From Aisle 15.

From his window seat he looked out at the city and shrugged, not knowing how to respond properly to the last glance of it he might have. He had romanced that city, had wrapped himself in her streets for years, and now he was leaving. One day he was content enough to jot his address on an envelope freely, the next day he stopped short at the beginning of the third line and he felt trapped. He put down his pen. He opened a dusty road atlas of the Pacific Northwest. He licked a stamp and made up his mind.

If the city had merely been a girl he'd met the night before and gone home with, he would have said, "This was great, I'll call you." Then he would have walked away quickly with no intentions of calling, having said he would only because it was the natural, polite thing to say. Instinctively, the girl would have said, "Yeah, I had a great time. Let's do it again. I'll call you." She would have smiled widely and offered a handshake or a hug, depending on how much she'd had to drink the night before.

Neither he nor this girl he'd met would have had a particularly good time, in their memories there would not be etchings of one another inside daydreams of romance and futures, their meeting had simply been. But now, in saying goodbye, they would be obligated to leave the other person with a feeling of accomplishment after their evening together. Even in the cruel advantage they had taken of each other there was a sense of loss, and in an attempt to reconcile their lust with their fear of being bad people, they would each extend just enough kindness while they dressed, wiped under their eyes with their index fingers and gathered up their keys.

They would not attempt to contact each other, they would recall only a few sloppy hours from the night before ambiguously. As time went by their night together would get progressively worse in their memories until it was unfairly embellished at parties for other people's pleasure. "He barely looked me in the eye," she would say to her friends. "She laid there like it hurt or something," he would say to his friends.

But this city had not been some girl he'd never called. She had been his greatest love, his first home, his family. She had predicted his needs and had known his wants and had made life for him simple and uncomplicated. She had spread her streets before him unreservedly until he knew them by heart. Her name had allowed him abandon, he had felt powerful and driven because of her, she had given him ambition. When others might have avoided recklessness, he embraced it because of her. Had the city had been a girl he'd never called, the rest of his life would have been so much easier.

He would not feel so empty when he thought of her.