Things That Must Be Written (at the End of an Affair) by Sam Ruddick
1. The sky was gray. The skyscraper was the same color. I’d never seen anything quite like it: the colors so perfectly aligned. She pointed out that the building was glass.
2. The way she took my arm on the sidewalk and pulled me closer to let the guy on the scooter go by, the guy on the bike, to stop me before I walked into a driveway that a car was about to pull into or out of, how gently she brought me back to Earth. I’d be talking about some idea I had in my head or telling some story from the past and she would bring me back to the here and now with such care, such insistent tenderness, and I would go all weak inside be-cause she was so present and strong and yet so kind and I tried to tell her how impressed I was, how magical it seemed to me, her awareness of her surroundings, because I felt like I’d been blun-dering through life, barely cognizant of my surroundings, virtually blind to what was actually going on around me, always too busy thinking or talking, trying to figure out what was going on without bothering to just be aware of it, to just pay attention to it, and that awareness came so naturally to her, and I tried to tell her but I couldn’t quite say it – I didn’t have the words, offhand, words like magical, like presence or awareness – and so she laughed it off, ex-plaining it away in two words. “City girl,” she said. “You gotta be aware of your surroundings.” And yes, there was that, of course. I was not used to walking in the city anymore, and she’d been walk-ing in cities her whole life, but there was something more to it, a way of being in the world that she had that made the world better, more interesting, more beautiful, somehow, a way of being that made me more aware, too, made me want to be more aware, more attentive, more in the moment, not just on the street that day but later, in the restaurant that night, when they brought my espresso out on a saucer that curved both up and down at the edges, more like a flying saucer than a saucer for a cup, and I couldn’t stop touching it, because I thought it was such a strange thing, the de-sign of this saucer, like somebody had actually put thought into it, real thought into making this thing beautiful, this object, and if only I could be more like that. I was always in such a hurry, always in my head, trying to get to the next thing, to the indeterminate future where everything would be alright, when in fact nothing would ever be alright as long as I thought that way, because alright wasn’t a thing that was going to happen later. Alright was now. Alright was the saucer for my coffee, the gentle tug of her hand, pulling me close so the guy on the bike could get by. I’d scolded myself for not noticing him. “It’s inconsiderate,” I said. “Walking around a city, not paying attention to where you’re going.” But she pointed to the big red circle painted on the concrete, the block letters inside it that said no bikes or scooters allowed, and she said, “He’s ridden his bike over four or five of those things. He’s the one who’s out of line.” God, she forgave me everything. God, I loved her.
3. She kissed me goodbye with urgency. Her teeth clicked against mine, her first and only graceless moment, and I knew that I would not see her again. On the way to the airport to pick up my wife and child, I stopped at the gas station, stuffed the silk underwear I’d worn the night before in the trashcan.
4. The child in the car, telling me about her vacation. She’d caught a butterfly with her friends, but when they tried to put it in a jar, it got away.
Sam Ruddick’s work has appeared in The Sun, The Threepenny Review, Glimmer Train, Prairie Fire, and North American Review.