Last Call at the Dep

It's 10:45. The dep stops selling beer at eleven, which is the only deadline I've made all year.

We reach for the same six of Boréale. The blonde, because we're both pretending to have taste.

"You take it."

"On split?"

So we walk to the park with the bag between us, passing it back and forth so the handles don't cut. You tell me about the ex who moved to Toronto. I say Toronto the way you'd read a diagnosis and you laugh, which is the whole trick.

The park has one working streetlight and it flickers. The swings are the old kind, rubber straps on chains, and the chains are cold enough to hurt through gloves.

You push off. For a second you're up over the light, a shape against the rest of the city, and then you come down and the chain squeaks and you go up again.

"In another life," you say, going higher, "we meet in daylight. Proper dates and everything."

"In another life we're different people."

"Yeah."

Six beers, six hours. The sun comes up over the east end and turns everything the colour of a bad photograph. We don't trade numbers. You take the empties, because your building has a bin.