what is it that you might say?
When I was in my early twenties, I was in Vancouver for a business meeting. It was the first time I had ever travelled for work. I grabbed lunch with a girl I had worked with a few years ago. She had recently moved to the city. I was visiting and felt a little adrift in the day before my meetings began. We sat down across from each other at a dark wood table in a restaurant designed to feel like a ship. Wood, everywhere. Netting on the walls. Plastic crabs tangled in the brown, gaping threads.
How are you? I asked this girl I had worked with, realizing that I fundamentally knew nothing about her, except that when we had worked together, she had been very good at her job.
Well, the girl said looking directly at me. I’m really lonely.
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Until that day in the belly of a ship that was not a ship, I didn’t know you could say something like that out loud. I thought you had to keep those kinds of things to yourself. Or, if you were going to say it, then you had to say it with some…