Talking Shadows

She looked at his silhouette in the moonlight, the black curve of his Adam’s apple against the dark blue of the sky behind, the way those two almost blended when he moved a little. They both were drunk; on the terrace where they stood, came the sounds of the living room below. The others were not quite done yet, and sudden shrieks and shouts could be heard from time to time, breaking the silence of the cold December air.

‘Do you know how difficult it is? Do you know how hard it is for me to just let it all slip, to forget it all and move on…’, he seemed to be saying, the frustration seeping into his voice.

‘Hmmm’, she replied, and there were another few moments of quiet. She wanted him to stop speaking, she wanted them to sit together like this and look at the sky together, everything drunk and hazy. But she didn’t have the courage or the heart to tell him so.

So she listened.

‘I called her a million times last month….and on the phone, everything is alright….when we meet with everyone around, everything is alright….but a moment alone, and nothing is alright anymore….I’m sick of it!’

The vodka was making him speak more, and louder.

‘I…I…’

The sound of breaking glass broke his dialogue in the middle. For a moment, everything was silent again; and then, the shrieks and laughs came with even greater intensity. He started to move towards the staircase.

‘Where are you going?’, she asked.

‘Down. God knows what’s happening there!’, he said, glancing down.

‘It’s OK. They probably dropped the bottle or something’, she replied, and then, pointing towards where he had been sitting, said, ‘Sit.’

That’s all the invitation he needed. He didn’t want to go really. Sit and don’t talk, was what she had wanted to say. But the words didn’t come out.

‘Am I talking too loud?’, he asked nervously, in an unnecessarily low volume.

‘Na. Its OK. But don’t talk so much.’

She had finally mustered the strength to say it, half scared that it might hurt him, or worse – put him off.

‘No….no…let me talk…please’

And then he started again. In the limited light the moon provided, she couldn’t see his face, and so, she imagined. She imagined his cheek bones getting stretched in anguish, the nerves on his forehead coming out, the anger making his nose twitch. He looked majestic, like an actor on stage delivering his ultimate performance.

And it was only his silhouette talking.

‘Are we machines or something? No, tell me. That you press a button and wow, it’s all gone? What am I supposed to do? The effort has to come from both sides. This way, nothing will happen. And its killing me….totally…do you….do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘Yes…yes I do!’

This time, the anguish was in her voice, not his. It made him look up.

And in the near darkness of this cold winter night, their eyes met for the first time.