Nights Out

Don't happen anymore.

Last night my wife and I were home by eight. As usual. In bed by midnight. The weather’s decent so I leave the window open, which means that I can not only see the cars in the street but sometimes hear what’s happening inside of them. One had young people in it with deep bass booming and loud conversation trying to outpace it. It reminded me of being much younger and being out in the city. While I slept I got an idea for the beginning of something that turned out to be as much about the end of things.

*

THE NIGHT BEFORE

Victor was in the cab heading back from the dinner he assumed would change his life, breathing air that mixed, mostly, the water of the river with the exhaust of other cars. He closed his eyes to see the night more clearly, and opened them to confirm what he had seen: the mosaic of windows that asked more questions than they answered. Why were so many people up so late? Were they apartments at all or offices left on to convey a sense of industry, not big wheels grinding but midnight oil burned? It was this type of industry that had delayed his evening, which was supposed to start at eight but didn’t get rolling until nine-thirty, when Kelly arrived with an apology. “One of the partners is on vacation,” she said, “but can’t relax, so we have to keep him posted between when he wakes up and when he goes to Railay Beach or wherever.” Victor drew his brows together in slight confusion. “Krabi,” she said, clarifying nothing. They had met at a friend’s party a few weeks before, gotten talking, uncovered some key points of contact (same favorite bands, college in the same Midwestern state) and some intriguing differences (she was politically far more conservative than he was, and she was significantly more attractive). At the end of the night, heady from vodka and something someone had passed him, he had asked her out, and she had accepted. The dinner was that date. He had done his best to minimize contact in the days leading up to it, just a confirmation text, no small talk. Innumerable failures had educated him. He had arrived a few minutes early to make sure he got a good table, meaning one along the window, where they could watch the people go by in the street and never want for conversation. It worked beautifully. They laughed at passing fashions, tried to guess at the intense arguments, assumed an altitude when they saw couples fighting, as if promising each other that they would not be that way when they were a couple. Laughs came faster than he thought they might, from both of them, and dinner gave way to a few more hours at the bar next door. She had turned sideways on her stool to put her knee between his knees, something that he had once been told was a sure sign of availability. But he didn’t press the matter. They finished the night arm in arm on the sidewalk, he went in for a kiss that she matched equally, and then he hailed her a cab. “Let’s do this again,” she said as her driver turned to head uptown. He walked a few blocks before hailing his own. During the walk, he tried not to think of her, knowing that soon he would think of little else. He tried to focus instead on what was around him, the banks, the stocks, the way that money moved invisibly and with a lack of accountability that bordered on malignancy. It was doing so much that he would never know. When he found himself struggling to remember her name, he got his own cab. On the ride, over the river, he allowed himself finally to inhabit his memory of the evening. The sickly sweetness of cars and river became the scent of remembering her. He could not have known that this was the last time he would be on the bridge, or for that matter the last time anyone would be. [©2026 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas]