I noticed that there was no doorman for the apartment. That was an oddity nowadays, as it was much easier – if not, indeed, preferred – to knock, as visitors could leave short messages for the person they were looking for, assuming they weren’t home or didn’t feel like bothering with people. Granted, they also cost a fair sum, so mid-to-high-end developments like this one likely opted for a universal doorman at the main entrance instead. Even so, I wasn’t here to speculate on the costs of new developments (and, more pressingly, the sinking feeling of unease in my mind began rising yet again), so I promptly knocked, letting it echo through the corridor. For a moment, silence regained its reign, until the rummaging sound, all too familiar in my line of work, broke from behind the door, concluding with its opening click.

As the door opened, I was greeted by a man, maybe or year or two older than me – a somewhat unfair observation, as I only really deduced that from his face (which, now that I wrote it like that, makes it sound rather mean): crow feet and blue-ish bags under his dark, slightly hollowing eyes; an unkept stubble – not quite a beard – running across his slim, defined jaw; a gaze that was both exhausted and wild all at once. His messy dark hair, clean yet blatantly uncut for a while, sprang wildly in every direction, with an occasional grey sticking out like a reminder that none of us stay young forever. Wearing a dark blue dressing gown over a pair of sweats and a sweat-stained white shirt, he was struggling to keep himself upright. The man was clearly intoxicated.

“Ye-s?” he said, making strange, exasperating pauses that seemed to both emphasise particular sounds in his words and mask his hiccups.

“Your delivery, sir,” I replied professionally, pulling out the correct parcel (being mindful to not even rattle the black box that it sat next to) – a somewhat heavy, rectangular box, wrapped neatly in our company paper. His eyes darted towards it, as his face lit up with a grimace.

“Ah yes, of cour-se! Where do I sign?”

“Just here,” in the rhythm all too familiar by now, I extended the S-Pad with the pen to him. As he took it, I could smell hints of wine and whiskey, reeking from his gown. His hand, however, remained steady and swift, as he signed off with one elegant move, “Thank you. Have a good night.”

“A-and you,” he smiled politely, starting to close the door. I already turned around and began walking down the corridor, expecting the closing sound of the door, but it never came.

Instead, I heard a crashing sound, somewhere deeper in the apartment.

Instinctively, I turned back around. A terrible stillness hung in the air.

The protocol was not clear in such instances, but the wisdom sure as hell was. “You hear – and sometimes, if you’re really unlucky, see – a lot of weird stuff on this job,” Sam warned me back when I started, coaching me during one of my first shifts. I think we were deep in the Northern sleeping districts of the Capital that night, in one of the sketchier parts of the city, “We are not here to judge, observe, or intervene. Be a professional, do the delivery, and get out. That’s all there is to it.” Funny I should remember that episode now, that was a really-not-good night. Let’s not dwell on this further.

Pushing the entrenched memory aside, I swallowed all the cautionary feelings in my throat. Cursing myself, I made the call to go in.

The small hallway presented three pathways, yet only the door on the left was open, leading to a spacious kitchen-slash-living room-slash-study (the other closed ones, I assumed, were leading to the bedroom and the bathroom, completely silent on either end). Despite the clash of purposes, the room looked spacious: the wide windows, stretching all the way to the high celling, let the yellowish light from the lamps outside through the blinds; a white desk, tucked in the corner, housed a bank teller lamp, a vinyl player, and a bunch of envelopes, scattered by a grey laptop; by the wall next to it, the TV panel stood atop a beige console, covered with dimly lit fairy lights; opposite, a couch, covered by a cosy red blanket, and a coffee table with a wide-open album of polaroids; by each side, a cardboard box, filled with miscellaneous items, from shoes and towels to a coffee machine and stacks of folders; at the farther end, a bookshelf in the process of decommission with another box next to it, obstructing the kitchen counter; and a simple white table by the window, covered with bottles, themselves filled to a varying degree, deceptively suggesting either a recent party or a bad drinking habit. The overall ambiance had an uncanny degree of whiplash to it, as if the room (or its occupant) couldn’t make up its mind if it was lived-in or just a temporary stop along a greater, more meaningful journey; a familiar, unmistakeable sight during the end of tenancy. If you looked hard enough, you could see the shadows form silhouettes on the wall, dancing in remembrance of the days long gone.

In the middle of the room, just by the sofa, the man sat upright, hissing at his wounded knee. He raised his eyes to meet mine.

“Oh, it’s you again. Hel-lo,” he was, uncharacteristically, calm in the face of a stranger crashing his home, “Did I-something-sign wrong or…?”

“Uh, no,” I looked around, nothing seemed out of order, “I heard a sound, wanted to make sure you’re okay?”

“Oh, yeah, don’t sweat it!” he waved his hand away as if I was ridiculous to even think something was up, “I just… I tripped, very unfortunately, over that table over here,” he nodded his head towards the coffee table near the sofa, “Happy accidents, and all that.”

“Right,” I wasn’t fully buying it – the sound was much louder than that – but who was I to judge or play detective, “Then I am sorry to bother you.”

“You’re all good,” he assured me, suddenly catching himself mid-sentence, “Nice place, right?”

“It is very spacious,” too spacious, maybe, for one person, by the standards of a rental market today.

“That’s what I was thinking,” he caught himself again, staring somewhere in the distance, “Would you care to listen to a madman’s tale, for a minute or two?”

“How do you… About what?”

“I uh, I ne-ed to get something off my chest,” his face suddenly went a little darker, as if clouded in thoughts and certain judgements, “Tonight, if at all possible.” 

“Why me?” that came out somewhat blunt; I didn’t mind the request, but I was on the clock.

“Well, first off, I am drunk, so I suddenly have the confidence to talk to strangers again; second, I’ve already exhausted all my friends to death with this one. A fresh pair of ears is as good as it gets,” he leaned back and fourth awkwardly, clearly struggling to keep himself upright, “And two- wai-t, no, three: as I said, I have a feeling if I don’t square this thought tonight, I might be haunted by it forever,” he sniffed, his eyes filled with unmistakeable melancholic grief, despite the rest of his face hating him for it in a borderline apologetic manner, “Please?” 

Contrary to what you may think of my occupation by now, listening to people was not part of the job description. On a normal day (or, well, night) at the office, we’d make our way to different addresses, drop off the packages, collect signatures, don’t ask any questions, and leave – a simple, straightforward, almost mechanical routine. Sure, sometimes we’d break into a chat with the client, and other times they’d even offer a tea or a drink for the road, understanding – or imagining – the exhausting nature of our occupation. Yet, over the last year or so, full-on conversations (relatively speaking) were struck up somewhat more often. Granted, I am no sociologist – let alone, a psychologist – to tell you what the reason behind this trend was, and neither did I ever really pause to speculate. So, I simply obliged: in the end, people – even strangers – were people; if I had a minute to spare, who was I to refuse a chat?

Instinctively, I checked the clock on my phone. It was closing on half past, and Miranda was inevitably going to give me shit for slacking. But, remembering the wind outside (and recalling the police car standing just down the street), I figured it would be best, and likely safer, to wait it out for at least a little while longer.

“Sure,” I shrugged with polite indifference, “Do tell.”

“Splen-did! Let me just fix myself here,” supporting himself with one hand, he began rising to the sofa, wobbling a little to the side, but eventually setting himself down proper, “What’s your name, stranger?” he asked plopping himself down on the sofa, kicking back and lighting a cigarette, a sleek art-deco ashtray materialising as if out of nowhere on the coffee table.

“Just ‘Courier’ is fine.”

“Well that’s fucked up, your parents didn’t like you or some-thing?” he chuckled at his own joke, “I’m just pulling your leg, have your secrets. In this case, you can just call me ‘Writer,’” I did know his name, of course – or rather, a pseudonym he has given the company – but the Writer was a little more elegant and (if you can believe it) somehow less pretentions, so that seemed like a fair deal to me. I nodded with a light smile.

“You ever write anything I would’ve read?” I asked out of curiosity.

“Probably not – unless you read the short story section in the paper or various contest collections,” he didn’t bother specifying either the newspaper or the particular contests, shrugging as he lit his cigarette and took a drag, “Well, go on, don’t be a stranger. Have a seat.”

I carefully placed my bag down by the doorway, ready to go at a moment’s notice, and sat on the end of the sofa, looking at the Writer.

“Oh, shoes off, p-lease,” how rude of me. I took my winter sneakers off, placed them by the bag, and returned to the sofa. Silence, interrupted only by the wind outside and the smell of the cigarette (not quite Myrollboro Golds, but something soft-ish with menthol in the same realm).

“So?” I asked, somewhat impatiently. I did have time, but not a lot of it.

“Just thinking of where to start,” he smiled, as if to a made-up audience in his head, “Okay. How about this,” he finally looked at me, “Tell me, Courier, have you ever been in love?”

Oh, Jesus Christ, no.

“In a way, yes – hard to go through life without falling for it once or twice.”

“Mm. Right. Follow-up question then: you ever had someone you were certain was quote-unquote, ‘the one,’ become just another stranger?’

I couldn’t believe my ears, I walked in – with a smile and by my own will – onto someone’s breakup lament.

“Can’t say I have, never was a romantic long enough for it to get that bad,” it was too late to turn back, so we may as well have gotten it over with, “What happened?”

“Tale as old as time, really, a certain death of my career if I decided to ever write a story so cliché: boy meets girl, they fall in love despite the distance and the odds against them, fast-forward three years of happiness and it all falls apart, the end.”

“That seems pretty standard,” I leaned on the side of the couch, preparing mentally for the conversation ahead. It wasn’t the first nor, I’m sure, the last story like this I was going to hear. Heartbreak was an everyday occurrence in the Capital – by the hundredth time, even if sympathy (for, undoubtedly, the wrong party and never the reason for the breakup) was still there, the main story beats remained largely similar, “Let me guess – she just left unexpectedly?”

“Not quite,” he smirked, reminiscent of how Miranda smirked when she proved you wrong, “My tale’s a little more imaginative than that. No, this one was amicable in the worst way possible – we grew apart, and I was the one who fucked it up.”

Well, at least there was some self-awareness here. Consciously, I shifted my posture, readjusting myself to sit up straight.

“See, Courier,” the Writer put out his cigarette, getting up to the table with bottles on it, “I won’t bore you with the romantics of the three years we did spend together – I already know that she was… well, it’s not for a lack of vocabu-lary that I called her ‘the one.’ What I am trying to work through,” he unsealed one of the bottles, with the messed-up cork on the top, to pour himself some red wine. Midway through, he paused, looking up at me; after taking a second to process what he was doing, I shook my head – I couldn’t afford to drink on the job, “Anyway, what I’m trying to work through is how to live with the fact that it has ended.”

“Right,” I said, mincing my words, “Well, how did it end?”

“Ah, as I said – we grew apart. My fault, to that end,” he leaned against the windowsill, pulling one of the legs up, “Is what I’ve done. Or haven’t done. I don’t know – can you believe it’s been a year and I’m still this confused?” he laughed, pitifully, as if trying to cheer himself up, as the grimace washed away from his face, “Grief is a bitch, and I buried mine so deep in my brain – or, hell, soul, if you’re one of those people – that every attempt to rationalise it thus far left me unsatisfied.”

“Gotta start somewhere,” I knew I was speaking in platitudes, the worst kind of way to engage in a conversation, but platitudes were all I had for him, “Did you hurt her somehow?”

“That’s the funny part: I don’t think I did. Well, no,” he grimaced, either from alcohol or the choice of words, “Rather, I didn’t intend to – there’s a difference. It’d be something if I chose to hurt her, like if I cheated, or something worse, an active decision to do so. But I didn’t; I never even meant to do that.”

“Most people don’t,” or so I’d liked to believe. Was it feasible? Not really. Plenty of people are in the business of living for no other reason than to watch others suffer, but I had to believe most – if not all – were still good. “We all do in the end, but not because of malice, but negligence, or maybe a blindspot in our thinking.”

“You really believe that?”

“Does it matter if I do? Maybe, I guess.”

“Good point,” he closed his eyes, taking a swing from his cup, “Always such an op-timist, or have I just gotten lucky?”

I ignored his question – not out of rudeness, but because I didn’t know how to answer it.

“Okay, so, you didn’t mean to hurt her, that’s fine. How do you think you did?”

“I took us for granted,” he shrugged, staring down into the cup in his hands, “We sacri-ficed a lot to be together in the same place at the same time, and I just didn’t act grateful – like, I’d only see her once a week, and we’d always – fuck, always!” he suddenly burst out, “- would do the exact same thing, week in week out. What kind of boyfriend does that make me?”

“Life gets in the way,” I tried to parry – why was I parrying? “You can’t possibly blame yourself for that.”

“Funny – I used to say the same thing,” he took another, longer swing from the cup. Settling it down, face reddened, the Writer stared directly at me, “But here’s the best one: a month or so before-” he paused, picking his next words, “Before we broke up, we went to her folks for holidays. Plan was, do family stuff for Christmas, then come back here for New Year’s. As you say, life gets in the way – she had to stay up there, but I was already going back to the city, given the plans. So, she asked, why not just spend New Year’s here, together? You know what I said?” I shook my head, “‘I didn’t think about that,’” he went quiet, letting the words hang in the air for a moment. Then, furiously – at the world, or, more likely, himself, “Now, you tell me, what kind of a boyfriend says something like that to his girlfriend of three years.”

I didn’t have an answer for him. I mean, fuck, what do you even say to this? “Yeah, that’s awful, and you are a dick”?

“I guess… I guess there’s clarity, if nothing else,” collecting himself, he rubbed his eyes and sat at the table. Still thinking of what to say, I followed suit, “I remember, when it happened, I couldn’t sleep – my mind just kept replaying that morning, trying to figure out what I did wrong. It was good, right – I mean, fuck, man, I was gonna propose to her if we lasted another year.”

“Why wait another year?” I had to interject with something, anything – this was as good as any.

“I don’t know, it seem-ed appropriate. You don’t want to rush these things, so I assigned an arbitrary number to it. Four years felt compelling enough,” his eyes darted around the table, pausing on another bottle, from which he took a sip. His face betrayed him in how awful whatever was inside of it tasted, “It doesn’t matter now, anyway. Fact of the matter is, I hurt her. I made her feel like I didn’t care for it – for us. You ever had to hold someone you’d trade your own life for as they tell you, through tears, how they ‘can’t do this,’ despite how much they might love you back?” I shook my head, a distinct yet solemn promise of relatability disappearing from between us, “Don’t recommend. It’s awful – I mean, look at me, right?”

The man was a familiar wreck. Grief, in whatever form it comes and whatever cause it may have, was a consuming poison if not dealt with correctly. If one thing was certain, by the fact that this conversation between two strangers was unfolding at all, was how improperly the Writer has dealt with it thus far. I wanted to extend something to him – if not assurance of innocence, then at least an understanding – but I was genuinely just lost for words.

“This wine suck-s,” he grimaced, picking one of the bottles and dragging it over to the sink, “You a big wine guy at all?”

“My parents were,” I smiled at the memory, relieved by a break in the narrative, “I’ve picked up some knowledge here and there, but nothing major.”

“Mmm. Well, let me put you on something,” he went back to the couch, grabbing the parcel I brought. Unwrapping it, not without struggle, he produced a dark bottle in his hands, the label saying Thomas Barton, “Ah, evergreen. This used to be our favourite bottle – many a candle-lit dinner spent with this one.”

That was new – I couldn’t remember delivering a bottle of wine before (at least, from the handful of instances when I could verify what the delivery was). Has it always been an ‘anything goes’ approach in the company?

“These,” he tapped the bottle, evidently proud of it, “Used to be sold in my favourite wine shop. But, since the Soil Crisis, produc-tion was discontinued. How did you get your hands on it?”

“Couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to,” I shrugged, “Company policy.”

“Right, of course, working from the shadows and all – no offence,” none was taken, at least until he said ‘no offence.’ I think he caught my sentiment, as he hurried over to the counter and got a bottle opener, “Would you like a taste?”

“No thank you,” well, actually, just a taste surely was fine? “Maybe just a smidge.”

“My man!” the Writer exclaimed, swiftly opening the bottle and grabbing two coffee cups, “It’s a sin to drink wine this good from a cup, but it’s an even bigger sin to drink alone,” what that sentiment made him, judging by the number of bottles scattered throughout, was anybody’s guess. He brought the two cups over – both from different universities – and pushed one over to me. I went for the sip, when suddenly, “Wait, no, give it a whirl and a sniff first!” I obliged, for fear of upsetting the wine guru further. The wine had a suppressed sweet smell to it, restrained but pleasant. I looked up at the Writer – he seemed happy for me to take a sip.

I hate to admit it, but that was some really good wine.

“Holy shit,” I exclaimed.

“I know, right!” his face was beaming in a simple yet pleased satisfaction. He finally took a sip himself, his grimacing face reddened further, “It’s not quite the same, but that’s as close to heaven as I’ll ever be,” and then we were back to silence. The wind outside picked up slightly, bashing against the window.

“You know,” he turned around to me, “I never stopped hoping that we could still be friends. She cut contact a while after we were done, but I did write her a letter once, a few months after it was over. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have – she wanted space – but I,” he paused, as if again considering his next words as carefully as possible, as if I was in any capacity to judge him properly and honestly, “I thought I had the right, I guess, to still be a part of her world. She never wrote back, naturally,” he swallowed, like every sentence that came out was harder to swallow than the next, “I know now I shouldn’t have.”

“What’s done is done,” was all I could muster, taking another sip (God, this really was some good wine, but I couldn’t possibly ask for a refill). Like a lubricant, alcohol helped the words come out of my throat into the room easier, “You did what you felt was right, for yourself or her. Even if it didn’t work, you can’t be too hard on yourself for giving into it.”

“Sure-ly, though, you don’t get to pat yourself on the back because you thought you did the right thing; what about the other person, what they might think as right?”

“Point taken. But even so,” I shrugged, “What’s done is done, and by the sound of it, the two of you are separated enough to not berate yourself over it,” those last words seemed to have struck a chord with him, as his eyes bolted over to me suddenly. I pulled myself back, taking another sip.

“I disagree,” he answered, bluntly, “I’ll let you in on a secret,” he got up, bringing the ashtray to the table, “I got this apartment hoping one day we’d live here together. There was this song I don’t like remembering too much, but we had this ongoing thing,” he pulled a cigarette out from behind his ear – was it always there? – and started looking for a lighter, “A promise, if you will, to waltz to it on our hypothetical wedding day,” he surveyed the room, from the desk in the corner to the TV by the wall; from the door to the bookshelf, filled with books; to the sofa in the middle of it and, finally, to the kitchen table at which we sat, “When I first saw this place, I thought ‘God, she’d love this,’ and, believe it or not, how nice it would’ve been to waltz to that song of ours,” his lip quivered on that last word, eyes darted downwards. I reached my hand out towards his shoulder, but he waved it away, “I’m okay, I’m fine.

“What’s funny about it all now” he continued, “Is I can’t fucking stand this apartment, this city – I can’t walk the street she lived on, I feel weird going to what used to be our favourite spots. Even people- when I see someone who dresses like her, say in a leather coat, or with a similar hairstyle, I get this- this- this sinking feeling in my stomach, both wishing they’d turn around so I can be sure and praying they don’t so I never have to find out, if it’s her or not,” he stopped, short of hysteria, lighting his cigarette and opening the window slightly, “So, you tell me, if this is ‘separated enough’ on my end, Courier.”

He paused, taking a long drag. Then,

“But maybe you are right. Maybe berating myself over it is meaningless. In the morning, none of this will matter,” he concluded, “In a few days, I’m handing in the keys and getting the hell out.”

“Where will you go?” I asked more so to continue the flow of the conversation than out of curiosity.

“I don’t know yet. Anywhere but here? Whatever was waiting for me in this city, well, I think it’s safe to conclude that it’s not here anymore. This last year, that was just me stubbornly refusing to let go, and I think it’s about time I did something about that” he gestured upwards, with a cigarette falling out on the floor, “Ah, for f-uck’s sake!” he picked it up, blowing the flame out. Sighing, he immediately grabbed his pack from the gown’s pocket and slung another cigarette into his mouth, pointing at it as it rested between his teeth, “We can split this one if you’d like.”

“Eh, sure,” technically, this was not a full new cigarette – or whatever arbitrary number I assigned to my rituals. Everything was going to hell, so what power did those numbers hold anymore?

As has become the norm of this strange encounter, we sat in silence some more, listening to the sirens creeping in the distance and the wind hitting against the window. An overwatch drone flew by, whizzing through the streets. The flame of the cigarette burned mercilessly against the wind, with no regard for us. 

“I think I’m afraid,” he finally broke the silence, taking a drag. It felt like we were nearing the end, “I’m afraid of what I’ll become once I do move on, once I start to forget, once I stop holding her as the standard of what love’s ought to be. Because, if- when, when it happens, when I do move on, that’s it – she’s merely another face in the crowd who just so happens to know everything about me.”

“You can’t possibly carry a burden like that forever. Can’t live in the past. Can’t… change it,” and suddenly, maybe by the tone of my voice, or by something in wine, there was familiarity between us again.  

“Change? No, of course, I am not trying to change it,” he passed me the cigarette, turning himself over to the window, as if shielding himself from the conversation.

“Okay, sure,” I flicked the ash into his gorgeous art-deco ashtray, “Then ‘right’ it, somehow.”

“‘Right’ it?”

“I’ve seen it all before,” I shook my head, taking another drag, “You’re hoping that, in absolution, one day, somehow, you can do it all over again; that you’ll see her in the crowd, and she’ll see you, and suddenly, it’ll be like that first moment all over again. And, you know, maybe – but generally, that’s not how life works.”

He took himself aback. My words, if not hurting, were certainly startling. His gaze drifted from me to the table, back to me and to the doorway, then to the floor for a long time, before finally returning to me, steadied, and finally, to the window. 

“Let me paint you a pic-ture. Imagine yourself outside right now, in this snow, sitting on a rock in a backyard, a remnant of a building, or a monument. It’s chilling, dark, and windy; your skin is cold and red, bruised in places you didn’t even know was possible; you can’t feel your face, or your legs, stuck to that rock you’re sitting on. And it’s terrible, you should really get inside – in fact, you know you should get back inside. But you sit. You sit so long, in fact, it doesn’t even bother you anymore, despite knowing what’s best for you. Why?” I shrugged, unsure of where he was going with it, “I’ll tell you why. You sit out of fear that once you go back inside, this pain you’re feeling now will stop being so significant it occupies your mind, instead becoming an afterthought as you embrace the warmth once more. Worse yet, you worry that you’ll forget why the ruins were there in the first place or why you refused to move for as long as you did. And one day, as you look over them nonchalantly, they would no longer register as ruins of something once wonderful. Rather, they would seem like mere stones in the garden – beautiful, certainly, but no more than a decoration of whatever once was, of a life long gone, or a life that could’ve been, too vague to recall, too dis-tant to care,” he paused, taking a swing out of the bottle behind him, “But whatever the worry, you don’t get a choice – you have to go back inside at some point, unless you want to freeze to death. So, eventually, you do, and you get comfortable, and you forget, and you move on. But I am not ready yet.”

Silence, wind, snow. Quiet, warm hum of the lamp in the corner. Then,

“Am I hopeful that I might see her again? Sure, I don’t think the part of me that longs for that moment will ever die, just as love for anyone we’ve ever loved never truly fades. I admit that I didn’t get closure, so I’m sure the same part of me will continue terrorising my brain over the possibility that we will one day get back together. But this, this is more than that,” he finally looked back at me, solemn and wild, reminiscent of the look he gave me when I first knocked on the door. I had little to say, processing all that the Writer had decided to dump on me in the middle of this strange, unrelenting night.

“I wonder sometimes,” he said, longingly, as if out into the window, to the snowy streets below, or the distant stars above, “If your twenties – the first half of them, anyway – is made for heart-break. If all this anguish, and worry, and just general messiness, is by design, to… build character, or something stupid along those lines.”

“That seems like an awful way of looking at things,” I shook my head, leaning against the table, “What if it doesn’t lead to anything?” It felt as if someone else was asking that question, and I suddenly felt dizzy from the déjà vu.

“It has to lead to something. Otherwise, heartbreak is just that – pointless agony, and all you’re left with is confusion,” he paused, briefly turning back around, seemingly not to me but to the room at large, “And maybe a drinking problem,” he tried to smile, but it came out crooked, misaligned, too tipsy to be genuine.

I thought about it for a moment, about my life, wondering if all the things that I have gone through were, deep beneath it all, just a test of character. If, maybe, the heartbreaks and the sorrows we’ve both undergone were purposeful and just part of the design, or, if the senseless tragedy of it all, was the point in itself.

“Maybe,” I finally collected myself to give a proper response, “But maybe it won’t. I don’t think anyone can say for certain, not until way after the fact,” I took one of the last drags from the cigarette – it was barely staying alive by then, “But none of that is possible while wallowing in grief itself. You can hope for it to mean something, sure, but you gotta pull yourself out of it first – even under the fear of forgetting.”

“But she was the one, Courier, the one!” he was relentless, and I was tempted to walk out.

“I know a guy like you,” I decided against it, taking the final drag of the cigarette, extinguishing it out into the ashtray, “He used to be big on fate. He’d say, you had to believe in it for it to happen.”

“That makes sense,” of course he agreed with Sam. I raised my hand slightly, indicating I wasn’t finished, “Sorry, continue.”

“But I didn’t. I never did – and I still don’t,” pause. This one was harder to get through than I initially thought, “I think, sometimes, bad things just happen – as do good things. And it’s normal – correct, even – to try and assign them meaning, to look for a lesson, or a path that leads to something, and even grow from it. But to say that it was predestined, especially for something bad to happen, to someone who doesn’t deserve it, that just makes me angry.”

“You think I didn’t deserve this?”

“I don’t know, maybe you did. That’s not the point,” I checked the clock on my phone. It was already past ten. I was really outstaying my welcome, “The point is, to hell with fate, to hell with ‘the one.’ No one is made for anyone,” that was too sombre of a note to finish, not that I even fully believed in it myself, so I added, “Not in advance, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” what did I mean? “I think you have to become ‘the one’ by living, by experience, by your words and actions,” I paused again, a sombre note in my throat. Then, “Between when you meet them and when you say goodbye, no person stays the same, for better or for worse, neither do you, nor ‘the one,’” I got up, stretching my back, “Otherwise, what’s the point of change, you know?”

Another silence – heavier, more oppressive. The wind had subsided, and not even distant whispers from the pub escaped to the window any longer. I could tell he was deeply in thought, so it was as good of a point for me to leave. Before that, however, I decided to ask to be sure.

“Will you be okay?”

“Oh? Sure, yeah,” he jolted upwards, as if awakened from sleep, “I’ll just sit here some more, get working through that bottle, write some letters, listen to the wind,” then, more melancholically, “Maybe, if I’m lucky, it’ll sound like her, just one last time,” I rolled my eyes ever so slightly, which he thankfully missed by pouring himself some more wine, “And then, well, we’ll see in the morning. What more can a guy do?” he paused, mincing his words, “Thank you for hearing me out. I know I’m being melodra-matic – that’s why nobody really listens to me nowadays,” I nodded in silent appreciation, heading for the doorway to get my shoes. As far as I could tell, this conversation was over.

“Hey Courier?”

“Yeah?”

“You really think it’s possible for someone to ‘become’ the one?” I pondered my words from earlier as I slipped into my shoes. There probably was something more to say, had this been a more familiar environment and we had more time.

“I don’t know,” I confessed, “I hope so. But maybe, just as with fate, you simply gotta believe in it for it to happen. I won’t know until I try,” I paused at the entryway, turning around to him, “And neither will you.”

I gave the Writer, lounged and unmoving at the table, one final look from across the room. The blinds made the light fall on his face in stripes, a streak of yellow running unevenly across his eyes, obscuring his expression. And yet, within them – at least within the one eye I could see clearly – a hint of purpose, that unmistakable realisation of one’s situation and what was to, or could, be done, desperate yet optimistic all at once, flickered ever so slightly. He gave me a gentle nod, returning to the wine cup in his hand. I returned the favour, reaching for my bag on the floor.

But as I was pulling it to my shoulder, I noticed something underneath it: a polaroid, slipped out from under the album, now laid pressed underneath the console where the TV stood. The, admittedly, slightly younger, fresher, and more upkept-looking Writer, a blonde woman to his side, sitting together on the couch, sharply dressed and smiling. Underneath, a little marker scribble:

‘Happy two years, dear. I love you!’

For a second, I wanted to pick it up, put it back where it belonged, or at least alert him to it. But I never did – perhaps selfishly, I didn’t think this was my fight to help with any longer.

“Good night,” I threw behind me into the room, “And good luck,” he didn’t respond, clearly lost in thought by then. It was time for me to leave, anyhow. 

For the record, I did love before, once. I won’t bore you with details, it was short – relatively speaking – but it was pure and true. And as much as I may have cringed earlier, I understood the Writer’s agony. For, however you spin it, love is awful, intoxicating, corroding; and it’s even worse after it’s over – like a bad hangover stretching into days, weeks, months. You swear you will never touch it again, that poison, that you can go without it. But as any well-behaved alcoholic, of course, you can’t.

Despite his belief in fate, Sam also used to say that nothing in this world comes cheap, or easy – least of all, as he stressed every time he and Lena got into a fight, happiness. It had to be fought for, with every fibre of your being, every single day, and it had to change with you as you changed with it. And so, he did – every day, without failure, against all odds. It’s probably one of the things I always admired the most about him, and a definitive example for me to follow to the best of my ability. The Writer’s problem, at least the way I saw it if I had to judge, wasn’t that he didn’t fight; rather, it was permitting his despair to take over for much too long. In a way, I understood – grief, as overbearingly oppressive as it can be, was comfort, a certain permission to give up, however temporarily. But eventually, one had to pull himself out; else, what was there to do?

In the end, wherever the Writer went after all this, even if I didn’t think of him much after, I hoped he found a way to keep fighting.

Outside, the wind has finally begun dying down, its song transforming to a mere quiet hum. The snow, unbothered, continued to fall peacefully, carrying an occasional whistle or murmur back up the street from the pub down the street. The police car, thankfully, was gone. I guess, there were more pressing things happening in the Capital than me and my nightly quota.

10:38 pm
After getting a no more than normal dose of worried but well-meaning earfuls from Miranda (“Why the FUCK were you stationary for almost an hour?”), scared to death that something may have happened to me (“Xxx, you know what kind of a night this is, please don’t do that again”), I made my way downtown, just near Leicester Square, right into the red lights of Chinatown. For a change, the streets were livelier than usual, as people came outside to gawk at the snow and embrace the holiday spirit. The police, understandably, were on high alert as a result – I’ve never seen more uniformed badges (most, uncharacteristically, with armoured chest plates distinctly visible rather than concealed) posted on every corner all at once (except for, obviously, that night). Worse yet, most of them now carried guns, authorised by an emergency decree of a government unwilling to take any more chances on terrorism. Whether or not that made anyone feel safer (especially those like the Journalist and myself, carrying the curse of knowing the insides of the awful night that kickstarted all of this), the jury was still out. For my part, I did my best to not think about it too hard and stay out of trouble, painfully aware of a deadly weapon hidden (and, thankfully, safely locked away) beneath the parcels in my bag.

As I made my way to the building, carefully navigating around the crowds underneath red neon and smells of overpriced roasted noodles, I arrived at a discreet door next to an old movie theatre. It was one of those places that barely turned a profit, partly due to its aging technology (it’s hard to compete with mainstay franchises like Orion and their new immersive screens – trust me, I’ve sat at those myself, and they are unforgettable), partly because it would only play independent releases and small-scale reruns of classics. Neither, of course, were subsided or assisted by a government that, seemingly by design, made it their mission to strangle the arts when the first fiscal cuts were announced almost two decades ago. A mate back in university – the same one who was convinced he’d be the next Scorsese – used to go on lengthy rants about that same subject, particularly when drunk and cheered on by his classmates.

“And worst of all,” he would say, seemingly having a new subject that was ‘worst of all’ every week, “Worst of all, they know our cameras are shit! They know those laptops they give us, shared between four people at a time, can’t render a full .mov file! They know that the internship is unpaid and no further prospects will be offered!, yet they do not care!” someone would likely shout ‘hear-hear!’ at that point, as he’d gear up to go for the kill, the rare yet omnipresent, “Great art is always born out of struggle; but there can be no great art if struggle is all we know!” and that would be a wrap on the evening – no one would listen further, as at that point, the cacophony of drinking and arts hysteria would become overwhelming. That, usually, was also the point Sam would pat him on the back and gently gesture for me to go for a smoke, an excuse as good as any to get out of the tortured artists’ range. Most of the time, I took him up on it, but truthfully, it was never because I didn’t enjoy their discussions; rather, sometimes, it could just get a little much. Thinking back to it now, I wonder what the STEM students thought of it all, often sitting a few tables to the side in the student bar, their job prospects never in doubt. I never bothered to ask while I still was a student.

Nevertheless, that night, the theatre lobby seemed bursting with people, and the commotion, uncharacteristic for a weekday night, was spilling to the streets outside. As I found out later after looking it up, some renowned filmmaker was doing a limited release of his last movie via a ticket lottery that included a meet and greet, or a Q&A, with him, or something along those lines. Part of me was sad about this, that the only way a small theatre could generate this much excitement was by employing someone else’s fame to get by (discussion regarding the film industry notwithstanding, you know what I mean). But another, more romantic side of me, was simply glad to see that the arts, blue in the face and gasping for air in this terror of an economy, could still have a victory, however small. And just for a moment, I felt certain that the film school, regardless of entry year, still assembled at that same table of my almost-alma mater’s student bar, unleashing the fury of the creative on the dullness and conformity of the pragmatic.

I turned away from my thoughts on the arts, letting them linger around the theatre lobby, as I instead knocked on the metallic door by the corner, glancing over my shoulder every so often to make sure I wasn’t drawing any attention. After a few seconds of waiting, a series of heavy footsteps echoed towards me, growing louder and then disappearing in a burst. Opening the door, I was greeted by a man dressed for a night out: blue jeans, a dark jacket atop a stylish evening shirt, a cleanly shaved face, and a nice smell of an expensive cologne coming off him.

“Can I help you?” he asked, thick Nordic accent atop every syllable, somewhat impatiently – there could be no doubt he had somewhere else, likely forgetting about the appointment with me.

“Mr…,” I checked the S-Pad, “Stryker?”

I’m sorry, this is an unrelated aside, but good god, the creativity of pseudonyms was taking a nosedive by that point. When I first started, people would use ‘Shakespeare,’ ‘Kafka,’ or maybe something silly like ‘John Parcelovich,’ ‘Mackenzie McDelivery,’ ‘Paige Turner,’ you get the idea. Now, fucking ‘Mr Stryker’ was all I got, and there was never a bigger indication that nice things just never last.

“Who? Oh, that,” his pseudonym notwithstanding, the man nodded in affirmation after a second of realisation, “Yes, that is me. I believe you have a parcel for me, yes?” I nodded as he cheerfully took the parcel out of my hands, “Tack you, sir – where do uh, where do I sign?”

“Right here,” as would’ve become custom for you by now, too, I extended the S-Pad, got the signature, checked it to be certain, folded the pad, and put it away, “Many thanks. Have a good night.”

“And you!” he waved at me, closing the door. The noises of the street returned once more. I allowed myself a brief pause to admire the snow, listen to the murmurs of the night market, observe the people in the theatre lobby. Duty called, though, so I began walking to the next address.  

You didn’t actually think that all of my deliveries were complicated, did you? I admit, there was no real reason to tell you about that one, as these kinds of people are not why I am writing any of this, but I just wanted to prove a point: most of the time, a delivery was just a delivery, and this is what my job looked like 90% of the time. Find the client, verify their pseudonym, get the signature, leave. If anything, we often hoped for most deliveries to go like that, even more so because of the general discord in the Capital at the time. The less we lingered, the less attention we brought to ourselves; the less attention we brought to ourselves, the smoother and faster we could make our deliveries; the smoother and faster we could make our deliveries, the bigger the profit yada-yada-yada you know what I’m talking about.

The contract afterward went just as smoothly, by the way – it was only a few blocks up, and I didn’t even get to reflect on the arts again, so no point in telling you about that one. Unfortunately, that’s when my luck that night began to run out.

11:21 pm
As I was making my way towards the last contract of the night, up in Bloomsbury, one of the central but lesser posh areas of the city, sitting just under the main metropolitan railway station, Miranda’s worst nightmare came to life. Despite the planning and the supposed cancelation of the mass demonstrations outside of the West-Central districts, a demonstration was in my way. I was now on Tottenham Court Road, running next to an area where the Capital’s main universities and various legal offices were, now fully occupied – and completely refusing to move – by the protestors.

From the few banners and placards facing my way (“No More Cuts!,” “Pay Our Student Workers,” “While Students Starve, Xxxx’x University Profits From War!”), as well as the chants spreading back and fourth through a megaphone, I deduced that this particular group was made of both students and doctors from the few universities in the area, undeterred neither by the harsh weather nor the late hour. Instead, the protestors had pitched a couple of tents (mostly with hot food and various supplies), remaining firm in their resolve despite the multiple tired faces even my untrained eye noticed. At the other end of the road, just where it broke into a T-junction (and, unfortunately, where I was initially headed) a police cordon was set up facing the protestors head on – only standing by quietly for now, yet clearly undeterred in the face of the mass gathering. Subconsciously scanning the barricade, I breathed a sigh of relief seeing they did not have guns in hands, even if the sight of a couple of drones hovering above the street remained anything but assuring.

Securing myself on the side of the street and affixing my cap to at least try and conceal my face, I considered my options. The university by which the street unfolded had its gates closed, so cutting through was not possible. Neither was going through the cordon, obviously – the last thing I needed was bringing more attention to myself. Trekking back towards Leicester Square was the most likely option, even if, at this point, I was looking forward to being back in my warm bed and this was definitively going to cut into my schedule, but hey – what else was there to do?

“Xxx!” suddenly, a familiar voice broke through the crowds, just further up the street. My eyes darted as I winced, unprepared to hear my own name here, “Xxx, over here!” I noticed someone waving their hand, maybe a couple of rows of people ahead of me, just by the tent – a man wearing a ski mask, a familiar brown jacket, and a bag over his shoulder.

It took a second to register, but of course he was here – why wouldn’t Archie be here?

“Xxx, pleasantly surprised you finally decided to join the struggle,” he said, stepping away from the table at the edge of the tent and rolling up his ski mask after a quick glance up to the sky.

“I’m surprised you’re here at all,” I got under the tent, also ensuring that I was out of the drones’ view, “I thought you had a lengthy commute East?”

“I do,” he remarked, smug as ever, “But the night is young – I do not intend to sleep, so figured I’d support a friend first. Oh, which reminds me,” he turned around, motioning towards the table, by which a slender figure, covered with a grey coat that seemed a little too tight, face obscured by a carefully wrapped green scarf, busily assembled boxes of… something, “That’s Alya, they’re a good friend of mine and a student activist.”

“For the hundredth time, Archie,” they turned around, slender brown face locked into a frown through the gap between the medical mask and the scarf, “Don’t use my real name with strangers in public!” they looked towards me, gaze softening in an almost apologetic manner, “No offence.”

“Oh come off it ‘Said’, Xxx may not be the most politically active guy, but he’s solid,” for some reason, that actually didn’t come out as backhanded as, I’m sure, he intended.

“I don’t mean to intrude, I’m just passing by,” I threw towards ‘Said’, who by then had swiftly returned to their packing assignment, “Of all places, though, isn’t this kind of… too small-scale for your liking?”

“What, just because I find both the creeping rise of fascism AND student mistreatment appalling, I can’t be supportive of both? How awfully, awfully reductionist!”

“Can you either KEEP IT DOWN or come help me over here already?!” Said turned around, looking as if they were ready to strangle Archie. There was a funny, familiar note of accent that came through in their voice as it broke into annoyance, one that I myself heard aplenty in my household when my parents first switched to speaking a new, foreign language. It was an unmistakeable reminder of your native tongue, fighting to come through the emotional if not the substantial undertone of the sentence, a reminder in any immigrant household that even half a world away, the purest of emotions could only materialise proper in the language you learnt first. Whether he picked up on it as well, Archie did not hesitate to roll down his ski mask and return to the table, getting his hands busy. With few options open to proceed, I followed suit, figuring I might as well wait for an opening.

“What are these?” I asked of the containers on the table – and I do mean containers, including plastic, cardboard, and metallic boxes – as unimposing as possible.

“The counter-riot kits, we’ve been stockpiling supplies for the last few days and started assembling them as soon as the pigs barricaded us in: basic eye protection, water, clean cloth, some bandages and, if we still have any lying around, dust masks,” it was hard to tell through their face covering, but by the simple glance towards the barricade alone, it was clear Said was preparing for the worst, “So far, they seem passive enough, but it’d be just another day if they decide to make a move on us with tear gas and batons.”

“I’d like to see them try,” I heard Archie smirk through his ski mask.

“Easy for you to say – I can get deported over this, and then it’s bye-bye to master of medicine for me,” Said parried, emphasising ‘deported’ and slamming themselves down on the lid of the metallic box that was then handed to another face-covered protestor, “Okay, I think that’s it for now, we can take a breather,” they stepped off to the side, as another chant rolled across the street, removing the scarf just enough to reveal the rest of the face: dark eyes surrounded by crow’s feet, with an occasional messy black curl getting in the way; a barely noticeable golden piercing under their nose, shiny despite the darkness; a birthmark just above the lips, “It’s a pleasure to meet you… Xxx, right?”

“Right,” I shook Said’s hand, firm either from the unrebukable resolve or the cold of the street, “What are you guys protesting?”

“Oh, you know, nothing new: student workers aren’t being paid, the universities are investing in weapon manufacturers instead, activists being suspended. Just another Tuesday.”

“It really is just another Tuesday, isn’t it,” Archie finished packing his last box, joining us to the side under the tent, “Haven’t you guys been at it since you started your master’s, like two years ago?”

“A year and a half, technically, but in ebbs and waves, yes,” Said rubbed their eyes, extracting a crumbled-up pack of Fortunes’– the Myrollboros of many downtrodden students – and lighting a cigarette, “Sorry, I’d offer to share, but this is my last pack,” I nodded understandingly, “Anyway, yeah; the protests have been starting and restarting for a while, until the student workers’ union finally decided to cross-coordinate across campuses, and so here we are.”

I wasn’t entirely out of my element here: during my time on campus, protests would normally take up at least a good third of the academic year for a whole slate of reasons, from unfair pay to varying degrees of unsavoury conduct. The difference, however, is the admin used to be more receptive back then to make concessions, however small. These days, last I checked, my alma mater called the police on the picket line within hours of its formation a month or so ago – and nothing (and I really do mean nothing) could be done about the hundred-plus people that ended up being arrested. I don’t know what the arrest policy is these days where you are, but on the fundamental level, I think we both feel it to be wrong.

“Why wait so long until a proper, union-wide protest, if you don’t mind me asking?” I figured there was no harm in satisfying my curiosity, especially one moved by the extensive memory of my university days, as that night was becoming by that point.

“Great question,” they said, unbothered, flicking ash under the snowed-over hiking boot, “I think some of it has to do with too many people thinking it’ll blow over, but then the 01/12 happened, the ever-elusive Suns decided to kick things into high gear, our movement received support, and bam, there we are – reinforced in grievances, legitimised in wider disdain.”

“The fact that fucking assholes unaffiliated with the movement keep cropping up doesn’t help either,” Archie chimed in puffing on his e-cig, “We keep getting these fucks trying to join, shouting all sorts of bullshit about ‘New World Order,’ how Jews are behind all this, or that it’s the new faculty of colour that is poisoning their kids’ minds with ‘cultural marxism.’ That, as you can imagine, detracts from the appeal.” 

“Yeah, some people are saying… unsavoury things,” Said threw the cigarette to the ground and took a deep breath, reaching for the bag near one of the poles and retrieving a metal thermos, covered with colourful stickers, “But I know why I am here, I know why you are here,” they motioned towards Archie, “And that has nothing to do with this racist dribble; surely, that has to count for something?”

“Some would argue it doesn’t,” Archie shrugged, adjusting his ski mask, “How much can one view represent the entire group is up for the debate. Take cops, for example.”

“What about them?”

“Some feel safe in their presence, even as others primarily care for a violent crackdown on those they don’t agree with – like ‘in the olden days.’ Even the shirts themselves, some of them claim to ‘know why’ they are there, and yet they are still pigs who won’t hesitate to hit you over the head – the individual views, clearly, don’t mean shit in the face of the wider movement.”

“True, they don’t, not always; but what’s the substance of policing as opposed to our protest?”

“Depends on who you ask,” he was relentless, now that a proper discussion started, “I may dislike the police-”

“Sure you do,” ever so slightly, Said smiled.  

“Hey now,” he frowned at them, feigning offence, “I do dislike the police, but others – say, George, may feel genuinely safe around them.”  

“Yeah, well, that’s George’s opinion – I asked for substance. And as far as substance goes, we are striking and demanding fair pay and divestment. If you want to be more specific, when we protested the police, we demanded an end to a clearly racialised, prejudiced system; meanwhile, the pigs beat us senseless and detain us on flimsy grounds, including George if he ever grew a spine to come to one of these protests. Even putting ethics aside, which one is legally sound to you, or did you skip that in your PPE class?”

“Disgusting of you to suggest I did anything but argue with politicians’ sons during PPE, but yeah, fair,” Archie laughed unbothered, dreamily looking over the crowd, “I just hope this time, it finally sticks. I’d very much like to see an actual win for someone on our team, not just an endless back and fourth, you know?”

“You and me both,” Said concluded, affixing their mask and scarf back across the face, “But until then, not much else we can do but be here, weed out bad actors – best we can, anyhow – and prepare for the worst.”

The three of us froze there and then, looking over the mass of people gathered under the snow. From young to old, from makeshift banners to umbrellas, the defiance of the occasion glimmered ceaselessly in the concealed faces of every member of the crowd. A couple of people had their phones out, earning annoyed looks and remarks about how unsafe it was from their immediate neighbours. On the opposite end of the street, a few makeshift vendors in tents were handing out hot drinks to keep everyone warm. To top it all off, someone brought a speaker, playing all sorts of resistance folk songs here and there. If one didn’t know any better, it’d be possible to fool yourself into thinking this was a regular holiday market, even as the price of admission, rather than overpriced tickets and merchandise, was consciousness and a feeling of purpose being stronger than one’s fear. And while I stayed clear from mass gatherings since that night, it felt good to feel yourself being one with the whole, united in its purpose and goals.

The crowd, defiant as ever, began gearing up for another chant, until suddenly, a harsh, cutting sound of feedback from the end of the street, swept across us. The lights began shifting: the armoured van by the cordon turned on its searchlights, and the drones, only buzzing above us earlier, switched their own tiny blue lights on. Looking ahead, we saw one of the policemen emerge closer to the edge of the cordon, lifting his helmet’s visor. His face was blurry from where we stood, but by the general outline, I figured he couldn’t have been much older than me. Not wasting much more time, he produced a megaphone in his hand – his finger on its trigger, the source of that terrible feedback – and waited for the protestors to settle down. Seeing the moment finally open, he raised his instrument, bellowing at us through the crackle of audio waves and violent wind.

“Attention, citizens! You are in grave violation of the non-trespassing order of the Civil Assembly Responsibilities and Liberties Act. This is your final chance to disperse; leave this street immediately, or you will be arrested. I repeat: this is your final chanceto disperse peacefully; leave immediately, or face the consequences!”

The policeman lowered the megaphone, letting the silence set in.

Finally, someone in the crowd shouted,

“Get a real job, fascist pig!”

Followed by,

“Join us, you fucking bootlicker!”

A couple of,

“You have no right!”

And, of course,

“Oink! Oink! Oink!”

Until a larger cacophony of sounds erupted, all at once, with those immediately at the front of the crowd being perhaps the most proactively loud and imposing. So fast did it all erupt all over again, I’ve barely caught myself joining with Archie and Said.

The policeman, unmoved, attempted to raise the megaphone again, with a barely noticeable uptick of feedback turning on and off, after which he simply shook his head, put the megaphone away, and obscured his already blurry face with the helmet once more. In his final act before disappearing into the fold of his colleagues, he stepped away, hand raised and one finger pointed to the sky, making some sort of a circular motion with it.

Within seconds, our cacophony replaced was replaced with the other. A loud siren shrieked across the street. Many of us ducked, clasping our ears, looking for cover, but it was inescapable: the sound came from the drones hovering just above us.

Without hesitation, a quiet hiss of tear gas grenades, preluded by a barely audible ‘pop’ sound, followed, landing all around. A stomp of leather boots and cracking of batons – for now, only in the front – drew closer. And then, finally, the splashing sound of the water cannons – scathing, cold, devastating – right down the middle.

Panic took hold, as people hurried to unpack and assemble their riot kits. Some raised their umbrellas, covering each other from the cold waters and the gas. A bulky man at the front tried to tackle the armour-cladded cop with a shield, only to get struck down by another with a baton to the head. Seemingly out of nowhere, a girl on the opposite end of the street lit a flare, throwing it at the unfazed squadron approaching her. Someone else, having failed in throwing their hot coffee at the geared-up enforcer of law and violence, was being ruthlessly pressed to the ground, their scream barely reaching already overborne eardrums.

“Here, take this!” Said broke me out of the trance, handing me a moist cloth, “Press it against your nose, it’ll help with the gas. We gotta go,” I felt their hand turning me around, towards the other end from where I first emerged, where the rest of the crowd was trying to escape to. I obliged, following the push,

Until, at the other end, another set of searchlights turned on.

Water cannons, batons, boots, sirens – it all resumed again, more intense than before.  

“There!” Archie, ski mask and goggles (did he always have them?) affixed, suddenly appeared on my right, grabbing my arm and pointing towards an opening in the street, a tiny alleyway, where the coffee vendors were mere a second ago, “We can slip through there if we’re fast!”

Without hesitation, as Said and Archie broke into the run, I followed, trying to cover both my ears and my nose somehow. My eyes felt both dried out and full at once, so I kept them closed best I could. I did my best to not fixate on the screams or the convulsions of panic in protestors who kept bumping into me; I just prayed that the alleyway was not a dead end.

I don’t know how long I ran, half-blinded, until I finally bumped into Archie. Both he and Said stopped at an intersection of sorts, attempting to catch their breath and figure out where to go and, without mentioning it to one another, trying to drown out the sirens and the cracks of the batons still coming through the alleyway towards us. I finally let go of the cloth, instinctively going to rub my eyes.

“Do not do that!” Said grabbed my hand, as harshly as they could, producing another metallic thermos in their other hand, “Wash your eyes with this.”

“That’s coffee, are you crazy?!” I yelped, in agony over my burning eyes – good fucking god they burnt so badly at that moment. Said, unbothered and swift, grabbed the back of my head, opened the lid, and poured cold, cold water, all across my face. After a moment, they let go, handing me the bottle, “Sorry,” was all I could say, as I lowered myself to wash my eyes proper.

“You think they followed us?” Said finally threw out to Archie, wiping their face with the colourful scarf that was being swapped for a grey beanie from their bag.

“Maybe?” he replied, taking off his ski mask and goggles. I’ve never heard Archie so unsure of anything as I did that night, “Hard to tell. I think they have bigger problems, but tear gas, water cannons, and sirens on top of batons is… excessive, so I don’t think we are out-out of the woods yet.”  

“Okay, then I suggest we make ourselves scarce. This is towards the street, right?”

“Should be. Xxx, can you walk?” he turned around to me, green eyes, for the first time ever, filled with genuine concern.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” besides the teary eyes, I really was.

“Good, because we’re gonna have to scramble,” both Said and Archie finally stopped packing their stuff, “Come on, through here.”

“Hey, you!” suddenly bellowed from the direction that we were all turning in, as another few policemen emerged in the streetlamp, “Police, stay right there!”

“Oh, fuck!”

“This way, run!”

Without thinking, I dodged in the opposite direction, footsteps growing louder behind us. A sweep of wind knocked some snow from the roof as we turned the corner. The sirens suddenly grew closer, mixing into the sound of creaking snow and wet dirt under our feet.

After God knows how long of a run, we emerged onto the street, but the sirens didn’t cease: the cacophony only intensified, as the pedestrians started running as well. A police sweep has spilled over into the main street, obscuring both the holiday spirit and the festive shopping. Looking around, I didn’t see either Said or Archie, except for a flash of red hair disappearing towards a wider alley across the street. Instinctively, I darted there, only to feel a hand just barely graze the collar of my jacket behind me and a demanding, authoritative “Stop!”. Almost getting hit by the car, I slipped into the alleyway that was now getting bottled up with people, doing my best to dodge around.

Until, expectedly, I lost my footing, stumbling to the ground. The great mass of people raced past me, and panic began overtaking me again. In the flashes of blue and red, I saw my arrest, the handcuffs, the gun – oh God the fucking gun! – still in my bag, Miranda’s angry face, Sam’s voice to keep it together, the gun in my bag, the parcel for Lena, the fucking gun in my bag!, the court hearing, the-

“Hey!” an unfamiliar but friendly voice, clearly directed at me, broke through; in one of the openings in the alleyway, just by a brightly lit coffee store’s display, a sharp face of a man, dressed in an equally sharp dark blue coat, looked directly in me, his hand extended, “Get over, come on!”

Without hesitation, I grabbed onto the man’s arm, as he pulled me up towards himself. Without saying a word, he led me through the alley towards a pink neon sign, underneath which a group of people was bubbling around, unbothered and detached, inside a tiny, taped-off area. The man, unfazed as before, ducked under, dragging me with him towards a smaller group out in the back, further from the light of an unfamiliar sign.

“You okay?” despite the concern, his voice came through harsh, cold, cutting through the very fibre of the air around us. I nodded silently, trying to gather my thoughts, “Good. Stand with us for a bit, get yourself in order.”

I looked around. I was surrounded by a group of equally sharply dressed people, whom I assumed to be the man’s friends, laughing and having a smoke. Examining the neon sign behind me, I realised I found myself in the smoking area of a club I’d never heard of before (go figure – a night out in this part of the city could set you back by five figures if you were reckless with your money). From behind the door under the sign, just barely, muffled music could be heard – yet, remarkable, not the sirens from the street.

“Cigarette?” the man drew me back, a solitary slim roll up in his hands. The night was a goddamn wreck as is, so without hesitation, I took it.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention, my friend,” as he smiled, there was suddenly a cavalcade of footsteps. Throwing a quick look in their direction, my heart sank: a police unit, rushing through the alley, batons in hand, violent intent in every move. Subconsciously, I sank into the brick wall. 

“Hey!” one of the cops stopped by the smoking area, his helmet obscuring his face, “You’ve seen anyone suspicious pass by here, maybe running?”

“No, officer, just a whole group-a of people, that way,” the man in the coat stepped ever so slightly in front of me, fixing his thin, black hair in an exaggerated motion, pointing in the opposite direction. The policeman, his eyes still obscured, lingered on the man, his head not moving. For a moment, I even felt like he was looking at me.

Until, finally, another voice came from the end of the alley, and the cop, turning away, rushed towards it. I breathed out, almost breaking into tears for a moment, collecting myself.

“Some night, aye?” the man in the coat helped me up, retrieving an engraved silver lighter from his pocket, “Relax, is all good now.”

“Why’d you help me?”

“I came to see what all the noise was about and saw a fellow Slav on the ground – was I not to help?”

“No, I, I appreciate it, thank you,” I finally took a drag from the cigarette – did I really look that Slavic? – and I couldn’t believe what I tasted: it was Senate, true as day, with its smooth and just right harshness, an almost pleasant aftertaste, and ease of smoking itself, “Where… Where did you get these?”

“Back home, of course! They sell them on the corner near my babushka, I always bring some back with me whenever I visit,” he smiled, turning back to his friends, as the pieces started falling into place.

“You guys are from Russia,” there was no doubt anymore: the accent, the cigarettes, the unbothered demeanour; it wasn’t always easy to recognise, but a typical Russian abroad stood out like a sore thumb if given into his worst tendencies and stereotypes.

“Not all-all of us, we prefer Eastern European these days,” a blonde girl in the group, wearing a not-weather-appropriate sparkling black dress, replied, a tall transparent glass of red liquid in her hand, “Once in a café I said I was Ukrainian, just so it’s easier and more sympathetic. Russian these days is… complicated.”

My face soured. I don’t know how much you are allowed to be told about what’s going on, so allow me to provide a refresher just in case. For a few years now, as a result of a revolution, there has been unrest in Ukraine, as the country (I do mean the country, not the parliament) and especially its youth, alongside many other similar movements across the region, have decisively rejected having to endure being on the East side of the Wall. To that end, Russia – unfortunately, my homeland – decided to wage a war – sorry, a ‘special peacekeeping operation’ – to reconnect it by force into its Pact. But as per usual, things weren’t so easy, and the ‘operation’ has effectively reached a stalemate of attrition, despite, for better or for worse, the expectations of a quick victory on either side.

And here she was, this woman I was seeing for the first time, just brazenly admitting she posed as a citizen from the country her compatriots were bombing, mercilessly, day in and day out, like it was a casual aside about her choice of coffee.

“Why do you ask, are you – oh, what’s that fucking word,” another man in a stylish tan evening jacking, his brown hair receding, clicked his fingers, “Our zemlyak?”

“Zemlya– Oh, oh, a countryman!” the girl exclaimed, earning herself a round of applause from her friends.

“No, I am not,” I certainly wasn’t mentally, if not legally, anyhow – I was as detached from this community as a foreigner may have been by now, especially after realising what kind of company I ended up in.

“But you look the part, and you understand what I’m saying, da?” the evening jacket chimed in again with the ever-complicated question.

“I’ve spent more than a decade here, so I really don’t think I can say I am Russian anymore.”

“Really?” the coated man turned around, his voice collected and calm as ever, “What are you, then – one of them, here?”

“I-” I couldn’t say that either, no matter how much I wanted to. My citizenship test was still some time off, and the grief I got with my visa status – especially after losing my university sponsorship – obscured any goodwill sentiment that may have remained from being acknowledged, no matter how much my friends assured me, time and time again, I was considered one of them.

“Oh, I see,” the man, tone unchanged, lit his own cigarette, “You think you’re better than us because you’re out on the barricades, caring about saving the world, all that stuff?”

“It’s better than pretending I’m a Ukrainian because I’m a coward,” I snapped. The girl gasped, ever so audibly, as the rest of the group looked at me frowning. But not the man in the coat.

“Oh, my friend, you’re funny,” he shook his head, looking away, “You think you know us, huh? Explain me this, then. In their language, politics – is, how you say plural, multiple, there can be difference. For us, that’s just politika – one, singular, whole. There no difference in it – dirt is dirt, yes? Now I never killed– hell, I never even hit a Ukrainian, and I guess neither did you. And still, they treat you – me, my friends here – with suspicion, like we did a crime by existing. Why should I pay for what my country is doing? For all they promise of plurality, it seems we all the same to them.”

“I am not like you,” I replied, desperate and defensive, backed against the wall.

“You sure? Did not seem so from the police face,” the man grinned, taking a long drag of his cigarette, “Let me be clear, my dear zemlyak: you, me, us, whoever, if we carry the same passport, we will never be more than a threat to them. They’ll pat you on the head for following their rules, promise you that one day you can be one of them, but in the end, none of it would be true. In the end, you’re just a foreigner – a ‘them’ to their ‘us.’ Same goes for Ukrainians: you will always be a Russian to them, and no good you do would ever erase that fact for them. So why should I care about being right, being good enough, to them?”

“I think you shouldn’t bother with this shit at all,” the girl decided to chime in again, taking a long sip of her drink, already clearly not entirely sober, “Look how much good protesting did for your beloved Ukrainians, or even you. If you love them so much, why don’t you get a gun and go fight? I, we all, are okay like this – it’s not our war, I pay good money here, so leave us alone,” I decided against arguing – there was no winning this, no matter how stubborn I could be. I focused instead on getting through my cigarette and getting out, fast.

“Look, my friend,” the man in the coat leaned against the wall next to me after a momentary silence, letting his friends get back to their conversation, “Don’t take it personal – I’m sorry the conversation became, uh, how you say, so hot. I’d even say,” he slouched a little closer to me, switching to a whisper, “I agree with you, my girlfriend should not do things like that. But as a whole, to be fair, what point is there – why bother making it so difficult?”

“On the most basic level, to do the right thing?” I had nothing else, but it had to be worth something.

“And what good will come off that?” he sounded genuinely sympathetic, but endlessly warped in his conviction – unbudging and unmoved, no matter what I said to him, “We got enough problemi as is. Save yourself before you save the world, eh?” he got up, patting me forcefully on the shoulder, “I think you’re clear to go now. Here, a goodbye gift,” in his palm, he held another Senate, “Last one from the pack, figured you could have some luck, or whatever they believe here.”

“I’m okay, thank you,” I replied instinctively.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” he shook his head disapprovingly, “I saw your face lit up when you tasted Senate. Take it – is a cigarette, not a peace treaty.”

Hesitantly, I heeded his advice – even just one, in this drought of the situation, proved how much of an addict I really was in the end – sliding the Senate it into a compartment of my bag.

“Good,” the man fixed his hair again, evidently pleased with himself, “Now why don’t you fuck off, we are gonna go back to dance?”

“Sure,” I answered, half-defeated, half-relieved, “Have a great rest of your night.”

“And you, zemlyak, and you too!” and with that, they disappeared under the neon sign, laughing and drinking, back to where the music was thumping, and all the worries of the world – of class and inequality, of war and genocide, of addiction and despair – disappeared like snow, washed away by the rain we all knew would come eventually: under clicking of heels and boots, as dirt and waste, hardly a thing to worry about when there is so much else going on. In these walls, to do the right thing was reckless and stupid, to care for anything further than yourself – a waste of time and health. Just enjoy your damn night and shut up already – what good is there in bringing everyone else down?

Judging by what I figured I looked like then, I probably wasn’t the best representative of a better future where everyone cared for the issues of others. After scouting the alley, I jumped into a public restroom – a little booth, etched and concealed on corners of various buildings across the city – by the exit to the main street, to wash up and prepare, mentally, if not physically, for the last delivery of this long, frustrating night.

12:27 am
I arrived at Bloomsbury, one of the central but slightly less posh areas of the city (meaning, by some miracle, it was still affordable for at least some people than just the top 1%) sitting south of the Capital’s main railway station, sometime just after midnight – much more tired than I usually am, reminding me just how exhausted I’ve been lately. This also was that usual time of the month when the wear of doing these night shifts would begin to really take its toll. Seeing all the jolly people around me go out and enjoy themselves, getting into the spirit of festivities, liberated from folly commitments like education and their non-essential jobs, certainly did not help things. Then again, the night wasn’t exactly kind to me: I was in a pretty crappy mood after both the run-in with the police and the unpleasant interaction with some of my (former in spirit, if not yet in passport) compatriots at the club’s smoking area. In combination, all three of those things were making for an uncharacteristically piss-poor night. At least the wind and the snow ensured that it wasn’t all that quiet – a small mercy for my mostly deprived mind.

The final address of the night was neither inconspicuous nor especially flashy; if anything, it was almost ordinary: past one of the side streets adjacent to the main road, I took out of the policed hell around Tottenham Court, through an arched pathway that led into a panopticon of residential buildings surrounding the front yard, and up a small set of stairs, a discreet hostel was situated. Its blue neon sign, with a name generic enough to not be recalled, had about half of its letters completely fried and blacked out, spelling (unintentionally, of course)

H E L (B A A D)

Not that I was especially religious (or at all – last I opened the bible was at a mandatory Christmas service in my final year of high school more than half a decade ago now), nor that the accidental urban religious iconography was the weirdest thing you’d see in the Capital, but the irony of the misspelled, semi-ominous and self-evident statement on nature of ‘hel,’ in a time like this, was not entirely lost on me. Disappointingly, though, the omen’s exact meaning (‘Hell is bad?’ No shit. ‘Hell is around us, and that’s bad?’ A bit of a stretch, but if you want. ‘Hel, as in a city in Poland, is bad?’ What does the universe have against seaside resorts in Eastern Europe?…) to this day, eludes me.

Making my way up the snowed-in – but thankfully, not-yet-frozen – steps, I opened the door to the lobby, half-expecting to go through the same beats as the hotel contract earlier in the month, running over the script for receptionists (“Yes, I am a legitimate courier. No, I can’t, I need a signature. Yes, I have no idea what the real name of the person in room number-whatever is. No, police would not be necessary. Yes, I am a legitimate courier-” and so on) in my head. But, unexpectedly, the narrow corridor of the lobby was empty – only a haphazardly assembled card on the little countertop to my right, with a sloppily written ‘Dinner break. Be back soon,’ no automated check-in system in sight, and the familiar buzz of the LED lamps high above, enveloping the place in its dark orange light.

I was thus locked into the ever-present puzzle of my job: the elevator was right there, just further down the corridor, and it would spare me a lot of unnecessary headaches I did not seek at that point of the night, if I just went for it. At the same time, what did our codex say about deliveries to addresses accompanied by a check-in desk? Pretty sure it was something along the lines of ‘make yourself known, explain the need for the signature, omit any and all contents of the parcel.’ At the SAME-same time, it’s not as if Miranda – or anyone, for that matter – could’ve checked that; this conduct hinged on good faith and best behaviour of couriers. As far as I could tell, my good faith was exhausted, and best behaviour was worth a crock of shit.

I made a beeline for the elevator, intensively and repeatedly pressing the button, and feeling absolutely zero amounts of guilt.

The door I was looking for ended up on the fifth floor of the available eight, buried in the labyrinth of short, narrow corridors. I was thankfully spared a vomit-inducing interior design: no crazy colour schemes, only the ordinary and familiar yellow liminality. By God, it has never looked so good. 

Finally reaching the metal door numbered 57, I did my usual pre-delivery check (pad, parcel, friendly face), before suddenly hearing some commotion inside. Poorly muffled voices (of which, I think, there were three) kept rising and falling, with separate phrases eschewing discontent, frustration, joy, and fear all at once. At intervals, they were broken by a thump or a clap, seemingly carrying no rhyme or rhythm, both apparent and illusive at once. It was difficult to make sense of just what was going on in there – and honestly, sometimes it’s better to not even try to – just as Sam taught me. But there was no avoiding this one; and so, with a deep breath, I straightened my jacket (which, regrettably, torn around my shoulder blade – must’ve been from the fall earlier), knocked on the door, as politely yet affirmatively as I could, and fixed my hat; the voices, along with other sounds, stopped. An expected cavalcade of short taps on the floor followed, just before the door was finally opened.

“Yes?” I was greeted before the door had even fully (more so halfway) opened. Out of the partition between it and the frame, a tired yet somehow endlessly radiant face of a woman my age emerged, her brown-dyed hair with flashes of red, assembled into a bun that was barely holding itself together, spilling out across her blue-and-grey eyes. She puffed upwards a couple of times, unsuccessfully trying to remove the obstructing hairs, before finally moving the flock out of the way with her hand, covered in a dark-green sweatshirt.

“Delivery for,” I checked my S-Pad, as a barely noticeable, appreciative smile grew across my face, “Dorian Gray?”

“Ah!” she smiled back widely, opening the door more. The green sweatshirt had a tiny print above the heart, spelling out the name of a local prominent arts conservatory, “You must be my ‘totally legitimate’ midnight courier – interesting choice of a business model.”

“Yeah, that would be me,” I checked again for the parcel in my bag, before realising that there were two scheduled for Ms. Gray – one blocky, very light to the touch, and a sturdy cylindric one, almost the same one as I delivered to the Writer only hours ago, “You are expecting two packages, right?”

“Sure am,” she said, her nose proudly raised, “That’s allowed, right?”

“No, sure, it is, just… We don’t get many requests like that, I guess?”

“Well, you ought to consider that I might be not your usual customer. Do I sign somewhere?” I extended the S-Pad and the pen, as she signed it in one swoop move, a hand trained to give out autographs and seal fates, “Thank you; now we’ll see if your company is worth the salt.”

“I promise you, we are,” I put the pad and the pen back into the bag, ready to depart.

“Remains to be seen,” already turning away, she suddenly continued, “But actually – and sorry to bother you, you are well within your right to tell me off on this – we could use an untrained pair of eyes here. You got a spare moment?”

“What for?” a request for my voice, as it’s been for a chat, were these days unsurprising, even if unusual; my eyes – terribly untrained – not so much.  

“Just a little outside perspective is all I need,” she glanced back in the room a little impatient, “Help me out here, and I’ll consider giving you guys five starts?” we didn’t have a rating system, given how our business operated – word of mouth and being in the known (neither particularly difficult in the internet age) was how we got our clients, not through arbitrary reviews meant to indicate quality. Not to mention, I really, really wanted to get to bed by that point – what good could my eyes, in exchange for a non-existent rating, really do?

“Alright,” and yet, I agreed, for reasons I still don’t fully understand. A certain irking from within, a pull at the back of my head, some dumb force of the universe, god-forsaken fate (eugh), if nothing else – any and all of those things could’ve been blamed for my ultimate agreement; fact of the matter was such that I did agree, and I lensed my eyes contrary to reason and exhaustion, “How can I help?”

“That’s the spirit!” she nodded in affirmation, opening the door fully, “Come on in, I’ll explain- Oh, and shoes off, please!”

The nauseatingly white-lit room was embroiled in a state of creative chaos: barely big enough to hold a set of two bunk beds, a grey plastic table with a couple of tucked-in chairs, and a little space at the end with a hidden wardrobe by the window overlooking the front yard, its already crammed space was further exacerbated by a myriad of coffee cups, a couple of half-full (and one empty) white wine bottles, notebooks, laptops, and books occupying the table. On the finely printed pages of what seemed like scripts, notes were haphazardly scribbled in the margins (and, at times, across and above the lines themselves), neon yellow highlighters bleeding themselves dry. So overwhelming was the sight, I didn’t even notice two other people in the room – two other women, to be specific: one, with short dark-hair and golden-tanned skin, sat on the windowsill, busily scribbling notes into a book, the cover of which I could not recognize, wrapped in a similar looking crewneck of the woman that greeted me (maroon rather than dark-green); the other, fashioning loose dirty blonde hair and pale hands, wore a white fisherman sweater (that has by then fallen victim to a coffee spill, just by its hem) standing by the wardrobe, seemingly intent on burning a hole through the manuscript in one hand, all the while feverishly puffing on a purple disposable e-cigarette in the other. All three, I also realised, were wearing jeans – even at this late hour.

As the door closed, both of them looked up, their faces turning from neutral concentration to confusion – and, to an extent, displeased bafflement.

“Who is this strange man and what is he doing in our room?” the blonde spoke up first, taking a puff from her device.

“You said we needed an audience,” Ms. Gray replied, stepping up and waving a hand across me, “I got us an audience.”

“Sure, but not like that? I mean, that’s just some rando – what does he even know about theatre?” the blonde fired back.

“It’s okay,” believe me, I understood how uncomfortable my presence – especially at this late hour – was, “I get it – I can go.”

“No,” Ms Gray was insistent, “Karla, you wanted an audience. I won’t have you say shit like ‘this would never work outside of the rehearsal’ to me and then backpedal when I’m giving you an opportunity to either prove me wrong or shut up and trust the vision. Now do the damn scene, it’s getting late.”

“You can be so tyrannical, M,” the windowsill girl chimed in, “Can’t we just sleep on this?”

“Pish-posh, you say tyranny, I say good directing,” she got a chair out for me from under their table, leaning against the bunks by the door “The performance is tomorrow; if we don’t get this done tonight, we might as well drop the entire course,” she picked up another script lying on the top bunk, violated all over with notes, “Go on, read your lines, without forgetting my notes on the margins this time, and we can be done in literally the next ten minutes.”

The actresses on the other end of the room rolled their eyes, groaning under their breath, but still put their scripts down, shifting their posture to that unmistakable pre-performance stance I’ve seen many times in exhibitions of my university’s drama department. To my end, I simply took my seat, and allowed for the show to unfold.

“So, what do you want me to look for?” I sheepishly asked M/Gray, “Also, what even is the play?”

“That doesn’t matter. I just need you to focus on the emotions of it all, and – importantly – the differing attitudes between characters, whether a switch-up works or not. You’ll see.”

“Alright then,” I shuffled in the seat, freeing a bit of space in front for me on the table to put my hands somewhere, feeling the time around me slow down.

“From the top?” the girl on the windowsill asked her director.

“No,” replied M/Gray, “Let’s go from… Ah, yes, midway through page 15 – in the print-out for the final scene. Soph, let’s start with your line and then just ease into the lengthy Jamie bit. I’ll tell you where to cut,” the actresses nodded, finding the correct segment, and finally starting their performance.

The Windowsill Book Girl: Shut up! (she throws her hands up in despair, intent to do worse clearly telegraphed, but held back) I-I-I don’t want to hear-

The Pale Hands: No, Kid, you listen! (she steps up to her, one finger raised. Pause. Then, regretfully and ashamed) I did it on purpose to make a bum of you. Or part of me did – a big part. (she sits down, sliding against the wall – slowly) That part that’s been dead so long – the part that hates life. Putting you wise so you’d learn from my mistakes. Believed that myself at times, but it’s a fake. I made my mistakes look good, (escalating) made getting drunk romantic, (escalating further) made fun of works as sucker’s game, (almost breaking into hysteria) never wanted you to succeed and make me look even worse by comparison! Wanted you to fail. Always jealous of you. (she brings her fist down to the floor, face enraged) Mama’s baby, Papa’s pet!

“Okay, pause,” the actresses froze in place, beholden to M/Gray’s every word, “That’s good, but let’s try doing the part we’ve discussed – go to 21. Soph, that’s where you switch roles; Karla, you still good, stay in Jamie, let’s kick off with the end of your bit,” they nodded at the suggestions. The rustling of pages in a script, Hands quickly putting herself upright again, Window putting her feet down, as if waiting for a signal, and then,

The Hands: (voice trembling, mumbling, with no more resentment left to it) All right, Kid. I had it coming. But I told you how much I’d hoped- (she raises her hand up, reaching out to her family, ultimately being just out of reach. Her head drops, exhausted, the rest of her body follows against the windowsill)

Beat. Window looks at Hands, before her own expression shifts, as she looks up at the audience.

The Window: I heard the last part of his talk. That’s what I was trying to warn you about. But don’t take it too much to heart: he loves to exaggerate the worst of himself when he’s drunk. He’s devoted to us, to you – it’s the one good thing left in him. (looking down at Hands again, hints of bitter sadness in her eyes) My first-born, who I hoped would bear my name in honor and dignity, who showed such brilliant promise … (Hands murmurs something unintelligibly, beginning to rise back up. Window mimics pouring herself a drink, looking away again)You’re a waste. (then, more forcefully) A wreck! A drunken hulk, done and finished!

The Hands: (her head slowly rising, eyes full of hatred. Then, with great pettiness in her voice) Got a great idea for you, Papa: put on a revival of that play nobody came to see a few years back. Great part in it you can play without make-up – Old Gaspard, the miser! (she sniffs, pointing at herself, beginning to recite, eyes wondering around as if in a dream) Clarence is come, false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury. Seize on him, Furis, take him into torment.” (pausing, eyes searching the floor, before raising her eyes back at Window) What the hell are you staring at?

“Cut!” M/Gray exclaimed, with a clap that erupted into a gentle applause. I followed suit, “Well, what do you think?” they all turned around to me as if their careers hung on my opinion.

“I’m… confused,” I said, after a moment of hesitation, “Is she,” I pointed at the woman by the window, “Meant to be two different people?”

“See?!” the pale-handed girl exclaimed, half in victory, half in annoyance, “I told you that would not work outside of the rehearsal! Jamie just doesn’t work as a central character!”

“Okay, hang on a sec,” M/Gray remained steadfast, her hand gently raised to quell the rebelling actors as she turned to me, “Let me explain. The three of us is all we’ve got, but there are four characters in total – all fairly important to the script. For the sake of simplicity – and better flow of it all – we’re centering Jamie and his perspective as the focal reference point. This scene is especially important, it’s his final repentance and breakdown – a catharsis, of sorts – so hard-focusing on him makes even more sense because of the emotions of it all.”

“That makes sense, sure,” I shrugged, “And, to your credit, it is cathartic, I think both of you,” I turned towards the two actresses, “Are brilliant, from your voices to your movements,” they smiled, even if I could tell that the blonde in the fisherman sweater did not fully appreciate my input (and fair, I was very blatantly not a theatre person), “I just don’t think it’s clearly shown. But I also missed 6 pages in-between, right?”

“Yes, but I suspect it’ll be more like two pages,” M/Gray replied, rubbing her eyes, “We just don’t have enough time to do the whole thing.”

“I see. Then… it could work better if there were more of these switch-ups? Just to establish that this is something that does happen.”

“I always thought Uncle Vanya would be easier to do,” the gold-tanned girl chimed in, kicking her feet around, “It’s more straightforward, not as many characters. I still remember most of my lines?”

“Unless you want to spend an entire night here, no,” the director cut her off, “We’ve come too far to call it quits – that final assessment is still happening tomorrow, whether we’re ready or not, and I won’t be ending my program on an underprepared note,” she paused, deep in thoughts, pondering the right course of action. Finally, breathing out, “Okay, let’s take five, and get back to it. I feel we’re close to cracking this thing wide open.”

“Oh, M, come on!” the girl in the fisherman sweater pleaded, “I agree we can’t go back to Chekhov, but could we just call it a night? You’re fucking killing me here, and Soph; we still have time tomorrow to do a proper run through, we’ll just get up early,” the director opened her mouth, ready to argue, but stopped herself.

“Fine,” M/Gray exhaled, notes of fatigue trembling in the air, “You’re right – let’s pick this up in the morning. But I need a cig,” she reached for a backpack hanging on the bunk, quietly cursing under her breath and turning to me again, “Can I split one with you? I’m all out.”

“What makes you think I have one?” I answered, half-baffled by the implication.

“You look the type,” she smiled, slily, “Prove me wrong, I guess, but I don’t think you can.”

12:55 am
“So, now that we’re away from the cast,” M/Gray asked me after we got downstairs, past the empty security desk (despite the assuring note of ‘being back soon’ still standing) and into the quiet snowfall back outside, “What did you think of it, really?”

“What, the performance?” I threw back, half-dreamily, as I logged the end of my shift on my S-Pad – what else could she have been asking about? “Like I said, I thought it was good – just, again, the clarity of switching between characters needs to be polished a bit,” I reached inside my jacket for the cigarettes, “What’s that play, anyhow?”

“Oh, don’t worry, you probably haven’t heard of it,” she paused, as if upset at herself for dismissing my question, “It’s a play from the 50s about a migrant family in the U.S., not anything particularly special, but it… spoke to me when I first read it – especially Jamie’s character, for better or for worse. So, since that was an option, you can imagine I seized the opportunity to direct it,” I handed her the almost empty pack, “Are you sure it’s not a problem if I bum one off you?”  

“By all means – if it was, I wouldn’t have offered.”

“Thank you,” she smiled gently, extracting the long white stick and leaning for my lighter. Her bright red flight jacket glowed warmly in the flame of the lighter, “You a theatre person?”

“No, not at all,” I tried, mostly in vain, to remember what my last role was. I think it was as a background character in something Shakespearean-ish – one of those productions that nobody except for the two leads really remembers (or wants to remember, anyhow), “Haven’t done anything since the end of middle school, I think.”

“Bummer,” she took a couple of drags, savouring the sensation with each puff, “There’s so few people interested in theatre these days, go figure even this exchange is only semester long.”

“You a member of a dying breed, then?”

“Not by day, certainly,” she shook her head, trying to swipe away the snow that was starting to pile up in her hair, “I was tempted to go into creative arts, but there’s literally no money in it – neither here nor across the Atlantic – unless you have industry connections. So, no – I’m majoring in business; this, that’s just my last hoorah to theatre,” she paused, as if the words escaping her mouth left a heavy weight in her throat, “What about you? We’ve already established you’re not a theatre person, but I highly doubt this,” she assessed me, head to toe, with a quick glance, “Is what you were expecting to be doing? No offense.”

“None taken,” although I was starting to wonder at that point if our reputation really was that bad amongst the general populace, “And you’re right – I did economics, but never finished.”

“Oh, shit,” she grimaced, “I’m sorry. Why, if you don’t mind the question?”

“Just uh, a few really stupid reasons – you ever tried arguing with your professor?”

“Not regularly, but yes, I may have dabbled.”

“What about trying to convince him your terminology was better, and it wasn’t fair he was penalising the class for using it in place of peer-reviewed vocabulary?” 

“Can’t say I have, but I’m suspecting someone here did,” she chuckled, “What happened?”

“That’s it – don’t do it, turns it out they don’t like that.”

“Oof,” she covered her smile, flicking some ash down across the railing, “Does that really warrant getting expelled?”

“Not by itself,” I mean, obviously there were other things. We don’t need to get into it – it’s not relevant anymore, “Just a lot of factors at once, really – the terminology-gate-incident just broke the camel’s back.”

“Well excuse me, I didn’t know I was in the company of such a rebel,” if she wasn’t getting a story, I guess it was only fair she’d take the mockery, “Are you gonna tell me how you also don’t pay your taxes or your medical bills now?”

“Actually, we don’t have medical bills here, not for most things anyway,” try as they might throughout multiple decades, the Blues were not able to strangle the nationalised healthcare, “Or, rather, it’s easy to avoid.”

“Oh, right, nationalized healthcare- God, fuck you guys,” she extinguished her cigarette against the railing, getting her hands wet and cold in the snow, “Maybe I should try breaking a bone or two, just to get it out of the way whilst I’m still here?”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” it was my turn to chuckle, as I dropped the burnt-out Myrollboro down to my feet, “How long do you have here, anyhow?”

“Until the end of the week – we’ve got our performance tomorrow- Well, today, technically, and then we’re off, just in time for the holidays.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” she paused, as if reflecting on her words, “You know, I don’t feel like sleeping, but I also don’t wanna work,” another pause, as if considering her words further, “You got any more deliveries to make, or are you available to see if I need a hand,” she winked at me, evidently proud of the, admittedly, mediocre at best pun, “With the whole bone breaking business?”

I checked the time – it was around one, but I already clocked off. Nobody was waiting for me back at my place, and Miranda wouldn’t bother to check at least until midday.

“Why the hell not,” I smiled at her, the promise of good company and a momentary reprieve from the horrors of the night that I was trying to push to the back of my head, impossible to hide in my face, “As long as I don’t need to physically break it myself.”

“Naturally – I also do have a mace in my pocket if you think of trying,” she said, perfectly nonchalantly, “And that baby does hurt.” 

“Point taken,” I nodded my head in agreement, “So, which bone are you thinking of breaking, then?”

“Mm, probably the left hand – or maybe the wrist? Whichever one’s least painful. Now if only there was somewhere to dislocate it from…” she looked upwards, dreamily, eyes scanning the buildings opposite of us, from one lit window to another, to the antennas pointing out of the roof and through the grating atop of it, as if looking for a most efficient way to break it, but the only the stars, almost mockingly, were all that stared back at her.

1:22 am
“Alrighty, I gotta ask,” M/Gray asked me, her legs up on the armrest of a green sofa in the hostel’s deserted common room, “What’s with all the foxes I keep seeing around the city?”

“Great question,” I said from across the room stashing my bag under the table, out of sight and out of mind, underneath our jackets, dampened from the snow, “I’ve only ever seen one up close, on one of my first nights at uni; I was waiting for my laundry to finish, so I stepped outside for an e-cigarette-”

“Ew,” she cringed, “You’ll never recover from saying this, I hope you know that.”

“In my defence, it was awhile back,” I frowned at her, “Look, the point is, I was sitting outside of the laundry room, having a smoke-”

“A vape.”

“Fine, yes, I was ‘having’ a vape – and I see something in the bushes from across me. At first, I thought I was just hearing things, or my mind playing tricks with me – it’s all a bit blurry during freshers. But then, this fox comes out, just staring at me. I didn’t dare to move, cause they- actually, do foxes attack humans?”

“Not really,” she shrugged, playing with her elastic hairband, “And if they do, I defo haven’t ever heard of something like that.”

“Well, again, the point is, I didn’t know for sure at the time. Anyway, we just sort of stared at each other, and then it was gone, just as fast.”

“Didn’t ask for a snack or a pet or some water?” I shook my head, “So the little guys just roam the city with impunity?”

“Not all-all the city, but pretty much, yeah – they don’t bother anyone, so.”

“And no one wonders, how they manage day-to-day, or at least where they’re from?”

“It’s nature,” came my turn to shrug, “Considerably above my paygrade to wonder about it.”

“How terribly dull,” she rolled her eyes, disappointed in my lack of curiosity.

1:53 am
“Have you ever tried this?” M/Gray asked me, returning to the room with the cylindrical parcel I brought earlier.

“Tried what, exactly?” this was her second trip back to the room; earlier, she went to get the exact notes of her script, with many a highlight and a note scribbled across it, to show me her vision and make me understand what she was after with her actresses (and, granted, it did make more sense once you saw the notes).

“This,” she unwrapped the package, revealing – in a twist of a strange coincidence – the second bottle of wine I’ve had the duty to deliver that night, “The label’s missing, but I think it’s from Southern France? D’Whatever-its-name. I heard it’s quite good, but the Soil Crisis kinda fucked everything up a decade ago, so you guys are the only people I could find with any available supply.”

“Not a wine guy,” I confessed to her, “But if you’re offering, I don’t mind a sip.”

“Wonderful,” and just like that, she produced two plastic cups from behind herself, as if she was preparing for this exact answer. Just as fast, she produced a bottle opener, twisting the cork right off with one hand. Momentarily, the red liquid was served to us both, “I think they recommend you let it sit for a minute first, but fuck that – I’m thirsty. Cheers!”

“Cheers!” I raised my cup, taking a sip. A familiar taste overtook my senses – not in a bad way, of course, but I was almost dead certain this was the exact same wine as the Writer was having earlier, “That’s some good wine,” only now did I notice she was looking at me as if waiting for some sort of confirmation. 

“I agree,” she smiled at my reaction, finally allowing herself to also take a sip, “I admit, I half considered it’ll be a bootleg, or a poison, but seeing as you’re not convulsing in pain…”

“Ouch,” I parried, taking another sip, “Could’ve at least warned me I’ll be your test subject.”

“Well, first of all, I did – what did you think I meant by ‘remains to be seen’? Secondly – and more importantly – can you blame the girl?” she shrugged, as innocently and nonchalantly, “Don’t get me wrong, you’re nice and everything, but you just never know with men,” another sip. Then, “If it’s any consolation, you’re in the presence of me breaking in a bottle meant to be a celebration for the exhibition tomor- agh, TODAY, the exhibition LATER TODAY, God- Anyway, that – what’s a little test of faith as a price of admission?”

Sometime after 2:30, I think?
“…Look, all I’m saying is,” I was waving my hands around, heated conversation refusing to abate, “Can you really be considered a singer/songwriter if you have an entire band playing for you?”

“Um, YES, obviously I can??” M/Gray/Dorian/director/playwright was baffled, now lounging in the armchair closer to me, “Some bands are bands-bands, like the Beatles; but other bands are just, well, backup bands – the main thing is the SINGER-slash-SONGWRITER, so!”

“That just seems ungrateful,” I huffed, refusing to concede, feeling as if I was back in the highpoint of my university days, “Shouldn’t other people playing with you be recognised?”

“Who says they’re not recognized? I think most are doing just fine – monetarily and recognition-wise,” she pondered, taking another sip from her cup, “Besides, that’s how it is in every band – one member gets the most attention, usually the frontman-slash-frontwoman, while others get more niche followings based on their skill. And if they’re not happy with it, well, that’s what a band hiatus is for.”

“A-HA!” I exclaimed, “You called them a band!”

“I ALREADY called them a band earlier, dipshit!” she laughed through her cursing, covering her eyes with the palm of her hand, “They are a band, but there are two different kinds- oh, why do I bother…”

Around 3 am
“…I think this will do it for me,” she finally closed the bottle, both of us somewhere around our third half-a-glass, “I know my limit, and I am somewhere just under it now. Besides, gotta save some for the girls tomorrow.”

“Fair dues,” I felt as if she was trying to apologise for something, but truthfully, it was a miracle I was able to have any of it – twice in a single night! – so who was I to complain, “Good breaking-in of a bottle, though?”

“Certainly,” she nodded, “But, I do want a cigarette again,” that sly smile again, “You can say no if I am pushing my luck here…”

I don’t know, sometime between 3 and 4?
“…I sadly dated a guy like that once,” M shook off some of the ash from her cigarette as we rounded the corner of the street, going in circles around the hostel. To our right, a little communal garden stood quietly, its flowers – mostly daises – still in bloom underneath the snowed-over glass terrarium, “God, he sucked.”

“How so?” we were about forty minutes into airing out our mutual gossip, a hallmark of any good conversation, especially after the arguments about the higher, purer things – like art, politics, meaning of life, or at least the sophisticated wine-tastings – are all exhausted and trite, made all the better when the central character of the said gossip was an awful person.

“Man, how do I explain it? For example, the whole ‘socially liberal, fiscally conservative’ shit – it’s stupid, but that never bothered him,” she took a long puff, “And don’t get me started on the substance of those ‘liberal’ social views, it just gets worse,” she twisted her face, as if imitating something, lowering her voice in the process, “‘Look, I’m fine with gay people, I just don’t want my kids exposed to this behavior,’ or casually throwing around ‘Fatherless Behavior’ to women he thought were ‘sleeping around too much.’ So, you know, he just sucked. I tend to try and stay approachable even with people who are no longer in my life, but this guy, ugh, no. Ironically, there is a 100% correlation between voting for our former president and sucking, one way or another.” 

“Why would you even put up with shit like that?” I wondered, “This just seems like a migraine to deal with.”

“It was, but I don’t know – I was young, stupid, thought ‘apolitical’ was a real thing? Don’t tell me you are proud of every person you’ve ever dated, especially in your teen years.”

“No of course not, it’s just that where I’m from, this right-wing stuff is a little more… extreme, I guess?”

“Well naturally, specifics, flags, even ways of expressing it differ – but I’m sure we can both agree that they suck just the same?” I paused for a second, pondering the question.

“Yeah. Yeah, actually,” I shook my head – there wasn’t exactly any other way to put it.

“Pre-cisely!” she exclaimed in victory.

4:02 am
“…You got your bag and everything?” she asked, standing under the archway into the front yard, as I emerged out of the completely dark lobby. The lights across the building have gone dark by then, and the placard on the desk has disappeared. The murmurs of the city had also gone quiet – not even an odd siren broke through anymore – and the snowfall had subsided. It was as if time itself decided to freeze for a moment, delaying the inevitable, cruel sunrise just a bit longer.

“Yup, got everything,” I replied, affixing the bag on my right shoulder. Underneath it all, unashamed, I was desperately looking for any excuse to keep the conversation going, “Your roommate’s still worried?”

“I think she’s going in and out of sleep,” M checked her phone, “It’s been a bit of a lull since about thirty texts of ‘where the hell are you???’, so I guess she decided to sleep on it,” she sighed, putting the phone back into the inside pocket of her red flight jacket, “But I’m afraid I must go to bed now if I am to get any sleep at all before this damn performance.”

“Of course,” it wasn’t pleasant to admit, but what else was there? All my encounters, especially those that happened on the clock, always ended the same way, no matter how pleasant they may have been, “Let me just figure out how I am getting back.”

“Oh, come on now,” she pouted her lips, “I didn’t mean I have to go now-now, I can spare a minute,” she tilted her head to the side as if inviting me to stand by her.

We dared not to say more than that, as I approached her and leaned against the same wall, looking up to the stars that had finally broken through the winter clouds.

“You guys don’t see the stars often around here, do you?” she asked, unclear if it was directed at me or the city, “This is the first time I’ve seen them clearly in all my time here.”

“No, we don’t – there’s always that terrible ‘whiteout’ effect from the streetlamps. I never quite understood why we have it, but that’s just the way things are at the Capital.”

“How terribly sad,” I felt her adjusting herself closer to me, leaning more on one side to see the stars better, “And I thought things back home were grim, but this is just tragic.”

“Couldn’t have said better myself.”

I didn’t dare to look at her, afraid with every moment that any minute now I would wake up. As I did, a wave of realisation washed over me: I have only known this girl for a few hours – if even that, there was no point checking for time precisely after I already clocked off – and I, clearly have only discovered a small fraction of who she was. But standing there, in the archway near her hostel, looking at the stars, to which the blackout of her building was an unexpected blessing, I couldn’t resist the temptation to hold on to this feeling, this longing to stay here, as sudden and uncalled for as it was pleasant; to know, that despite the time and space between us all, there was still warmth, however temporary, to be found in the unexpected, unexplored parts of this world, even if the reality itself seemingly made every effort to come down screaming about how it isn’t meant to be, however hard we may try to resist. And yet, there we stood, quietly resisting, equipped only with knowledge that in the darkness of all there was, and in the light of all that could be, we still had each other, even if only for a second longer.

We said nothing for a bit, just standing idly and savouring the moment. A chatty walk throughout the district suddenly shifted into a standstill, frozen in one perfect second. Despite the protests of her roommates and the clear worry that this whole affair has put them through, the moment felt so fragile that neither me nor M dared enough to break it up. Unabashed, we were stalling for time in the worst way possible, delaying and searching in our hearts for an excuse, the least meaningful of them all if it had to be, that we may just make this moment last another minute longer.

It feels almost pathetic to write all of this. In all honesty, I don’t even trust myself recalling that moment – it may just be my ‘artistic’ tendency speaking out, or perhaps the romanticism of the whole thing has gotten the best of me. But when you roam the city by yourself for so long, going from one place to the next, night to night, soul starved for connection, a simple act of human tenderness in meeting someone who, unexpectedly, understands you, cuts to the very depths of what you are. Even someone like me, who does not believe in fate, cannot help but wonder if this was predisposed. But I feel I wouldn’t do the moment – that one simple yet seemingly predisposed moment – any justice if I tried now to rationalise, or convince you further, that this was anything but fate.

Eventually, and rather cruelly, another vibration broke through. She leaned up from the wall slightly to check her phone. I glanced at it, without the need to ask further – the semi-transparent rectangles of notifications spoke for themselves.

Despite our best efforts, it was high time we parted ways.

“Seems that’s the end of this,” she smiled as tenderly as she could, a hint of sadness betraying her composure.

“Yeah,” I replied meekly, feeling a ball in my throat and fixing my cap, “I guess it is,” she glanced at the neon sign of her temporary accommodation, lingering on it for a short while.

“Thank you for this. Really,” she finally looked back at me, still smiling, “I’ve never been on a walk like this, not with anyone I know, and I didn’t think I needed it as much as I do now,” she raised her eyebrows, “For what it’s worth, you’ve shown me exemplary hospitality.”   

“Well, I am pleased to have shared it with you…” I’ve realised suddenly that throughout the entirety of our little time together, neither she nor I had actually asked for each other’s names. In my head, she was still just a playwright with brown-slash-red-ish hair, who happened to have a flair for spontaneity that most people simply don’t possess. She, noticing my puzzlement – and somehow, sensing the exact reason for it – only laughed.

“I’m Mia. Nice meeting you…?”

“Courier. Just Courier is fine.”

“Come on,” she frowned with a playful grumpiness, as overexaggerated as it was comedic. “I didn’t introduce myself as a Broke Playwright. What’s your actual name?” I hesitated for a moment, looking at the tips of my dirtied sneakers, wondering if a name was apt at that point.

“Xxxxxx. Xxx, if you will,” I finally gave in – damn if I do, damn if I don’t, who gives a shit.

“Xxxxxx. Xxx,” she repeated, as if attempting to gage the texture of my name, every intricacy of its sound, looking for imperfections and rough, foreign-sounding inflictions, “I like it. It’s unique – the good kind of unique. Not to the kind that guarantees a horrible childhood, like Cosmo or – God forbid – Kite. Can you imagine that?” she laughed, innocently, “Don’t tell Kites or Cosmos of this world I said this, that’s a horrible thing to say.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” I smiled to her – I really couldn’t help it despite my best efforts, that much was blatantly obvious. And she loved every second of it, judging by her eyes. At least, until the phone vibrated again in her pocket, and she checked it one last time.

“Well, Xxx, it’s been nice meeting you. I’m afraid, this is where we shall part,” she looked away for a second, dreamily, “I wish you would’ve brought these parcels earlier – perhaps we could’ve found ourselves a quiet café with tea for an entire night. Alas,” she returned her look to me, full of bittersweet regret. Nothing but a curt smile in sight, everything she meantreadable underneath it, “But that’s neither here nor there, is it. I guess, in case I don’t see you again, I hope you have a nice life,” she bowed slightly, “Goodbye, and take care of yourself.”

“Goodbye, Mia,” I bowed back, incidentally in a much more exaggerated than intended theatrical fashion. A chuckle escaped her exhausted face.

“Oh, God, you really are not a theatre person,” with that, she leaned in, supporting herself against my shoulders, placing a gentle kiss on my cheek. I reddened, touching the spot with my hand, shifting the gaze away. Mia, to her end, just continued smiling, “And you should use your real name more often – at least to remind us, mere commoners, of how boring we can be.”

When I finally looked up, she was already halfway up the stairs leading into the lobby. She threw one final gaze at me, waving her hand and giving me one more smile. I wanted to do the same, but my body simply froze, refusing to obey my carefully planned execution of the simplest moves. She only laughed, before finally disappearing inside the hall, dark orange LED light suddenly flaring up her silhouette.

After a few seconds, I finally felt the blood pumping through my veins again. I shook my head, as if ridding myself of the lingering essence of the dream, even as I desperately wished to hold on to it. The air felt chilly; I remember thinking I should have borrowed a scarf. My feet hurt. My back ached. My head rang for nicotine. But despite it all, I suddenly felt content. The world was fine, and everything was going to be alright.

I let myself smile, for the uncharacteristic millionth time that night, as I scanned the building upwards, travelling from one darkened window to another, to the antennas pointing out of the roof and through the grating atop of it, only stopping at the stars that suddenly seemed much brighter than they generally were those days.

This was a few weeks ago now, but that sensation – the feeling of that moment – still lingers within me. On reflection, I’d like to think that somewhere, maybe in another life, we’ve met again, maybe after a year or two after that night, just running into each other out of nowhere. Maybe this moment, this beautiful, terrible, god-awful, bastard of a moment I’ll never forget, bloomed into something more, something where either her or me had to make some arrangements and take a chance on each other. And maybe, after another year or two, we went our separate ways, as is often the case with people you tend to meet in the first half of your twenties – be it because of drifting apart or one of us, like the Writer, fucking it up. But maybe, on the off-chance and the odds stacked against us, a future was there, in whatever shape or form it may have arrived; and I, maybe- no, certainly, would’ve even been happy in it. 

Yet that’s not what was to be, not what happened; a moment is all we got, and a part of me might even say it’s better this way, a temporary heartache being better than having it all come crashing down in a blaze after years of building, sacrificing, and fighting. However disappointing the reality was, a daydream could last forever or be gone as early as tomorrow on a whim, unbound by any circumstances. But a different part of me, one that persists no matter how much I fight it, will always hate me that this moment is all we’ve ever gotten, wondering if there was more, and detesting that we couldn’t have it, no matter how much we – how much I – wished and yearned for it.

As I write this, the truth remains that I never heard from Mia again, even if it is mainly my fault. It wasn’t until later in the month, as I was clearing out my closet, I discovered how, in her endless trickery, she somehow slipped a little crumbled up note with a phone number written on it into my jacket’s pocket. By then, she was gone, and things have gotten considerably worse, so whatever thoughts I had of reaching out this whole time, became replaced with shame and detest for myself and my stupidity for losing such rare momentum.

And still that piece of paper sits on my desk, just behind my laptop, as I remain unable to throw it away no matter my better judgement.

I do sometimes wonder if she thinks of me with the same feeling that I think of her, or if the conversations we’ve had that night erased themselves as part of the rhythm of life; if she, like me, wondered and cursed the ever-elusive ‘what could’ve been’ of connection, so prevalent in our culture it’s become a cliché, detesting the terrifying, awful promise of affection. Yet even if she did, a moment is all we’ve got; a moment, however hauntingly beautiful, is all I will ever live with now, and it will either have to be enough, or it will fade, eventually, into nothing, as I think of her less and less, just as ceaselessly and effortlessly (though not without at least some perseverance on my part) as it came about in the first place.

I wonder what Sam would’ve said to all this; he was always better in questions of the heart. Even in moments of crisis between him and Lena, he always seemed certain of what to do, that things will work out, that destiny was on their side, a zealous conviction of fate being ever in his corner, one that I could’ve greatly used in those twilight days of the year.

As I made my way home, I almost called him, but of course, there’d be no answer – he hasn’t picked up the phone once since skipping town. God, I wish he was here right now.

The Morning After
I didn’t sleep much afterward – there wasn’t a point, as I got back to my place closer to 6. A quick nap in the afternoon would do, I thought, as I allowed the shower to fully awaken me.

As the steamy waters brought my bones back to life, the distant noises of the city coming to terms with another day slipped in through the kitchen window. With the snowfall finally subsiding, the metallic shutters of shops big and small clanged as they were raised; with the snowploughs having made their way around the city in the dead of night, puffs and beeps of busses signified their return to usual scheduling, keeping the busy heart of the Capital beating ever so strongly; and even the police, despite their far from peaceful shift with all the protests, whizzed around with their sirens turned on. As I tried to listen to it through the running water, I let my mind wander the streets and faces of my last shift, as was often the case at the clock-out point of my job – especially so given how eventful the night before was. Yet, as semi-drunk as I felt from my encounter with Mia, and as angry as I remained from the incident at the smoking area, all I could really conjure was the image of Archie’s mad dash out of the alley and into the crowded street. It’d be really bad if he got caught, but surely, I reasoned, I’d know by now from Miranda – a warning of sorts, or a concerned message, was bound to have come through. It wasn’t like her to keep anyone – lest of all, employees she was responsible for – in the dark, at least insofar as our safety went. Surely, then, what was the worst that could’ve happened?

Whatever the worry and my personal sense, there was no point in it; instead, the only way to find out was to go to the office, and check for myself, even if the odds he went there – however poor the rest of the night may have gone for him – were quite low. Plus, it would be good to check on Miranda as well – maybe she’d even take that damn gun off my hands.

6:27 am
As I walked through half-empty, grey streets (the sun, regrettably, was quickly overwhelmed by clouds before it could be appreciated), I remember the air feeling unusually calm; the tension, fairly constant by then since the festival incident, seemed to have dissipated (even if no one in this city could fool themselves that it was anything but temporarily). Instead, I remember feeling this weird, static-like sensation all around, not quite tension and most definitely not satisfaction; it was, for lack of a better way to put it, as if the air was strung up in places, letting you breath freely on the condition that, whatever once held that tension over you, have not gone anywhere. As far as I was concerned, I did my best to bury that feeling behind all the other, more practical worries of my life at the time.

As I entered the office, I was greeted by an eery, empty lobby. It was still some time before the morning shift couriers piled in, so not exactly surprising. The desk where Miranda would usually sit, however, stood empty, two colourful thermoses towering over her workstation as reminders of anything but a quiet night. Her replacement (was it still Gerald? I think he may have quit earlier in the month), as of that point, also was missing in action.

And, obviously, no sight of Archie either. 

Still, I didn’t pay it any mind as I made my way to the alley door, where, I figured, she was just taking her morning vaping break. But even the alley stood empty, oppressive silence from the office filtering outside all the same. Walking back indoors, I scanned the corridor, with only our boss’ office red wooden door – ever shut, of course – gracing me with any attention. No noise came through behind it, be it due to excellent soundproofing or a dead silence with which boss worked. All the same, it felt – and it was – condescending; maybe I’d give it a try some other one of these days, but not then.

There was one other place to check – our lounge (which, on reflection was more akin to a small break room), rarely occupied these days by either couriers or the staff given the high volume of deliveries during the holiday season. Yet and still, the coffeemaker inside would make it highly tempting (albeit, a last resort) option for Miranda, so it couldn’t hurt to look for good measure.

6:39 am
Entering through the wood-and-glass door into the tight space, I finally had my answer: Miranda, curled up in a ball, laid on the faded sofa in the lonely, distant corner by the window, wrapped in a handknit blanket she’d kept around the office for comfort on especially demanding late-night shifts. Glasses tucked away on the windowsill with a book, the cover of which I couldn’t quite see, her face was content, unbothered even, despite the self-evident exhaustion in it even with her eyes completely shut. So still and peaceful was the scene, I almost didn’t notice a man standing over her, fiddling around with the pillow underneath her head. His warm, peach fuzz-shaded skin, shimmered slightly in the winter sunrays coming through the window, only for short black hair to swallow it like a black hole; a relaxed yet formal suit, covered with a blue branded sports jacket, sat on him confidently and with purpose; and every movement of his hand indicated not only care, but also experience – as if, the person in front of my colleague and one of the remaining friends, knew her on a level of tenderness unfamiliar to most others.

“Brian!” he hushed me as I exclaimed, nodding towards his girlfriend’s resting body. I instantly clasped my own mouth, switching to a hushed voice, “What are you doing here?” finishing with the pillow, he got up on my level, not taking his eyes off Miranda.

“I had a spare hour or so before work, and Miri told me last night was a little… messy,” he turned over to me, softly smiling, “I figured she could use a drop in, and what do you know – she passed out at the desk.”

“Fucking hell,” he nodded, “Is she okay?”

“Oh, Miri? Yes, of course,” he shook his head, restraining himself from chuckling, “Come on, Xxx, you know her – who if not Miranda Grace Xxxxx would work herself to a point of exhaustion?”

“Fair point,” I thought of what else to say – it’s been some time since I’ve seen Brian last, and he seemed perfectly content to just focus on Miranda, “Should we step out for… uh, do you want a cig?” I nodded towards the door. Brian only shook his head, moving over to my side of the room.

“Don’t worry, Miri – unless you’re being especially loud – sleeps like a rock. And no, thank you,” he replied, setting himself up by the little table on the opposite end from the sofa, “I quit, I wanna say, a year or so ago? It was starting to become too expensive a habit to keep.”

“Wow.”

“I know, that’s what my parents said! Born in a country that bans vapes but doesn’t even dare to touch cigarettes, only to end up a non-smoker? They sounded almost disappointed,” he produced a little slip of gum from his pocket, “You want gum instead?”

“Mint?”

“Of course; you really think that low of me to ask?”

“My bad; but yes, please!” I took another strip that he extended to me, throwing the flat green rectangle into my mouth. A small silence permeated, broke up by our chewing, “It’s been a while, man, how have you been?”

“Quite right! Well, as you know, me and Miranda have been very busy with the whole moving situation. Don’t know what you heard last, but it’s been… more difficult than we’d like it to be,” he grimaced, uncomfortably, “The market isn’t stellar at the moment, so we’re considering going to my folks, up in the country, for a bit.”

“You didn’t tell me they moved?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s also quite recent – I think they were fed up being almost half a day ahead of me and the fact that I used that as an excuse to not call them more often, so now they’re only a train journey out.”

“Did it work? I mean, you call them more often now?”

“Xxx, I am a young 20-something professional with a BS in Mathematics and a MS in Economics, working a starter finance job the Old City – what do you think?”

“Point taken,” he smiled, looking back to Miranda, another pause taking hold between us.

Brian was always cool, even without his many accomplishments; one of those guys that you think you’d hate upon first hearing about them, but is actually a real, genuine, caring softie with a heart of gold, who somehow decides to do the worst job imaginable, with hours and pressure so unimaginable you continuously wonder if he is putting up a front and is secretly working in a bakery somewhere instead. I never quite knew, how to carry myself around him, but there was always enough overlap for us to get along excellently. For lack of a better word, I missed him, and it was nice to see us finally cross paths, however temporarily, after such a long while, even as I remained somewhat awkward as to what exactly to speak to him about.

“But what about you?” he looked back at me, “Since… well… everything, I’ve only been hearing bits and pieces from Miri. You holding up okay?”

“I guess,” I shrugged. I didn’t want to dwell on ‘everything’ too much there and then, “Last night was… weird: Archie and me got chased down by the cops.”

“No shit?”

“Yes shit. I was actually looking for him, too – he hasn’t been here, by any chance?”

“Not that I know – I’ve arrived just before you. But, hey,” he grimaced, raising both hands in opposite directions, “It’s Archie, he’ll be fine.”

“True,” I chuckled quietly, thinking if I should ask him about the other parts of the night. Maybe, but I didn’t feel like talking about it directly, “Can I ask you something, Brian?”

“You just did,” I rolled my eyes at his grin, “Go for it, dude.”

“How did you and Miranda meet? I don’t think I ever bothered to ask, you were always just… there, you know?” I decided to go about it in as much of a roundabout way as possible.

“Are you asking me for romantic advice, Xxx? Never thought I’d see the day,” he chuckled again, pulling his hair back, “Okay, okay, I’m just pulling your leg – that’s a fair question,” he checked his electronic watch, “I’ll give you a shortened version, if you don’t mind?”

“Of course not – sorry to keep you.”

“Not at all,” he cleared his throat, as quietly as possible, “Well, we actually knew each other for a bit back in college – I was a year older, but we had enough mutual friends to hang out regularly. At the time, I was going through the worst breakup of my life – as is the case with every love when you are really young – so we didn’t start dating right away – I just felt lost, confused, unsure of where my life was going,” he looked at her, dreamily, “But I couldn’t deny that there was something there between us, and she liked me enough to not give up on me. Which, in retrospect, may have actually saved me.”

“Saved you?” he took a moment to reflect on the question. Then,

“Hard to explain. I was struggling with my identity on top of everything then – you can imagine how it is, being a mixed kid and all?”

“Not exactly,” I waved over myself and my pale skin, “I mean, you can see what I mean here.”

“Fair; well, I did, and Miranda… Well, she gave me a home, a feeling of belonging, at the time when I was tempted to just take my chances back in Singapore. But I didn’t – I asked her out formally just before applying for my Master’s, and – after a lengthy conversation and assurance that I was ready – the rest was history.”

“That’s a really nice story,” I didn’t hesitate to say – it was, genuinely and unconditionally, “Thank you for telling me.” 

“Oh, not at all; thank you – I’m tempted to agree,” a quiet laugh escaping his lips. Pause. Then, looking over me, “You know, she’s right – it is easy to tell when you have something on your mind.”

“It’s…” I stopped, considering my words, “It’s just that I wonder- Argh, God, I don’t know, Brian. I had a weird night yesterday – besides the whole Archie situation – first with these people from Russia whom I didn’t want anything to do with, and then this girl who’s leaving, and I- I guess I’m not sure who I want to be anymore, or what kind of place I want to be from. It’s… It’s just hard, you know?” 

“Right,” he straightened himself in the chair, his posture shifting towards me with assurance, “And for the record, I do know – we don’t have to talk about it,” he glanced at his watch, “I also don’t want to make you rush explaining anything, because I do have to run. So, here’s what I will say for now,” he got up, putting a hand on my shoulder, “Identity is hard, and it’s one bitch of a process, and it cannot be figured out by yourself. Luckily,” he smiled gently, “You have a great deal of people who would be willing to help with that,” he patted me lightly, somehow awfully reaffirming, “Tell me more sometime soon – we can organise a little get-together, just before – or even on – Christmas?”

“I’d like that,” I finally let myself smile in response. He returned it before grabbing his city-bag (so slick, I haven’t even noticed it by the sofa this whole time) from the floor, affixing it on the shoulder.

“Good man. Could you do me a solid, though,” he pulled out another thermos from the bag – bright orange, like a setting sun – and handed it to me, “Can you give this to Miranda once she wakes up? She’ll riot if her caffeine addiction isn’t sustained properly.”

“Of course,” I took the warm thermos filled to the brim with fresh coffee, “See you soon?”

“That you will!” and with another smile, he exited, quietly and swiftly as he came in the first place, leaving me in the room one-on-one with my exhausted supervisor and friend.

Lingering for final few contemplative moments in this room suspended out of time, I threw a glance at the old wall-mounted clock that I never noticed before despite its relentless ticking. As time mercilessly marched on, its hands have already gone past 7. The new day was here, and there was nothing else to be done about it but get on with it, so I took one last look at Miranda, not once bothered about her ‘closing’ responsibilities before the morning shift began, and took my exit to get more cigarettes, not quite realising yet that this small moment in the break room was the last time I would feel any peace this year. As messy as the night before was, it turned out to be but a prelude for a cascading series of events that have solidified my decision to document all of this, if not for you, then at least for myself.

It was during that next night that the Capital’s ugliest of faces was revealed to me, and the so far contained personal crisis of faith and purpose became an existential question of life and death, asked – almost mockingly – in a city that refused to engage with it in any meaningful way.