Auld Lang Syne

He stopped reading as he paced by the window. He looked out at the busy street below. Downtown was bustling with people. Lots of drunk people. He had spotted only a few of them stumbling about a few hours earlier, but now there were herds of them. Some of them were laughing and shouting--he was more than a dozen floors up, with the hotel room's windows closed, and still he could hear their "conversations" and loud gales of maniacal laughter from the streets far below.

Look at all those poor suckers. Just look at them. Obliterating themselves for the evening, erasing the painful cognizance of their meaningless, painful, tragically brief existence with drink, drugs, and only God knows what else. That's what New Year's Eve is for, after all, right? 

He checked his mobile phone. 7:15.

She should be here any minute.

The evening was still somewhat young, but not exactly getting any younger. He turned his attention back to his book.

**********

His world was turned upside down two and a half hours later.

They had talked. And talked. And talked. Then there was a long silence between them. He couldn't take any more of it, and so he finally decided that the silence needed to be broken.

"So...that's that? You don't want to have anything to do with me anymore?"

"Don't make me sound like that," she said. "You make me sound so cruel."

"Well I'm very sorry." He winced as soon as the words came out of his mouth, as he could taste their bitter, sarcastic tone. The last thing he wanted to be at this moment was bitter and sarcastic. He needed her in his life, and he knew that sarcasm was not the way to persuade her to stay in it.

There was another long moment of awkward silence. He finally decided to break that one, too.

"Look, I don't want to...take over your life, you know."

"I'm sorry, I have to go." She turned around and headed for the door. "I'm meeting some friends--"

"Wait...hey, look..." She stopped just as she was about to put her hand on the door handle. But he had no idea what to say next. He struggled to spit out some words, any words, that would stop her.

"I know that we haven't known each other--really known each other--for all that long. I mean, I know that a couple of long conversations over a lunch and a dinner, or a couple of drinks, don't exactly mean anybody's obligated--"

"What?" She laughed with a hint of mockery and contempt. "Who talks like that? 'Obligations'? You just don't--"

"I'm sure your mother told you all sorts of unflattering stories about me. And they were probably all true. But that was twenty-five years ago. Twenty-five years. That's a whole quarter of a century! I'm a completely different man now."

"Yes, she told me some very unflattering stories about you. She told me everything. Everything."

He wracked his brain. He filed through years of memories to pinpoint anything that would particularly cast him in a poor light in her eyes. She had vaguely alluded to something early in their conversation, but he couldn't tell what--

And then she was out the door.

He almost called after her, almost ran after her. But he let her go.

It was probably better that way.