Past tense

“Yes, but it’s different lately,” he says. He’s been dreaming about the exes and it’s taking a toll.

“How different?” I ask.

“I’m begging them to stay,” he says. “Sometimes in so many words.”

“All of them at once?” I ask.

“The words?”

“The women.”

“No, no. One per dream, one per night. Last night it was the woman who had all those kids, remember her?”

“Mother Hubbard,” I say. He ignores me.

“We’re riding in a car. She’s driving and I’m in the back seat with the oldest. He’s ten, maybe. I smell cigarette smoke and realize it’s him. He’s trying to be cool about it, too, which really ticks me off, so I climb into the front seat with her, but now she’s smoking, which she never did in real life, and this is too much. I tell her to stop the car and I get out. ‘Pick me up farther down the road,’ I say, presumably meaning after she’s dropped off the kid and finished her damn cigarette.”

“What happened to the begging?”

“I did that before we were in the car. After we had sex.”

“Of course. Well played.”

“Anyway, I get out and she drives on, but then the road divides and nothing looks familiar and I’ve left my phone at her place, so I’m lost and have no way of contacting her. Which is ironic, because earlier I’d said to her, ‘I just wish to God we could stay together.’ Direct quote. My heart was breaking when I said that, but all she did was stare out the window. A bright day, I remember. Bright and beautiful. And later I’m walking beside the road alone. Lost. And then I’m at a dead end, and then I’m walking up a flight of stairs to a steel door that’s chained shut’.”

“You’re tired of living alone,” I say.

“I’ve thought about that. It’s the obvious interpretation, but no. I wouldn’t trade living alone for any of them.”

“But you do get lonely,” I say.

“Everybody gets lonely,” he says. “It’s a law of nature.”

“Lives of quiet desperation and all that,” I say.

“Exactly,” he says.

Exactly.

Related: The new Solarians