Two or three times now, I have found myself unable to sleep because of the voices.
It sounds for all the world like two men having an argument somewhere in the house. Sometimes there are women’s voices mixed in. Sometimes there are children.
I can almost just make out what they’re saying. Almost.
Sometimes there’s music as well, faintly.
But I only hear it in our bedroom, only at night.
It’s… disconcerting. Maddening.
Irritating.
Impossible to sleep.
[This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated May 15th, 2001]
…and I am sitting there in Nate’s diner waiting for her to arrive. Finally, my time running short, I get up to leave. At the counter, the night shift waitress turns over the reign to the day shift. Nate stands, friendly and smiling wryly with his shirtsleeve pinned up to this left shoulder, a war injury I assume — perhaps mistakenly. While the women bicker over tips and time clocks, Nate hands me a bag. “On the house,” he says. Because I have been stood up yet again by my breakfast date.
He smiles as I leave, wading through the snow to my car.
And when I wake, it is summer and I realize that somewhere between the diner and my car, I lost the bag Nate had given me, its paper bottom stained dark and greasy from the warm chorizo and eggs he had prepared special for me out of pity.