There’s a light mounted on the industrial ceiling – one of those that looks like a fishbowl gone astray - and it’s enclosing a tiny little sun that’s dimmer than the real one but just as orange. It’s tasteful, and it gives everything a hue so warm, you start to think that things might catch on fire. 

It sounds of the highway and it smells of hash. And you promptly discovered that both the sink and the washing machine went on strike some time ago and they spit dark water when you make them work and they smell of the sort of things you try to get rid of, which is peculiar because he himself smells expensive. There’s a guitar, for school, and there’s loudspeakers that are painted yellow because the guitar for school is yellow too.

You were not intending to give him any of your secrets.  It was decided when you saw the sink and the washing machine and when you deduced he eats kids’ cereal for breakfast and, anyways, you’ve been rationing secrets after Alex. But it doesn’t matter that you won’t give any of your secrets because you came here after a swipe and no secrets need to be exchanged for your expectations to materialize. One-night stands don’t require the exchange of secrets in order to materialize the way relationships do. And he’s attractive. Alex wasn’t that attractive. 

There’s specs of green dust under your boots that must cost more than the boots did, and as you take your coat off, two pale hands extend a cereal box and a joint your way. Charming. But you take them both because it’s that sort of night and you remember once more that no secrets need to be exchanged.

“Let me play you this one song I made,” he tells his screen more than he tells you, and he gives away one secret -a small one- and you resist the eye-roll that’s rising up through your tear ducts. You take a mental note and a scorching puff and you put your mind to the music because you sense a looming boredom. You like it, and you’re surprised you do, and you can’t tell if it’s because you’ve listened to enough experimental music that you think that some degree of aptitude hides behind these abstract synths and beats which are as soothing to the ear as the traffic down below. 

“It’s good,” you say, your lips in a crescent moon, and you grind your shoulders and you begin to touch the music. “When did you start to learn?” you ask, and you invite more secrets but you remember that that’s how conversation tend to go. “I started in middle school,” he says, “as a hobby.” You didn’t have time for hobbies in middle school. “I wasn’t very good in school,” he continues. Clearly, “but I get music so I thought that’s what I should do for work.”

“I quite like school,” you say and you smile a little louder, “It’s challenging.” But he doesn’t seem the type to know what challenge is like. “Maybe,” he mumbles but his mind is elsewhere and his hand rests on your knee and the evening is starting to materialize. The veins in the white of his eye are more pronounced than they were when you arrived. “I don’t know,” he continues. “I never really learned how to study. I just don’t know how to do it. I have this course -music and culture or something- and she just talks and talks and talks in class and I just don’t get what I’m supposed to do with all that,” he says, and you begin to see a resignation in his voice and you begin to feel a pungent pity that catches you by surprise.  

The revelations pile on and that’s not what you’re here for. It’s almost as though he doesn’t know the codes. When secrets are exchanged, bonds form – kids are taught that in first grade. “Loose lips build ships,” or so goes the tune you’ve had to learn. It’s not a bond either one of you is after - besides, he wrote so on his profile. You indulge him though because you can’t resign to a wasted evening. “How did you get through school then?” you ask. “I had tutors.” Clearly. “Since grade one, there was someone at home and when I’d tell her I have math homework, we’d do math homework, and when I’d tell her I had an essay to write, we’d write an essay. And in middle school, mom would take a leave from work, which she never does, and we’d sit together all day and all night and she would make sure all the concepts were in my head in time for D-Day.” 

The blunt in his hand has been disappearing, denoting, like a clock out of tune, a distorted passage of time. It’s telling you it’s getting late. And it looks inappropriate next to the childishness of his face, which is round and pure, boasting cherry colored cheeks and fair hairs. And the veins in the white of his eye look more scarlet next to his ice blue iris than they usually do in the darker one you’ve grown to know better than the back of your hand – the one you’re trying hard to forget by coming here tonight. 

A melody disrupts his talk. It’s vaguely familiar, like all ringtones are, and it comes from a pocket, not a speaker.

“Yes?” he answers and his laid-back affectation vanishes, revealing itself an affectation. “Yes? No. Yes, I haven’t managed to, not yet, I haven’t.” He is impatient now, and with every breath his words turn sharper and a panic starts to take hold of his tone. “I’ve been taking care of it, I’ve been taking care of it, I’ve just had trouble finding the administration. I’ve been going every day since Monday and they’re never there! Not in the mornings, not in the evenings.” He draws the finished blunt to his lips mechanically. “Yes, but you told me to take care of it this week and I’ve been taking care of it this week – it’s just that nobody’s been there. You’ll get the papers, alright? I’m working on it. You don’t have to call me twice a day about it.” But he doesn’t hang up. Not before she allows him to. “Yes, I’ll go again tomorrow, I promise. Good night. Yes, I love you too.” 

He turns the phone down and the takes a deep breath and he sits closer to you on the couch and his other hand is now on your other knee and he longs to explain to someone that’ll hear – even if that someone’s virtually a stranger. “My mother is a manager in a big firm,” he confesses as if his apartment and the echo of her voice on the phone haven’t made that apparent, “and I think that sometimes she gets mixed up and forgets I’m her son and not some employee. Like, she tries to do the mother thing but I don’t think she knows how to do it, so she doesn’t switch off the manager tone with me most of the times. You know,” he continues, “I have to make an appointment with her secretary in order to get her on the phone.” And he smiles at the absurdity of it all, a pained smile, but a smile nonetheless, and suddenly you’re not that appalled by the home appliances that’ve gone on strike.  

“My father’s kind of like that too actually,” you hear yourself say. “I have literally no memory of him where he’s not on his phone,” you hear yourself say. “I think that’s why we’re not close,” you hear yourself say, and a stranger is a stranger no more.