When the Lights Come On, It's Time to Leave
By Mouse McEwan

Breathe. The pages rustle like the fins of a fish in water, soft and painted and surreal. Anthony asks what you're doing here so you hold up the pair of boots you're returning.

"Found them in the back of my closet." You wobble and drop them emphatically in the half-dark and keep staring at the soft white curls the pages make, cool gills filled by the open window. Anthony hasn't noticed the note.

"You know, you really shouldn't leave your spare key under the doormat, Tonyboy. Someone could break in." Your mouth is sloppy around such a long string of words and you giggle.

"Catherine," he sighs. You hear Claire slam the bedroom door. "C'mon," he grabs his coat. "Let's go sober you up. I'll buy you a cup of coffee." You follow him to his car, and he unlocks the passenger's door from the inside out. His gaze steadily misses yours until he parks in front of Cora's coffee shop in Santa Monica, where the fog floats in aimlessly like strands of moss on water. For spring in southern California, it's still awfully cold.

He lets you follow him but makes no effort to suggest you two might've come together. You're a couple of secret agents meeting incognito, with the fog rolling in the way it does in campy old spy films. You laugh, wishing you had on a trench coat and headscarf, maybe some dark glasses, then trip and knock your jaw so hard against the tabletop it bounces up and comes back for another. Whack-whack. It promptly shuts you up.

Anthony signals to the waitress - 2 coffees - and they come in a couple of brown ceramic mugs towing along a white saucer of Alta Dena creamers.

Cora's is a small place. The only other customers now are an old man and a younger woman sitting directing opposite you, reading newspapers. The woman glances up every few seconds to scoop and shovel spoonfuls of pea soup into the old man's mouth. She notices you staring and stops to stare back until you look down at your coffee. You finish it and the waitress fills it again. Anthony is emptying another creamer into his mug. He stacks the spent containers one into the other like lawn chairs at the corner of the table. He's so tidy. Hate him for being so tidy.

"Listen Catherine," he says, stacking his 6th creamer cup. "I know this is a bumpy transition for you. For all of us. Believe me, it's been rough for me and Claire too."

"Really?" you smirk. "Seems like you two are getting along just dandy."

"Well yeah, we would be dandy if it weren't for the psycho exgirlfriend breaking into my home at 2 in the morning."

You don't say anything.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

Focus on drinking the coffee. It's warm and bitter and it gives you something to do, a reason to keep your mouth shut.

Anthony's talking more about "change" and "acceptance," while stirring his sugar in, eyes hanging in his face diplomatically dark and lugubrious the way that politicians' do when they want to look sympathetic, and the couple across from you is scraping the bottom of the bowl. "...and I know you're upset," his voice drags, "but listen, there are acceptable ways of dealing with a break-up. Showing up drunk at our apartment - breaking in to our apartment - in the middle of the night - is not one of them."

Tell him you just wanted to return some stuff. You were just trying to return the goddamn boots, not hurt anyone. The alcohol has just about worn off. The waitress floats by in her white sneakers and tilts the lip of the pot in her hand to meet your cup, passing it back, black and murky, and there quivers on top the ghostly face of a woman who once looked a lot like you. You stare into your mug. She stares back.

Anthony asks if you want a ride home. He's shrugging into his jacket like he's about to leave. His face is haggard without sleep, a light shadow bristling at his jaws already, and for a moment you almost feel sorry for keeping him up. No, you'd rather stay. You can walk back, it's not so far. He nods, puts down a few dollars for the coffee, turns, and leaves without saying a thing.

You order a muffin, stab it idly with your fork a few times, then swallow it piece by piece with about 52 warm-ups to wash it down and it twists your colon into a headlock but you keep drinking because you don't have anywhere else to go.

Watch the faint black line of ocean through the cafe window until the sky bleaches white like an overexposed photograph. Realize it's been four hours. You pay and walk home, parallel to the beach, a longer but scenic way that just happens to pass by Anthony and Claire's apartment. It's still early, but soon they'll be waking up. The bedroom window will glow the color of butter. They'll shuffle out of bed to brush their teeth, one of them, Claire, will put on a pot of coffee - good, homebrewed coffee - fresh and aromatic, with cream that doesn't come in little plastic containers.

The letter will be waiting on her chair by the window and she'll walk over holding her favorite mug - the one that reads "This is my Dam Mug" with a picture of the Hoover Dam in the background - the one you bought her in Las Vegas last New Year's. You might even catch her shape as it passes by the window. She'll smile the way she always smiles in the morning, her small mouth still dopey with sleep, the cup brushing her bottom lip, and then she'll notice the letter. She'll pick it up slowly, and begin to read.