2022 Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing First Runner-Up
I’ll Be Seeing You
by Gina Troisi
It was the way she sang that first moved him. The way she brushed her bangs out of her eyes, the birthmark on the side of her chin, the gentle press of her fingers onto the piano keys. It was Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.” When she hit the high notes, her voice seemed like it might lift him up and carry him for miles, far beyond the small stage in the tiny dive bar, and into the brilliant, blue San Francisco night.
After that, Matt went back to The Tap Bar every Wednesday after he closed the bistro kitchen. He finished scrubbing the grill, wiped down the reach-in doors, wrapped the food in cellophane, and changed his clothes before walking out into the cool April air. He passed the cherry blossoms, the thick fog rising from the harbor like steam, the smells of seafood and curry, of trash and urine, the outline of the bridge in the distance. And it was her voice that kept bringing him back from wherever he’d gone. Years back. To the way he’d felt inside himself before he’d slipped away.
On the fourth Wednesday at The Tap Bar, he finally got up the nerve to ask the bartender what Julia drank. He sat with the ice-cold martini next to him, ready for when she stepped off the small stage. She grabbed her check from the bartender, then turned to Matt and said, “I was wondering when you were going to do that.” She sat down next to him, and plucked the toothpick from her drink, placed the olives between her teeth.
Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” played through the speakers, the candles on the piano still lighting up the stage, people trickling in and out as Matt and Julia’s faces grew closer, attempting to hear one another above the noise. “Did you grow up here?” he asked her.
“Down south,” she said. “Near LA.” Julia told him about her favorite bluegrass bands, and her years of trying to make it in Nashville. “I loved it for a while,” she said. “But there was so much competition. So much talent. And I missed the ocean.” She slipped off her glasses with the large, thick frames, and placed them on the bar. “How did you end up here?” she asked.
“I met a girl while I was hiking the Appalachian Trail. And I followed her here.”
“The Appalachian Trail. Impressive.” Julia gulped her drink.
“Not really,” Matt said, remembering how he’d made the decision on a whim, borrowed hiking books from the library, figured out how to use a compass, learned what to do if he encountered a bear. He’d read and researched like hell for weeks before leaving.
“And? What happened with the girl?”
“Nothing. I think she liked my cooking more than she liked me.” Matt grinned. He’d bought a camping stove for the trip, cooked chicken alfredo and beef stroganoff, while many of the hikers he met relied only on cold food—mixed nuts and cheese and packets of dried tuna. “I had no idea what I was going to do next. She offered me a place to stay with a bunch of her friends. And I wanted to see California.”
They ordered another round. Julia felt foreign and familiar at the same time. She laughed with her mouth wide open, and her face grew serious when she told him how she read books about climate change and bees, and planted her face in novels for entire days. “I like the escape,” she said.
Matt thought about his own version of escape, starting as a kid growing up in New Hampshire in his mom’s cluttered apartment, with her revolving door of boyfriends—a place that had always felt more like a boarding house than a home. His first sips of booze in grade school, then graduating to weed, then during his teenage years, dabbling in drugs harder and harder. He’d always assumed it was recreational until he grew into adulthood with habits that began to feel like something larger, more powerful—more of a hunger than a fleeting desire. This was especially true when he’d found heroin. Heroin had served as the departure it seemed he’d always been waiting for. It pulled him far from his life as his mother’s son, his not knowing who his father was, his being a kid that had been destined to have little, to go nowhere beyond the confines of his small town. And for a while it seemed as if he’d never look back. Not until his mom had his little sister Mandy two years ago, when Matt was already twenty-four—another kid with a preoccupied mother and a missing father unlikely to ever return.
Now, he hadn’t touched hard drugs in two years. He rarely told anyone about that tumultuous year of using, and he certainly wasn’t about to tell Julia. Instead, he looked around at the people dancing, the unused fireplace in the corner of the lounge, breathed in the scent of cologne and sweat, the laughter among friends like a second song playing through the speakers. When they stumbled outside after last call, their faces inches apart, he told Julia, “The ocean has always been like home to me too.”
After that, they met up in early mornings to drive to the beach. Matt would wake up when it was still dark out, fry eggs for bagel sandwiches, pack a bottle of cheap champagne, and rent one of those Zipcars lining the city streets. They’d take off down Highway 1 to Half Moon Bay, the sun rising around them, the lush green trees wet with mist. They’d park for a while, watching as surfers swam out into the sea, the waves a mess of white, crashing foam.
On the beach, they’d sip mimosas from plastic cups, and pass a joint or share a cigarette, breathe in the brisk air, their feet in the cold, damp sand, streams of pink and yellow streaking across the sky. Julia wore a winter hat with a pom-pom, and Matt huddled her against his chest, using his jacket to block her from the wind. They stared through the morning haze, each moment of silence like relief.
*
After only a few months of dating, Julia moved into Matt’s third-floor studio apartment. She brought a loveseat and a bed to replace his air mattress, fresh flowers for the windowsill. Now, at the end of his shifts, he packs up warm goat cheese and arugula salads and slices of meat, brings them home to Julia to eat at their card table, her guitar leaning up against the wall next to them, the stereo playing in the background.
In August, lying in bed one morning, the sun streaming through the skylight, Julia leans over to light a candle on the nightstand. She tells Matt more about what it was like for her as a child. He’d known she grew up in one of those Southern California McMansions on a quiet road where every house had a three-car garage and an alarm system and a perfectly manicured lawn. But he didn’t know that she’d started singing by the time she was five, and within a few years, her parents were paying for violin lessons, entering her in competitions, forcing her to dress like a life-sized doll, with ruffles and high-waisted belts and patent leather shoes. “I rebelled,” Julia tells him, as she runs her fingers along his upper arm. “I loved music, but I didn’t like how they were trying to control it—to control me. I got kicked out of private school. Joined a metal band. Refused to go to college and moved to Nashville. They were so pissed.” She laughs, and takes a drag from his cigarette. “Then they cut me off,” she says, exhaling, her breath hot on his skin. “Before that, I never understood what it meant to need money. It was always just there.”
Matt stares up at the clouds creeping through the sky, barely able to imagine this version of reality. And although the two of them might as well have come from different planets—his Head Start program for kids from low-income families, his waiting in the free lunch line during all his years of school, his having to wear shoes too small for him, toes and heals blistered, he knows that in her own way, Julia understands the feeling of having been an outsider.
“It was worth it though,” she says. Matt turns to her, and she touches his cheek. “You want to know my greatest fear?” she asks. He nods, breathing the sweetness of the blueberry scented candle. “Not being able to make music,” she says. “It’s the only thing that’s ever really made me feel alive.” She looks at him intently, and he becomes lost in the creases around her eyes, the tiny pores of her nose, her gorgeous, uneven lips. “Money doesn’t do that,” she says, reaching again for his cigarette.
“Depends who you ask.”
“It doesn’t. Not for long anyway.”
He takes one last drag of the cigarette, his throat burning. “I know what you mean,” he says. “About your music.” He thinks about how cooking is the only thing he’s ever really been good at—the way, as a child, he learned to toss random ingredients together because his mother rarely made meals—the way he got creative because there’d be nothing but a box of mac and cheese, a can of tuna, a random cauliflower in the fridge. An old bottle of ketchup from her waitressing job that, when opened, released a tiny puff of black smoke.
He stares at the bright white of the ceiling. Listens to the classical music playing, the type that Julia says relaxes her. But to Matt, she always seems relaxed. In fact, he’s never met a person so at ease in her skin, so sure of the way she lives. And he’s never experienced this kind of chemistry with anyone—so palpable, so intense it almost scares him. With Julia, his impulses are like an animal’s, his instincts primal, and impossible to argue with.
Other than his year-long stint with heroin, the closest thing he can compare it to is the way he feels in the kitchen—his hands at home in a mixing bowl full of ground meat and spices, his body alert to the printer spitting out orders, his ability to sauté eight dishes at a time, his neck dripping with sweat, the flames blazing above the stove. The instant gratification that comes from timing several plates at once, garnishing them with color and precision, presenting them as works of art. In the kitchen, he’s fully present. It’s as if something larger than him is in control, his actions and responses visceral, his movement constant, his body a puppet someone’s pulling the strings to from above. In the kitchen, like with Julia, pausing to think, letting his mind get in the way, would only fuck everything up.
*
In early December, Julia tells Matt she’s missed her period. “It’s probably nothing, but it’s unusual for me,” she says. “I grabbed a test just in case.” It’s two a.m., and he’s been in bed smoking, rereading Anthony Bourdain’s Typhoid Mary while waiting for her to get home.
He drops his book on his chest, his stomach rising into his throat. Julia peels off her leather jacket and knee-high boots, replaces them with shorts and a tank top, climbs underneath the covers, next to him.
“Aren’t you going to take it?” he asks. He takes a long drag from his cigarette.
“Now?” She smells like tequila and smoke.
Yes, he thinks. He expects her to pee on a stick now, in the middle of the night. His fingers fidget against his thighs. He avoids her eyes, studies the shadows on the walls, the splotches of light filtering in from the city below.
“I didn’t think it was urgent,” she says. She sighs and flings back the covers. She grabs the box from the loveseat and heads into the bathroom. He’s not sure if he’s ever seen her become annoyed so quickly, at least not with him, and it occurs to him that during these seven all-consuming months together that have passed by with lightning speed, there are still so many dimensions of her he doesn’t know. And perhaps that’s been part of the draw—his constant surprise at a nervous gesture she makes when she’s always seemed so sure of herself, his finding a suitcase of old letters she keeps in the closet, or mentioning a longtime family friend he’s never heard of until now. Matt thinks about his life before Julia—the quiet, unsettling emptiness he felt after quitting heroin, the abrupt decisions he’s made, always attracted to the idea of a better place or person or job, something on the horizon that might complete him, and then chasing it relentlessly before plunging into regret.
Julia emerges from the bathroom and looks past him, out the window facing the street. Sirens wail below. Men’s voices call out to one another. “Two lines,” she says, with a type of indifference that feels unfamiliar. No matter how calm she is, her words are still usually full of emphasis, of energy.
“Two lines?” he asks.
“Positive. Supposedly.”
“What do you mean ‘supposedly?’”
“Sometimes these things are wrong.” Outside, there’s a silver sliver of moon. Matt lights another cigarette. He knows it’s time for him to say something, anything, but he can only grip the lighter, breathe in fiercely, stare up at the sky. This is not the first time a woman has told him she’s late, but it is the first time in a long time, when he’s of a legitimate age, with his own apartment and a steady job. And it’s Julia.
“I’ll go to the clinic. To see what’s going on.” She sits on the loveseat and picks up a glass of whiskey he’s left on the end table, downing it in one gulp. She kicks her feet up on the ottoman, pours more from the bottle beside her. Matt wants to ask if she’s sure that’s a good idea, but he stays quiet. He feels halfway afraid of her in this moment, her stiff, perfect eyebrows, her sterile expression as she jerks her head back and swallows.
“Come to bed,” he says, but she stays sitting and drinking. Most nights, before sleep, Julia reaches for him, then buries her head in the crook of his neck, but tonight, when she finally lies down, she faces the ceiling, then turns away from him. He can barely hear the sound of her breath, as his heart trembles restlessly inside his chest, fighting to get out.
*
It’s Monday, Matt’s only day off from the bistro. He lets himself sleep until noon, then stays in bed drinking coffee, watching reruns of Parts Unknown on the small TV. After a few hours, he finally takes a shower, eats a sandwich, and heads outside for some air.
He walks through the December rain with his hands in his pockets. He wears a bandana on his head, shades covering his eyes. Up ahead, the almost-setting sun is bright. It feels good to be outside, walking in this pocket of cold dusk, heading toward something luminous. To move his body while he thinks about the future, this unexpected life he and Julia have created. Their late night talks and early mornings watching the sun rise, their bare bodies pressed against one another, hot whiskey on their breath. His making her favorite breakfast: turkey sausages, eggs sunny-side-up, sweet potato hash. Their walking to farmers’ markets for avocados and greens, discovering eclectic galleries on hidden side streets, and roaming the city to check out new bands at various bars—things he probably wouldn’t even have considered before they met. And now, there might be a baby. After about a mile, he finds himself walking toward the Mission District, to the piano bar where Julia’s just started a new gig.
The sky grows dimmer, and the holiday lights illuminate the streets. He turns a corner, and walks down a side street into the dark, red-tinted lounge, golden lanterns shining on tables, a young guy with a long beard standing behind the bar. Matt orders a whiskey with ice. “Is Julia around?” he asks.
“Julia?” The bartender twirls the hairs of his beard.
“The musician.”
“Oh, right. She didn’t show. Sorry.”
“She didn’t show?”
“Yeah, she called a while ago and said she couldn’t make it. Think we found someone else though. If you want to stick around.” Matt watches the few couples sitting at tables around the lounge. Talking and laughing and eating. He sucks down his drink. “Just one more of these please, but no ice.” He kicks back his shot, pays his tab, and walks back outside into the bitter air. The rain has stopped. He pulls his one-hitter from his pocket and lights it, breathes in the sweet smoke.
He dials Julia as he walks, but her phone goes directly to voicemail. The city sparkles and glows. People bustle by with shopping bags in their hands. Matt’s phone vibrates, and he breathes out with relief. But it’s not Julia.
“Hey, Ma.”
“I wanted to see if you’re coming home for Mandy’s birthday party.”
“When is it?”
“Next week. Jeesh,” she says. “You don’t know your own sister’s birthday?”
“Well, I didn’t know you were having a party. Does she even know any other kids?”
“It’s the gesture that counts, Matt. The tradition.” He thinks about the traditions he had growing up—his mom taking him to the arcades at the beach, lingering at the food counter where she ordered beer after beer while he ran off to scour corners and crevices, weaving between games to search for dropped coins and forgotten tickets. Even at eight years old, he knew that if he took the money his mom offered him, he’d most likely be hungry for the rest of the week. He thinks about their other traditions—pouring her Kahlua and cream at Christmas time, sneaking rum into his glasses of eggnog, his mom bringing home a new “father” for him every other year.
“I can’t afford a plane ticket, Ma. With holiday prices? Some notice would have been nice.”
“I didn’t think I’d have to remind Mandy’s brother of her special day.” He can hear her take a drag from her cigarette, knows without a doubt that she’s sitting in her worn recliner by the front window of the apartment, rocking. A trolly passes him, then a public bus crowded with people. He decides to take a different route home. “I wish you’d told me about this sooner.”
“I would have if you called more often.” He walks uphill through a residential neighborhood, breathing heavily. “How’s Julia?”
“She’s good.”
“I’d like to meet her one of these days.”
“You will.”
“Why don’t you bring her with you?”
“Let’s talk about this later, Ma.”
Matt continues to trudge uphill, passing houses adorned with reindeer made of lights—blue and red and green. He gazes at glints of gold, ropes of lights coiled around porches and trees, twinkling against the black night. The cold air bites his skin as he descends.
*
Alone in bed with the lights off, Matt wonders whether he should be worried about the silence in the background during his mother’s call. He usually hears Mandy uttering words and sounds, or yelling with excitement, but he’d only heard the TV.
It’s midnight when Julia finally gets home. She undresses in the dark, and Matt clenches his teeth, his head throbbing, the veins in his neck tight.
“Where have you been?”
“You’re still awake? I was practicing.”
“Where?”
“I went back to Rodney’s after my gig. We were getting ready for next week.” After my gig. It’s not unusual for Julia and Rodney, her musician friend, to jam together, but it is unusual for her to lie. At least he thinks it is.
Anger pulses inside him the way it used to when he was a child. When his mom would leave him alone for hours, then saunter back into the house, as if it were perfectly normal to have a young kid put himself to bed, stomach growling, cold and crying. As he grew older, this anger became a slow, steady burn, one he worries might bubble up and boil over, sizzle out of him at the worst possible moment.
He thinks about telling Julia he went to the piano bar, that he knows she’s keeping something from him. Instead, he asks, “When are we going to the clinic?” The sound of his own voice, stern and unfamiliar, takes him aback. This is not who he wants to be. But this is one of those times when he feels he’s bending so much, he’ll surely break, like a rope stretched across a finish line, about to snap.
“I was going to go tomorrow. You don’t have to come.”
“Lucas will cover for me. I’ll tell him you have a doctor’s appointment.”
“I’d rather go alone.”
“Why?”
“I just would.” Julia sits on the edge of the bed with her back to him, and lights a cigarette.
Matt swallows hard, determined not to say something he might regret. Instead, he says, “My mom called.”
“Oh? What did she say?”
“She said she wants to meet you.”
“Is she coming for a visit?”
“She wants me to come home. For Mandy’s birthday.”
“You should go,” she says. He wonders for a minute what she might say if he asked her to come.
“I thought about telling her about the kid.”
Julia exhales, and crushes her cigarette into the ashtray on the nightstand. She finally turns around to face him. “It’s not a kid,” she says. “It’s the size of a fingernail.” She lies down without touching him, pulls the covers up to her neck, and closes her eyes.
*
The next day, Julia’s gone when he wakes up. She’s left a note: Went to the clinic. At work, he tries not to think about her, or about his mom, or about Mandy. Tries not to remember the fact that Julia insisted on going to the doctor without him, has lied to him outright. That he can’t afford a plane ticket home for Mandy’s birthday. Instead, he focuses on roasting chicken, mixing the brussels sprout salad, marinating the duck for this week’s dinner specials. Once the lunch rush has ended and he’s helped Lucas put away the deliveries, broken down boxes and tossed them into the dumpster, he realizes he has time to take a quick break before the dinner shift.
When he walks into their apartment, Fleetwood Mac’s “Gypsy” is blaring. Julia’s half-dressed, pulling sheer stockings up over her legs. Matt opens the cabinet above the sink, and pours himself a drink.
“Tough day already?” she asks, running a brush through her hair on her way into the bathroom.
He sips the bourbon, its sweet sting warming his body. “What happened at the clinic?” he asks.
“It’s gone,” she calls, her voice a soft echo. He can see the side of her face as she stands in front of the bathroom mirror, tweezing her eyebrows.
“What do you mean?” He pokes his head in, but she’s leaned close to the mirror, fixated on the tiny hairs. She’s wearing a bra he doesn’t recognize. Bright blue, trimmed with lace.
“It was there and now it’s gone. There was no heartbeat.”
“So now what?”
“They got rid of it.”
He downs the rest of his drink. Her face is lightly powdered, her bright eyes lined with black. She walks past him, still standing in the doorway.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m better,” she says, refilling his empty glass and bringing it to her lips. “I didn’t want it. You did.”
*
“MATT. MATT.” His head is underwater, swirling reds and purples, then black. What’s happening? He’s inside a swimming pool. Drowning. His mouth is sticky, his tongue too large. His eyes pressed shut, as if his face is buried in sand.
There’s Julia. Her dark curls touching his lips. He wants to ask her what’s happening, but his mouth is too swollen, his voice stuck somewhere inside him. She holds a plastic water pitcher. She’s slapping the side of his face. His shirt soaking wet. “Take these,” she says, shoving something in his mouth. “Try your best to swallow them.”
“Now,” she says. “NOW.” The pills slide down his throat easily, although he isn’t sure how. But then, he sees flashes of walking alone, climbing a hill along Haight Street. An old guy with an Irish cap. The white powder, the spoon, the flame. Heroin. Matt’s head feels as if it’s floating on a raft through a river, his muscles weak, skin soaked with sweat and water. Like a terrible flu. He stays there, lying on the cold bathroom floor like an invalid, his eyelids drooping shut.
*
Later, Julia tells him, “First, you were green, then gray. Scared the shit out of me.”
“How did you know what to do?”
“I’ve seen people overdose,” she says. “And I’ve seen the activated charcoal in your shaving kit. Now I know why.”
In the days that follow, when Matt’s not at work, he sleeps. Julia comes home sporadically, but doesn’t stay for long. She’s like a ghost in the small studio, guitar in hand, barely uttering a word to him. Invisible. And he doesn’t blame her for being pissed. He knows she must be thinking of leaving.
At work, Lucas hands him an envelope. “Christmas bonus,” he says. “Get some rest.” Five hundred dollars. And he knows just how to spend it.
*
In New Hampshire, balloons float above his mother’s mailbox. Purple streamers spiral down the front door, and twist around the railing. Matt opens the door without knocking. The entryway at the bottom of the stairs, usually cluttered with furniture and toys and bags of trash, has been cleaned out. He hears laughter and squealing, adults shouting to one another, Janice Joplin’s “Summertime” vibrating through the small apartment.
“Matt.” His mother’s longtime friend, Pierre, hugs him as he walks into the kitchen. Through the crowd, he spots Mandy in her highchair, red frosting on her face, her curly hair matted on her head.
“There’s my long lost son,” his mother says, pushing Pierre aside. “In the actual flesh.” She puts her hands on his shoulders. “Are you going to drop your bag? You are here for a week, aren’t you?”
A week. Matt can’t help but wonder if this trip is too long. But Mandy’s wide eyes soften him. This will be good, he thinks. He’ll press the pause button, cook his family delicious food, give Julia some space so they can make things right. Spend time with his sister. Pierre grabs Matt’s duffel bag. “How do you like it out in San Fran?” he asks.
“I love it,” Matt says.
“He’s too good for us now, P,” his mother says. “He’s got a big chef job and a pretty girlfriend. Couldn’t be farther away. Just breaking his mother’s heart.”
Matt clears his throat. “She’s full of it. I’m going to go say hi to Mandy.”
“Give him a break, Darla,” Pierre says.
“He never gave me a break.”
Mandy makes a high-pitched sound when he approaches. She stretches her arms toward him, smiling. He sits at the kitchen table, and pulls her onto his lap. Mandy squirms, her tiny fist full of cake. Lucinda Williams blares, and his mother, Pierre, and several others he’s never met begin dancing. A woman in a poncho lines shot glasses up on the counter. People gravitate toward a small bong on the stove, and meander in and out of the living room. The sweet smell of pot permeates the apartment. The licorice scent of Sambuca. And Mandy, the only kid in sight.
Matt carries her across the room. His mother’s laughing, popping cheese cubes into her mouth. “Maybe I’ll take Mandy for a walk,” he says.
“You can’t take Mandy. This is her birthday party for Christ’s sake,” his mother says.
Matt puts Mandy down, and she runs in circles on the living room carpet, shows him her blocks and Legos. He kneels down on the floor beside her. “Matt,” she says, touching his face with her tiny hand.
His mother’s still swaying in the kitchen, her eyes half-closed. Matt scoops Mandy up and carries her downstairs, bundling her in her tattered winter coat and gloves. In the yard, she runs back and forth, her cheeks red, while he stands and watches her. He takes a deep drag from his cigarette.
He feels so ashamed of what he’s done, almost dying on his and Julia’s bathroom floor. Leaving Mandy to fend for herself more than he already has. He thinks about what Julia said about the baby. Had he wanted it? No, not exactly. But perhaps he’d been looking for something to ground him—something steady and solid to help him stop thinking about giving in. If he’s honest, he’d already felt himself beginning to slip before Julia’s pregnancy test, and before the lying. He realizes how naïve it was to convince himself that he’d been fixed or cured, and he knows now he’s been depending on her to fill him, to elate him, to eradicate his self-loathing. To keep him warm and full and satiated.
Back inside, people begin to filter out. Matt puts Mandy down for a nap in his mother’s bed. His head is pounding from the plane ride, from the noise, from being pummeled with the reality of what he’s done. In the bathroom, he looks for Advil, but finds various prescription bottles hidden in the back of the medicine cabinet. OxyContin and Percocet and Vicodin. He clicks it shut.
He needs to get out of the house. In town, he strolls along the river, past the hardware store and the pawn shop, the adult bookstore tucked in between coffee shops and bars. He walks past the local library, the police and fire stations. He watches the red sun melt into the sky, the sky become darker, the moon peek out over the water.
On Main Street, he passes the town Christmas tree, glances at the wreathes on apartment doors, the glittery bows adorning telephone poles. He shivers, and turns into Timothy’s Bar and Grill.
“Hey stranger,” the bartender says, and he looks up to see a young woman he’s crossed paths with many times, since they’ve both been in the industry for a while. “Jenny,” he says. “Nice to see you.”
She places a cocktail napkin in front of him. “I thought you were out west now,” she says, pouring him a bourbon.
“Just visiting. Figured I’d stop in for a quick one.”
“That’s too bad,” she says, turning toward the computer. She begins pouring beers, opening bottles of wine.
“Why?”
“We’re looking for a chef. Ours is done next week,” she says, filling a cocktail tray with glasses of wine.
Matt sips his drink. His lips and face are warm, heat permeating his body.
Jenny delivers the drinks to a table, then returns to the bar, and hands him a piece of paper. “An application. Just in case.” Matt nods. Jenny adjusts the bar mats, changes the channel on the TVs, turning them to sports. The place is filling up, people chattering, clatter coming from the kitchen. Jenny greets customers, zigzags between tables. Matt pulls a twenty from his wallet, and places his empty glass on top of it. “Thanks,” he says. “See you around.”
“I hope so,” Jenny calls.
*
On his way back to his mother’s house, the moon shimmers over the water. The application flutters in Matt’s hand. People trickle in and out of restaurants and vintage stores. He passes a popular bar, the front door open despite the cold, Billie Holiday’s “I’ll Be Seeing You” percolating through the speakers, spilling onto the street. In his mind, Julia’s voice replaces Billie’s, its rhythm and cadence arresting, familiar and far, reaching into the frigid night. Her breath, her body, her music like a puff of smoke his lungs are forcing him to exhale. He doesn’t need to go back to San Francisco to know that he’s lost her. She’s thousands of miles away, like a vision from a dream he’s desperately trying to remember, an image created from the deepest parts of him. The song lulls as he walks, fading into the dark, winter night.