![]() ![]() If he squinted, he could almost imagine the bunched-up blanket being the form of a woman. Did someone once sleep next to him? He looked at the other side of the bed. He stared up at the ceiling, the fan slowly rotating above him. The light outside his window was bluish grey, and the earliest of the birds had just started singing the first measures of dawn. He awoke the following morning before his alarm, like he always did. "That was nice," she said as they walked, hand in hand, back to her hotel. They enjoyed their imaginary food, their drink, the way the stars came out, one by one, as the day gave way to tender night. Beads of moisture gather on our glasses, the cold of the drink trying to fend off the heat of the evening."Īnd so the date went. "The label on the bottle we're drinking is in Hebrew, and the wine is white and dry, and it's some of the best we've ever had. But a gentle breeze coming in off the water wicks away our sweat." It's late in the evening, the sun is burning red atop the water, and it's warm. I can't tell if it's pre-pandemic or post-, but everyone seems happy. ![]() He didn't either, but he knew it was on the Mediterranean. "Where are you taking us for dinner?" she asked. She was smiling, and he could see she had put on makeup. Her face showed up on his computer screen. She had sounded more bothered than usual, so he'd go the extra mile.Īt 7:30 he sat down at his desk and contacted her. In the mirror he realized that the reflection was someone he no longer recognized. He took a shower and shaved and combed his hair and brushed his teeth. His phone lit up and vibrated and played a default jingle. Across the street flew a crow, its strong wings rowing the air like two black oars. The horizon swirled orange and blue, the sky above paling violet. Soon it was Friday, and the late-summer sun had fallen into the window next to his desk. He and his computer, dancing partners until the end. He coded, he emailed, he tested, he uploaded, he downloaded-through it all, he typed. He took ibuprofen for the unending pain in his hand, wrist, and arm, the one he used for the mouse, and he tried, but usually forgot, to stretch his body every couple hours to improve blood flow. He got up from time to time to use the bathroom, to fix himself a sandwich, to brush his teeth. The day wore on, as days tend to do, as weeks tend to do, as life tends to do. She beamed at him and then broke connection, and he set a reminder for the engagement. "I'm sorry I've been so absent," he said. He accepted the request and the screen filled with her face, which was frowning. Though he couldn't remember precisely how long, he believed it had been months. He often forgot he was dating someone until a message came in from her. "What does it matter if it's 23 or 24? July or September? Everything's the same as yesterday, the same as it'll be tomorrow."Īn incoming notification on his computer alerted him to his girlfriend's presence. Sometimes he'd stare at a calendar and shake his head, the numbers making no sense to him. Increasingly, he wasn't sure exactly when he was awake and when he was asleep. He could do it in his sleep he often felt like he did. He returned to his work of updating software for the new version of a government surveillance app. "Nothing about their movies can be trusted." "Yeah, but this was Hollywood," he said to himself when he saw a man and a woman kissing on a first date, when he watched friends hug without a care in the world. He couldn't, so he watched old movies to try to remember. He tried to recall a time when it wasn't this way. In front of him, for nearly every minute he was awake, there was a screen.
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