He thought she would tell him to stop calculating and start showing up. He thought she'd be right. He texted Clare, "Porch light is 75 watts. You're welcome." She texted back.
I knew this was going to be a thing. Then, "Good night, Darius." He typed good night, then deleted it and typed good night Clare and sent it. It was a small thing. It was just a name, but adding her name made it specific and real and entirely his own choice.
And that was the whole point of all of it, wasn't it? He went to bed. Across 30 ft of lawn, her living room light stayed on for another hour. And through his window, he could see the curtains he'd hung open against the glass, letting in the dark and the stars and whatever came next. 3 weeks after the porch light, Derek got a text from supervisor at 7:45 on a Monday morning that said, "Community fundraiser Saturday at the Harrove Community Center.
Companies from a table. Your attendance will be appreciated, not required. Appreciated, which in the language of workplace requests from a man like Richard Colt meant required. Darius read the text twice. Then he looked out his windshield at the parking lot of the commercial building he was about to service and thought about the specific geometry of that event.
The Hardgrove Community Center fundraiser was the kind of Richmond gathering where homeowners and business owners and people who sat on neighborhood boards all ended up in the same room eating catered food and congratulating each other on existing in the same zip code. He knew some of those homeowners. He had serviced their HVAC systems. He had been in their mechanical rooms and their attics and their crawl spaces. And they had signed off on his work orders and been perfectly pleasant about it.
He had never sat at a table with them. He texted back, "I'll be there." Then he sat in the parking lot for another 90 seconds before getting out of the truck. That evening, he mentioned it to Clare across the porch railing. The way he mentioned most things now without preamble, without managing how it sounded first, which was something he was practicing, and which still felt slightly unnatural, like using his non-dominant hand.
"You should come," he said. Clare looked at him. She had a mug in both hands and she was watching him with the careful attention she'd developed for the specific moments when he said something that cost him something to say. "You sure?" She said.
"No," he said. "But I'm asking anyway," she smiled. Not the triumphant smile, the quiet one, the one that meant she understood what he'd just done. Okay, I'll be there. He nodded, went back inside, stood in his kitchen, and breathed through the particular feeling of having made a decision that was right and terrifying simultaneously.
Maya appeared in the kitchen doorway. You asked her, "Were you listening?" I was in the kitchen. I was on the porch. The window was open.
He looked at his daughter. Go to bed. It's 7:30. Go read. Then Maya considered him from the doorway.