WE’RE AT A NEAR-EMPTY WINE BAR at Fifty-Second and Tenth. She takes off her hat when she sees me. Her hair’s gotten longer, and the static electricity makes her stray strands fly in wild directions. When I ask how she’s doing, she says, “Beware the Ides of March,” which comes across as rehearsed and very Alex. I’ve known her since college. We have gone months without talking. And when we do meet, we drink. Alcohol makes us palatable to one another. We comment on pop culture, make crass jokes about strangers, and romanticize the risky behaviour of our youth, but rarely do we explore the depths of our inner, hidden lives. We do not confide. We’ve grown apart, which is another way to say we are now too different to sustain empathy for one another. And it is this fact, this truth in which our relationship operates, that makes tonight all the stranger.
It doesn’t take long for her to tell me. It’s as though she’s practiced her lines the night before the show and has to say them quickly before she forgets. She tells me it started in January. Bryn, her husband, was vacuuming their living room rug when his eyes went wide. His knees buckled before he collapsed. Alex tried to help him up, but he pressed his arms against the floor as though holding it back, blinking at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” I interject. “But is he okay?” I brace myself for the worst case, which is not that
…
Michelle Hulan is a poet and writer. Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, HAD, the Citron Review, RHINO, and elsewhere. She received her MA in English from the University of Ottawa and now lives in Brooklyn with her family.