Wednesday's Child

Wednesday evening here, we made grilled vegetables and pasta tricolore . Afterwards, my summer fling mixed me martinis, and we watched the sun set over the lake behind the house he is staying in for just two more weeks. We played Scrabble, had sex, and fell asleep with our pinkies and anklebones touching. In the morning we drove in to work together and stopped on the way at a cafe that serves their coffee in beautiful oversized clay bowls painted with gold and green swirls. He read the Times; I scanned the local weekly for music listings and furniture sales.

If I were a wiser man, I would be preparing myself for the end of the summer, the start of classes, the enforced brevity of this relationship.

But I have never been wise.

Tonight is my turn. I am making white grape martinis and burgers with a blue cheese sauce. And -- have I mentioned? The view of the sunset is beautiful from my house.

Storm Front

My office is glass on three sides, and in a city this size, I'm high enough on the sixth floor to have an unobstructed view of the horizon.

I am not yet used to these midwestern storms. In Boston, the weather is simply an organic part of the living city; rainstorms build and break and then release like a sigh. But here, storms rolling across the flat open spaces grow into formidable entities of their own. I have been watching this one approach the city over the trees to the southwest. You can see the storm front as a distinct, dark streak in the sky, behind which is a downpour, and in front of which is as bright and cheery as the rest of the day has been.

My office thrums from the beat of the raindrops breaking against the glass. The sound is almost deafening. The lightning forks across an impossibly open sky. Was the sky this big at home? Was there even lightning?

I've already forgotten.

Every day home seems further away.