Many more moments like this one

I sat down drunk on the pavement near the bus stop, pulled a knit cap down over my ears, and waited in that dead part of the downtown night. After a few minutes I crossed the street to buy a sandwich and a six-pack of cheap beer before it was too late. A bus went by in the meantime.

I sat back down and ate my sandwich, washed it down with one of the beers. That’s when I saw her watching me from the benches. The bus stops in this part of town were lit up and plexiglass like they were from the future, and the light cast harsh long shadows down her face. I said what, and it came out maybe a little too hard, so I offered her a beer. She asked me if I was homeless. I said no, I’m just a degenerate of some kind or other. She looked around, slid off the bench to the pavement, and took me up on my offer.

We did the whole small talk thing there in the stone heart of the city while civilization’s stragglers walked by or took up the seats we’d abandoned, me a long time ago, her just that moment. I told her that sitting on the ground felt better because it got at the truth of what we’d done in all this building of things. There was beauty in it somewhere is what I said.

Suddenly I got this idea to head over to this unlocked fire escape I knew about so we could see the sun come up from the rooftop of some lousy hotel. I told her so. She agreed to follow.

When we got there they’d padlocked the thing shut again. We stood at it and had another beer each, worked through the different ways we might get it open or get enough height to reach the second floor landing. I asked her name. I could see the way the light would come in, first as a whisper, then staccato bursts between the different buildings, finally the sun coming over and around the edges and warning off another night containing another million possibilities. By this age, though, you’re pretty well locked in. Finally I said well goodnight, Claire, which I realized later wasn’t the name she’d told me.