“So,” he said, “we’re agreed.”

She nodded. “Nobody can draw a perfect circle freehand.”

They’d been at it for hours. She eyed the objects on the table—nothing of interest, nothing suggesting anything that hadn’t been suggested already. “I’m stumped,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, “I was gonna say I’ve never met anybody who’s been to the Catskills, but then I remembered Mort.”

“Mort Sanderson?”

“That’s him. He told me, once, that he’d spent six weeks there. Till then I wasn’t convinced.”

“Of what?” she said, but realized the answer before he’d registered the question. “Oh,” she said, “that it existed.”

He tapped the side of his nose.

“So,” she said, “that’s it, then?”

“I suppose,” he said, sadness at the edges of the words.

She sipped her tea. “Don’t,” she said. “This is a good thing—a task complete. It’s something to be proud of.”

He smiled. “I know,” he said. “I know.”

“Besides,” she said, “this is the one time we can honestly say that the time is right.”

“Right,” he said. “No, this is good. No doubt. OK…”

She’d grown distracted at some point—the flight paths of the birds beyond the glass of the diner window, perhaps. In any case, she was slow to pick up the slack. “Oh,” she said, eventually. “Oh, well, now…now we mail it. You remember the address?”

“I do. Believe me, I wish I didn’t.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Me, too.”

“We mail it, then.” The same birds had distracted him. His voice was distant. “And that’s that.”

“Right,” she said. “Where do you think they’re headed?”

His response was slow in coming, better measured in the cooling of coffee than in spans of time. “Headed?”

“The birds,” she said. “You saw them, too, right?”

“Yeah, yeah. The birds.” Neither noticed the pause between “birds” and “nowhere,” despite its weight. It was just there, no more important than the salt shaker, the menus, or the nicks in the finish of the table. “Nowhere,” he said. “Even if it’s somewhere, the world’s just round enough to prove them wrong.”

She watched as they disappeared beyond the tall buildings of the city center. “I wish,” she said, “I’d loved you more…when we had a chance, I mean. I wish that.”

He rubbed at an imaginary itch in his palm with his thumb. “Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”

He’d finished writing the address on the provided envelope before she spoke again. “It’s better this way,” she said. “Chance is the real problem, baby.”

His agreement was a silent one, crammed between the folding of the list and the sealing of the envelope, but it was meaningful enough all the same. “Stamp,” he said.

“Right,” she said.

“For the record,” he said as she applied postage, “I always loved you as completely as I could’ve. I know you know, but I wanted to say…before…you know.”

“Shhh,” she whispered. “Don’t talk about it. Besides, I do know. But don’t think about what’s coming. It was always coming. It’s just ours, now, is all.”

The mailbox, a steel, street-corner model, spoke its truth through the window. “Days,” he said as he absently traced the envelope’s journey through space. “Days and days alone. No more vague, distant futures.”

She looked up, a soft smile in her eyes. “What’s that?” she said.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just thinking aloud.”

Timestamp: 12.20.07 at 07:56 PM. Filed under: Fiction.