08-28-2025, 04:00 PM
Crystal’s schmoozy enthusiasm peters out around one, one-thirty, well after her lipstick. She’s vanished by the time last call rolls around, victim – Near figures – to more regular circadian rhythms, resolving at least one of his existential quandaries. The only customer still hanging around by two AM is a drowsy-eyed older guy whose glasses and argyle sweater vest grant him a shabby professorial vibe that is probably someone somewhere’s thing, but that Near doesn’t find tempting enough to plumb for interest, despite the part of him that thinks it might be a good idea to sniff out some strategy to avoid the further conversation with Jude that he has agreed to.
But no, the professor’s tab is settled without a fuss, and Near is left to the various minor rituals of closing up shop. By two-thirty he’s pounding on Kovich’s door to announce his departure. By two forty-five he’s coasting back into the apartment parking lot, thinking about blah blah blah the only way out is through.
Is it, though? Maybe there are times when you can just drive away and not go in in the first place.
He goes in anyway. The rain outside has seeped through the walls as it likes to do and turned the inside damp. Stuffy. He flicks on the overhead light and surveys his space, the moving boxes stacked and scattered like a fort he forgot to finish building. He’s gotten his shit packed up sooner than he needed to, but that’s a kind of self-indulgence: he’s always found inexplicable pleasure in the sensation of living out of boxes, of putting everything away and out of sight. Of digging out just what you need and leaving the rest in the dark for later.
No Jude yet, and what are the odds Jude will think better of his proposal and not show up at all? The thought bothers Near more than it should, as if being ghosted now would qualify as Jude getting one over on him, haha made you think I was coming over and then I didn’t. The routes his thoughts take in relation to Jude are not good or healthy, but fighting it is impossible so he just lets them do their thing, turning on the TV (he has decided to leave it here with the larger furniture) for the distraction in the meantime. A twenty-four hour news channel squawks about wars and natural disasters.
But no, the professor’s tab is settled without a fuss, and Near is left to the various minor rituals of closing up shop. By two-thirty he’s pounding on Kovich’s door to announce his departure. By two forty-five he’s coasting back into the apartment parking lot, thinking about blah blah blah the only way out is through.
Is it, though? Maybe there are times when you can just drive away and not go in in the first place.
He goes in anyway. The rain outside has seeped through the walls as it likes to do and turned the inside damp. Stuffy. He flicks on the overhead light and surveys his space, the moving boxes stacked and scattered like a fort he forgot to finish building. He’s gotten his shit packed up sooner than he needed to, but that’s a kind of self-indulgence: he’s always found inexplicable pleasure in the sensation of living out of boxes, of putting everything away and out of sight. Of digging out just what you need and leaving the rest in the dark for later.
No Jude yet, and what are the odds Jude will think better of his proposal and not show up at all? The thought bothers Near more than it should, as if being ghosted now would qualify as Jude getting one over on him, haha made you think I was coming over and then I didn’t. The routes his thoughts take in relation to Jude are not good or healthy, but fighting it is impossible so he just lets them do their thing, turning on the TV (he has decided to leave it here with the larger furniture) for the distraction in the meantime. A twenty-four hour news channel squawks about wars and natural disasters.