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I belonged with him too.
“They better hurry up,” he whispered. “I have a hard-on with your name
on it.”
I turned to him, rubbing the scruff on his chin. “The whole thing, Mr.
Crowne?”
“Every letter’s going to be inside you, Mrs. Papillion.”
Things had changed. I still set out his slippers, and he still wore them. I
saw him in the morning, but also next to me, in our bed. He came home
most nights, and when he had a late-night overseas call, he still kept the
camera covered.
Things changed all the time. Sometimes I was the one who didn’t make
it home for dinner. Getting Papillion back on its feet wasn’t a small job. But
when I worked late, Logan brought takeout to the office for us, and we ate
together in the same room where my father had made me set in a sleeve
again and again until it was perfect.
We were separate people, but one and the same, locking our lives
together over and over until we were perfect too.
“New tweet!” Mandy said from beside Logan. “It’s going now!”
In the darkness of the ravine, a line of green dots lit up.
“I see it!” I cried.
The crowd bustled and hummed. Fathers put children on their
shoulders, and the green lanterns lifted over the treeline all at once, like
little frogs floating into the air, tightly at first, then drifting apart into the
sky. Then the paper lanterns fell downward onto the street and the children
lifted their arms to catch them.
A little boy next to us grasped for one, but it bounced off his fingers,
over the railing and out of reach. He screamed in disappointment, and his
mother had to grab him to keep him from falling over the rail.
“I have it,” Logan said, catching it in one swift motion. He handed it to
the boy.
“Thank you,” his mother said, then whispered in her son’s ear. “What do
you say?”
“Thank you!” The boy hugged the lantern, crinkling it.
It was over in five minutes, but like all great art, it lived as an
experience to be remembered and shared.
“That was a good one,” Mandy said, scrolling through her phone. “You
guys in for dinner or—” She stared at the screen. “No.”