Small Hours

Fiction by Chloé Williams

My sister, Chloé, has been writing this for a little while. It’s a piece of fiction that was so mysterious to me I had to ask her to put it in my snail mail club just so I could read it. I was not shocked when she sent me a story I needed to keep reading. I mean I needed to know everything, despite knowing it’s not fully written yet. It’s a story about intimacy, and it’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever read by her. In some ways this story reminds me how unfair it is that Chloé can do almost everything, but it also reminds me that I have a lifetime of books and essays and stories I get to read that leave me in need of more. I hope you enjoy as much as I do.

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“The glasses go in here?”

And then, like nothing, my dream was gone. I turned, the party where I’d left it in the other room. Summer was doing the thing it tends to before it arrives, sending a wave of heat that pushes the whole city into a prolonged stagnation. Nothing moved, not wind or time. And nothing changed; everything had come to a halt. We seemed stuck at this dinner, in this night, skin tacky with the heat.

I nodded and pulled my hand back from outside the window.

There had been no difference between the air in the kitchen and the air outside. Even he was stuck, waiting there in a lag in time. The gesture, however, reached him eventually, and his limbs moved from the hall into the kitchen, like he was wading through water.

He did not look at me, though I watched him. Embarrassed, maybe, sheepish, to add to the pile of dishes I was going to do. His approach to everything that night had been rather reserved; it might just be his temper. Though I could not say that, having gone to a stranger’s apartment, I’d have been any different.

He broke the silence again briefly. Passing me to place his cup down with a quiet hum. The sleeve of his shirt rolled, his watch reading 2:14 am. My own hands, soapy, had a moonlike quality beside his own. The suds running down into the silver sink pooled on the flat edge of it, wrapping around the bottom of his glass.

The party had been happening only in two places, the dining room table, and then, occasionally, the bathroom, where someone might talk while walking toward. So the solitude of the kitchen had not seemed easily broken, thick like the heat, and out of bounds. I had come in with the impression of complete privacy, as if I were in my own apartment, and had settled as such. His presence had caused an internal wrinkle. A body open that quickly had to close and thus had done so imperfectly. Trying to regain speech, those tedious manners I had abandoned once alone. Hoping he would leave before they were needed.

But whatever movement gained was quickly lost. He stopped beside me at the counter, watching the window where my hand had been.

“You’re friends with Harper.”

“A little.”

In the other room, laughter came in fluttering chorus. The pristine joy from earlier in the night had subtly broken. You could hear it if you knew the sound. My friends were tired. And their tired was starting to seep into everything. A sign that, despite all indications to the contrary, the night and the world were moving—time included. I turned over my shoulder, the hall empty, the wall flicking with light from the other room, and when I turned back, he let me catch him staring.

“From?”

“I know her old roommate.”

I nodded, resumed my washing, pressing my thumb into a kiss of lipstick on a wine glass. She had told us nothing about him. Which I supposed was the whole idea, really. But she had not said even that he was handsome. Something she would certainly do, especially when it was so obvious that he was.

“I think she’s interested in your date more,” he said.

“That’s good,” I said and put aside the cup I was working on. Watched from the corner of my eye to be sure that the cloth of the drying rack caught the water that slipped out. “It was kinda the point of my bringing him here.”

“Really?”

I nodded, “Did she tell you? It’s mean if she didn’t tell you.”

“She told me.”

“So why’d you come?”

He shrugged his shoulders, “Why not?”

It was nearing, now, 2:30 in the morning, and he remained just about as planted in his inner world as he had been when we arrived. I felt sorry for him. Stuck here, this many hours, and couldn’t even count on conversation.

“I can wash this,” I said. “If you’re heading out, I can wash your cup.”

“I’m not leaving. Or...” He turned over his shoulder, leaned back, but the table was too far around the corner to be seen. “I don’t think so, at least.”

“We haven’t bored you away yet?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

He didn’t laugh, but he also didn’t leave, and I sucked at my teeth.

“Why aren’t you out there?”

I took a long breath in, “I don’t know.”

Quietly, but with a little more emotion, more playfulness, he said, “I think that’s a lie.”

The withdrawn gentleman who’d sat diagonally from me quietly and unobtrusively all night, at once, was gone. The water ran, and a small gust blew in the window, and we stared at each other, and I knew I could have whatever I wanted, if only I figured out what that was.

It always seems like that. The start of any season will set the tone, so it is better to make choices immediately, when certain untouchable things become touchable. Thinking and waiting might only close this small window where everything might change.

“Alright,” I said. “It’s a lie.”

He hummed, nodding, “You don’t really seem like the type to do dishes before bed.”

“I was running late, so I didn’t bring anything with me. Doing the dishes is how I’m repenting.”

“But that’s not the reason you came in here.”

“No.”

I took his cup and washed it anyway. Whether or not he was bored or having a good time, it seemed the thing to do. Not being able to tell was enough of an answer. Even if it didn’t make much a difference, this favor, life could, at times, be so simple. It could be as easy as anything for him to leave here with a better impression than before. From the corner of my eye he leaned against the fridge behind us, watching my hand sweep the glass into it, and licked his lips.

“I brought wine,” He said finally. “We could give it to her together and go back to the party right now.”

“Well, the point of the party was that you were meant to bring someone no one else knew, so it would be a bit strange if we went in on a gift together, having not met before.”

“We could lie.”

“Or we could stay right here.”

“Why?”

The water behaved beautifully, washing away lipstick with one swipe of my thumb. I recalled, briefly, the summer Gwen lived in Far Rockaway, and the weekends we spent living there. Running into a cold now found only in sinks, and how the waves, when coming out of the water, would surprise us sometimes, toss us over. The sensation in those days of precipice, of a life which was surely beginning, and the subtle way since then this feeling had gone away.

“I think we live in the same neighborhood.”

“Really?” He said, and though I was relieved by it, I knew I was getting away with nothing.

“Yeah. You mentioned living a few blocks from BiBi. Well, I live right above it.”

“I’m on 7th. Across from the park.”

I smiled, “Park view! You should’ve given Gwen the bottle before the party began. We could’ve opened it and had rich people wine.”

“I mean,” He said, shifting, licking his lips again, “It’s just wine.”

“Sorry, very gauche of me thinking you’re rich. I see now you’re wealthy, which means you don’t like to talk about it.”

I took the glass I had just washed and ran it under the cold tap before sliding it down the counter to him. Guessing blindly, but he said nothing about it, just raised the cup to his mouth and took one long drink, all the water slipping down his throat. His thank you was breathy like wind, so full with relief.

“Nice of you to know the difference between the two. It can be so tedious most days to have to explain.”

If there had been any true discomfort, he no longer showed it. But the unease of before, no matter how slight, revealed the ease of what had been happening all this time before the possible wealth got in the way. In every other sense, it seemed, he was living with some profound openness toward me.

“If I were in my right mind, I think I’d be a bit intimidated by you.”

“You don’t strike me as someone who could be intimidated.”

“Well, every assumption I’ve made about you tonight was wrong, so I guess it’s your turn to be mistaken.”

He hummed, “What else did you assume about me?”

I turned over to look at him, raising a brow, “Nice try.”

He smiled, but it was small, almost nonexistent.

“You should talk more.”

“I’m glad I didn’t,” He said, voice even. “Earlier, you seemed to think highly of me for it.”

I knew what he was referring to. I lifted a pot overflowing with water, slowly turning it onto its side, my arms flexing then relaxing as the weight lessened. Inside, forks and spoons rattled around, knives. Life’s little dangers, rules that were broken that maybe no one knew were rules, aside from Harper, who had, in fact, worked in a restaurant.

If you knew to speak as little as he does, I’d actually like you.

I had said it to Siena’s boyfriend, after a round of Pitch. He had been the one, a couple years ago, in that house in Rockaway, who’d taught us to play. Of all of us, it was he who knew what he was doing. He’d set us three points into the negative.

Aiden had laughed, but I could tell as the words echoed in the corners of the apartment and everyone’s eyes turned to one another, that their understanding of me was less generous. The words had not come across as playfully competitive or insincere, but rather suggested something else about me. And their silence probed a truth we prefer to leave alone. There was no need for them to say anything or laugh awkwardly—the quiet shuffle of cards—because between them it had already been shared. And so formed the barrier between us. Within the new space, my apology began to take shape, filled with a quiet helplessness of something that knows it cannot be acknowledged or said until later.

The empty pot rested in my limp arms. I glanced back at him quickly. The stoicism returned, and he became again the person he’d been when he walked into the kitchen. When I had said it, he’d said nothing, only stared down at his cards, so I suppose in my head it felt like he hadn’t heard it at all.

“Does my opinion matter so much?” I asked.

“Why shouldn’t it?”

“Because if you said you liked that I didn’t talk,” I said, lifting the pot upright again, “I’d say every word I knew.” Soap smell mixed with tomato and oil and I began to run the sponge along the bottom. The bubbles turned orange, which, in another context, on a wall or in a painting, would not disgust me. “I mean, it doesn’t really matter to me what you think of me.”

He didn’t even blink. It surprised me to feel I was expecting him to. The words I realized were a little callous. This strange night, so barren of movement, so lacking the certain reliability of life. To count on your own rising heart rate, embarrassment, modesty, to make you think better of something, to withhold the things that may be best not to say.

“But you didn’t say that.”

“What did I say then?”

“That it might do him some good if he spoke with a little discretion.”

I huffed a laugh, “That’s how you speak? With discretion?”

“At least I think so.”

I nodded, slowly. Like I was thinking, but I wasn’t really. “Sorry,” I said. But I also wasn’t really that sorry. Just knew that I should be. That, tomorrow, I would be, and by then he’d be gone, and he wasn’t like the people out there who I could delay those kinds of things. Who probably expected my call in the morning anyway, and felt the premonition of it growing the moment I had been sharp, just as I had.

“For what?”

“It feels impolite to tell a stranger you don’t care what they think. I assure you, I have some manners.”

He shrugged, “I don’t.”

“Well,” I said, and shook the water from my hands and wiped at my forehead, and found moisture to renew what had been dried away. “Since it matters, I don’t think I have a real opinion of you.”

He hummed, nodded, but I could tell that he was actually thinking as opposed to my own vapidness. Some finer wrinkle there, at his brow or something, that was teeming with all his thoughts. Turning, I slipped my hands between the counter and the small of my back to avoid the bite and leaned back.

“Or I probably do. It just isn’t overwhelming.”

Everything went quiet, and the evening tilted toward its end, and I waited in the low pit of the silence for that particular sigh from him or the other room that meant everything was over.

“That’s a nice place to be.”

“Really?”

He nodded, “You’re willing to admit you had the wrong idea of me, and you wished I spoke more. That feels like something I can manage.”

“I’m a lot nicer than I sound.”

A chair scraped in the other room, and a voice, Tilda’s, fluttered through the apartment. The beat of her steps got quieter and quieter, her voice remained consistently airy until it was muffled by the bathroom door. I could feel and hear the tiredness. Most notably in her melodic laughter, which was now interwoven and weighed by some near-invisible force. The stressed syllables of her words seemed to drag. Tired always comes for happiness first and sadness last.

“This guy you brought,” He said. “What’s his deal?”

“Sam,” I sighed, “I don’t know. Harper came to pick me up at work once and saw him. They both asked about each other a few times.”

“They know each other then.”

“Not really. They spoke for maybe less than a minute.”

“But they’re not strangers.”

“What counts as strangers?”

“You and I.”

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This month featured the newsletter above, and a sticker of the star card! I couldn’t have done this without Chloé who, just recently I was talking to as we walked to our friends apartment. We decided that this lifetime together was the best one, because we are certain it’s the one were we spend the most time together. I hope you enjoyed her work as much as I did.

See you next month