Habit of Light

Dana walked the same route home every night, past one of the many underpasses the city kept upright to prevent collapse, indistinguishable from the others except for proximity and repetition. The concrete was scarred with old repairs, seams darkened by water that never fully cleared. Lights fixed along the wall cast a blue wash over everything, flattening color, softening edges, turning faces into shapes before they became people. It was enough light to see and never enough to settle what might be.

The city pressed on around her in its usual restless way, and the underpass eased into view. It had been occupied for quite some time. Streetlights pooled against the concrete and revealed the small world a man had built beneath the span of traffic. A chair waited beside a folding table, a mat stretched near a stack of crates, and a line of blue lamps glowed along the wall as if they belonged to another neighborhood entirely.

He sat at the center of it, posture loose, a candle burning near his hands. Ahead of Dana, another man passed beneath the bridge. The man at the table lifted the carton and tipped it slightly as the stranger went by, the gesture made and withdrawn without pause.

He looked up when she reached the table.

“You walk here a lot,” he called.

“Most nights,” she answered. The politeness in her voice irritated her, but she didn’t correct it.

He gestured toward the box, wrist loose, palm open, the offer steady and uncomplicated. “Wine?”

“No,” she said, and almost kept walking. The word felt practiced, like it belonged to a different part of her body than the pause that followed. She stopped long enough for the moment to stretch. Long enough to notice how often she did what was expected and called it choice.

The office followed her under the bridge, the screen glares and the white lights that never changed, the fake laughter in the elevator, the way her boss said creative when he meant compliant.

She stepped closer and rested her hand on the back of the empty chair.

He reached for the carton and lifted it a little, enough for her to see the cup beside it.

“If you want,” he gestured.

Her chest tightened in anticipation without a place to land, like being briefly suspended between floors.

She watched the wine shift inside the carton when he tilted it, the soft drag of liquid against cardboard. This was nothing, she thought. This didn’t count. It was a cup, it was a pause, it was just standing still for half a second longer than planned. Her head said keep walking. Her body stayed. She nodded before either of them could argue it through.

The sweetness landed first, sharper than she expected, cheap in a way that didn’t pretend otherwise.

“You drink this every night?” she asked.

“Most,” he said, easing the carton back toward himself. “When it shows up.”

He watched her long enough to catch the reaction and then looked away.

“Rough,” he said.

She tipped the cup, studied the surface. “It’s honest.”

That pulled a quiet breath of laughter from him. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s about the best you can ask for.”

She pulled the crate in with her foot and sat. The cold hit through her jeans and kept going, spreading into her thighs until she had to adjust her weight. Overhead the traffic rolled on, close and constant, the vibration moving through the concrete and into her ribs, something she felt before she registered it as sound.

The cold anchored her. It pressed upward, insistent, like a reminder that she had weight and edges. She let it hurt instead of shifting again.

“You work nearby?” he asked.

“Yeah. Advertising.”

The word landed and stayed there. He made a small sound, nothing that asked to be answered, just a way of setting it down.

“So you convince people,” he said.

“I write things that try to,” she answered, aware of how the sentence bent around what she didn’t feel like naming.

“You don’t say.”

He glanced at her cup, then away, like he was already done with the question before asking it.

“You good?”

It landed flat. Not an opening. A check.

She didn’t answer right away. She shifted her grip, felt the rim press into her thumb. “Yeah.”

He nodded once and looked back out toward the street. The conversation could end there. It almost did.

Traffic moved overhead. Someone coughed farther down the wall. Something small scratched and disappeared between the crates.

“Gets cold quick,” he said, not looking at her.

“I noticed.”

He adjusted the collar of his jacket. “You can stand if you want.”

“I’m fine.”

Another nod.

He poured a little more into her cup, the carton dipping, steady.

“People don’t usually stop,” he said. “Not the way you did.”

She watched the stream settle. “That because you’re dangerous?”

He let the carton rest on the table. Didn’t look at her right away.

“Depends who you ask,” he said.

She waited, giving him space to decide if he was finished.

“Some people think I am,” he went on. “Some people don’t like being told where to stand. Some people don’t like being told to leave.”

“And you,” she said.

He finally looked at her. “I can be.”

Her stomach dropped, a brief hollowing that fixed her in place.

The silence that followed didn’t tighten. It just sat there, acknowledged.

Traffic hummed overhead as a train horn carried in from farther off, and she drank, the wine warming her mouth and taking the edge off the air without dulling it.

She stood, pushing the crate back. “Thank you.”

“Tomorrow?”

The question landed simply.

“Maybe.”

He gave a small smile, the kind that barely shifted his face. “Maybe usually turns into yes.”

She came out from under the bridge into a street that felt too exposed all at once. The light was harsh after the dark, spotlighting things she could read a moment ago. She checked the time and dropped the phone back into her pocket without opening anything, unsettled by her own reflection in the glass.

At home she kept the lights off, the wine lingering on her tongue as she sat by the window with her back against the wall and listened to the city outside. She pictured the candle under the bridge and wondered how long it would hold before the flame sank into the wax.

The next night she told herself she wasn’t going back. She stayed late until everything started to blur, moved slowly through the routines she usually rushed, waited in the lobby long enough for the guard to nod. Outside, she took a longer route, following streets that kept her occupied until she realized where she was.

He looked up when she approached. “I saved your chair.”

The comment stopped her short. She hesitated, half turned back toward the street. “You didn’t know I’d come back.”

He shrugged. “You did.”

He poured more slowly than he did the night before. “Rough day?”

“They usually are.”

A corner of his mouth lifted. “That doesn’t tell me much.”

“It tells enough.”

“If you say so.” He studied her face as if measuring how much she meant it. “Your world sounds crowded.”

She rested her hands on the edge of the table. “What about yours?”

He exhaled through his nose. “I keep moving. I don’t stay anywhere long enough for it to get crowded.”

“Makes sense.”

He gestured toward the candle and the carton. “Some nights I have these. Sometimes a radio from the street. That covers it.”

She watched the flame catch along the rim of the glass jar. The light touched his jaw, the planes of his face steady and unharmed by the simplicity of his answer. The quiet around him felt like something he learned rather than something he settled for.

Awareness came without permission. It settled as presence. He sat there contained and attentive, shaping the space so completely that her gaze had nowhere else to rest. She shifted on the crate, changed the angle of her legs, pressed her feet more firmly into the ground, letting weight answer what rose in her. The moment loosened. The recognition stayed. He existed there as a man close enough to matter.

She needed the moment gone and reached for the first safe edge she could find.

“What did you do before living here?” she asked.

“Cooked.”

She waited. “Where?”

“A lot of places. A hotel for a while. A small place near the water. Then whatever came after that.”

“You were good at it?”

He lifted one shoulder. “People came back. That’s how you knew.”

“You miss cooking?” she asked.

He considered it, eyes drifting for a second before returning. “Some days.”

“What do you miss about it?”

“Good knives. A sharp edge keeps you honest.”

She let out a quiet laugh. “You sound dramatic.”

He shook his head. “I mean it. Tools matter.”

The simplicity of the statement settled her and stirred her at the same time, pinning her to the moment.

She studied her hands. They looked steady enough. She kept them there so he wouldn’t see the small tremor starting at her wrist.

“I’m not sure what to say to that.”

He shifted back on the crate, weight settling, eyes on her without insistence. “You sat down. That’s more than most.”

The words landed low, closer to her spine than her head.

“Why?”

He tipped his cup, watched the surface move. “Most people look through me.”

She felt the urge to correct him rise and fall. It would be a lie. She didn’t move.

“I didn’t plan to stop.”

He lifted his shoulders, a small motion that loosened something between them. “Good. Plans ruin everything.”

They drank. The wine hit sharper this time. She noticed the warmth gather where she didn’t expect it to, shifted her foot against the concrete until it faded to something manageable.

“You think this is pointless,” he said.

She looked at him then, really looked. “I don’t.”

He tapped the edge of the table with one finger. “Most would. You ever wonder if I’m trouble?”

“I haven’t made a call on that.”

He leaned back a little, weight shifting into the crate. “Reasonable.”

Air moved through the underpass, lifting grit and paper, the sound of traffic bending for a second before settling again. She tracked it without looking up and let the quiet hold.

“Tell me more about the job,” he said.

“It’s loud. Words everywhere. People trying to shine a light on things that already shine.”

“You sound finished with it.”

“I’m finished pretending it carries weight.”

He looked at her for a moment, measuring something she couldn’t place. “You’re finished putting up a front.”

She met his eyes. “I’m sorting that out.”

She hadn’t meant to stay, but now the quiet between them felt less like space and more like touch.

She leaned in, just slightly.

“What’s your name?”

“Serge,” he said.

She nodded. “Dana.”

When she stood to go, he didn’t move. He only said, “Take care, Dana.”

The sound of her name stayed. She walked until the street found its rhythm again, but the way he said it kept turning back up, like it was still looking for a place to land.

The next day dragged. Coffee tasted off. Conversations drifted past without touching down. She moved through the office the way she moved through crowded sidewalks, aware of everything but connected to none of it. The city cleared a path with its usual indifference, which she found oddly comforting.

By the time she headed home, the air had cooled. When she reached the underpass, she saw the light before the structure. The table was there. He was there, same as before, posture steady in the glow.

A police car was parked up the block. She didn’t know if they were watching him or something else.

She kept walking.

He looked up. “Evening.”

She glanced toward the parked car. “They here for you?”

He shook his head. “They’re always around. Someone’s fighting, someone’s high, someone’s bleeding. They don’t always stop. But they watch.”

She dropped into her usual place. It hit her that she had a usual place now.

They fell into conversation without needing to face each other. She told him about the office, the white walls that glared through every hour, the lights that never softened, the way the same ideas circled the room until someone pretended they were new. He listened without interrupting. His eyes stayed forward, like it was easier to follow her that way.

She finally stopped talking long enough to take the cup from his hand and drink. He didn’t stop her.

When she set it back down, he took a slow sip, same as always.

“Work takes more than it gives,” he said.

She couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with her or speaking from somewhere she hadn’t seen yet.

“You walk alone most nights,” he said.

“Usually.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

Her answer came fast. “No.”

He gave a short smile. “Should.”

She shifted, annoyed without knowing why. “I’m fine.”

He didn’t argue. He nodded, slow.

“Things are getting rougher. New stuff hitting the streets. People don’t know what they’re on. They don’t care. Makes it harder to see trouble coming.”

She didn’t let it go. “And you? You think you see it coming?”

He looked at her, steady. “I always know what I’m on.”

That landed wrong. She went still, caught off guard.

He caught her eye and held it long enough to make sure she understood. He wasn’t joking. She needed to take it seriously.

The comment pressed at her nerves. She glanced toward the street, expecting it to pass. It didn’t.

He watched her for a moment. “The city keeps score. You do too.”

She didn’t know what to make of that. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

“What does that even mean?”

“You notice everything. That kind of thing burns.”

She exhaled, sharp. “Why do you always talk like that?”

He looked at her. “Like what?”

“Like nothing means exactly what it sounds like.”

He shrugged. “What do you want from me?”

“A straight answer.”

He didn’t react right away. He watched her, like he was deciding whether that was fair.

“I said what I meant.”

She didn’t respond. She stood.

He stayed where he was and gave a nod. It still didn’t feel like goodbye.

She didn’t go home.

She told herself it was just a walk, but that wasn’t true. There was still too much in her chest, in her hands, in the way her jaw kept setting. He got under her skin and didn’t even try. Always talking like he knew something she didn’t.

She kept walking. When she reached the edge of campus, she crossed without thinking. The side door to the music hall was unlocked.

She heard the piano as she passed the first hallway, and she followed the sound without hesitating.

The auditorium was dark beyond the stage, where a single spotlight threw a concentrated circle of light onto the piano while the rest of the room stayed submerged in shadow.

The seats were empty, and whoever was playing continued without pause or concern for the silence around them. It was nine o’clock, which didn’t qualify as late, but the building felt finished for the day, shaped by a kind of routine vacancy.

The classrooms were dark, the side halls unlit, and the only illumination came from the commons areas. The seating sloped toward the stage in a shallow descent, the rows fixed in place by rusted brackets that held each folding chair against the concrete floor.

She dropped into a seat in the back row.

The song felt familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She opened the app and held her phone toward the stage. It identified the piece as Une Barque sur l’Océan by Ravel.

It felt adrift, and something in it kept slipping out of reach.

That felt right.

She slouched lower in the seat, let herself rest, let her mind go where it wanted.

She thought of dishes, laundry, a bill she hadn’t paid yet.

Then she thought of Serge naked, the same way she thought of dishes and bills. She felt no urgency in his nakedness filling her mind, the same way there was no urgency in the chores.

She allowed herself to question the length of his flaccid penis, and if he was circumcised. She wondered what made him hard.

Then she pictured herself lifting his penis between her thumb and index finger, the head of it still hooded in his foreskin, and inserting her tongue under his foreskin, licking until he was aroused.

Dana realized she was both willing and unwilling to perform oral sex on him just like she was both willing and unwilling to do the dishes with him. In this way, it became Schrodinger’s blow job.

She decided if he had somewhere to wash his wine glasses, he would wash them naked while she sucked on his flaccid penis. And if he had somewhere to wash his wine glasses, his concern would be the chores and her concern would be his hardness.

She stayed until the music stopped.

The next evening folds itself around her before she decides to return. She leaves the office late, shoulders tight, head full of language that has lost its purpose. Each meeting rewinds the one before it. Each word feels rented. She walks until the buildings thin and the air grows heavy with exhaust.

She reaches the underpass and notices it right away.

A tapestry hangs behind the table. The fabric is worn and uneven, the edges curled like it had been folded for a long time. She wonders where it came from.

One of the plywood partitions has a crack through the top half. The split runs wide, like something hit it hard.

She takes in the changes.

Something happened. She doesn’t know what.

He turned when he heard her.

The bruise under his eye was fresh. It looked swollen and dark, not fully settled. She looked again at the cracked partition.

“Evening,” he said.

She stepped closer. “What happened?”

He shrugged. “Some guy wanted my place.”

She waited.

“Nothing you need to worry about. It’s taken care of.”

He watched her for a moment, holding her eyes long enough to give her the chance to drop it.

“I’m glad you came back,” he said.

“It’s becoming a habit.”

“Habits are stronger than choices sometimes.”

“Did you have a bad day?” he asked.

“Everyone does.”

He nodded. “Most people say something.”

She looked at him. “You don’t.”

He held her gaze, steady. “That’s true.”

She started toward her usual spot, but he stopped her with a glance.

“Move the crate. Back to the wall,” he said. “Keep the table between you and the open side.”

She looked at him. “Why?”

His tone didn’t shift. “Just trust me this time.”

She wanted to push back. She didn’t like being told where to sit, and she liked even less the way he said it. But something in his voice closed the conversation before it started.

She moved the crate.

He pulled another beside her, angling it so his back was to the wall.

“I like to see the whole area,” he said.

She glanced at him. It felt a little paranoid.

“You high?” she asked.

“Pretty much always.”

He sat close enough that she could smell him. Sweat, street, maybe smoke. He probably hadn’t had a chance to shower in days.

She rested her arm on the table. Her forearm brushed his, and she let it stay there.

“All I do is earn rent.”

The words landed hard, like she’d thrown them at the table instead of speaking.

She hadn’t planned to say anything. Letting it slip felt like peeling something off too fast. The mix of relief and disgust settled in her throat.

Serge didn’t look at her right away.

“Could be worse,” he said. “You could think that’s enough.”

“Same thing.”

He lit a cigarette and exhaled through his nose. “All the kitchens I worked in, people ordered huge amounts of shit and gave up halfway through. They had too much pride to ask for less, so they ate half and I would eat the rest.”

“You think that means something.”

“It means I hate waste.”

The smoke moved slow across the light. She thought of her desk drawer, full of drafts that never made it past the first round.

She shifted slightly, closing the space between them until her shoulder touched his, her forearm already there. The contact was light, but it held.

Without speaking, she took the cigarette from his hand, drew in the smoke, then passed it back.

He didn’t look at her, and she didn’t explain.

“You have someone?” he asked.

“No.”

“Good.”

She looked over. “Why good?”

He shrugged. “You speak more freely.”

“I don’t.”

“Freer than you think.”

He watched the smoke rise. “You’d probably prefer if I said something tragic. Family, house, name. All gone.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“No. But you already filled in the blanks.”

She turned toward him. “Is that a guess or a dig?”

“Neither. I watch people.”

“And what do you see?”

He didn’t pause. “A woman trying not to be seen, and getting it wrong.”

The sentence moved through her, slow and exact. She didn’t answer. She looked down at the table, traced the grain with her thumb.

After a while, she said, “You ever miss it?”

“What.”

“Everything you lost.”

He didn’t answer right away.

“Sometimes,” he said. “But not like people think.”

“You ever think about leaving?” she asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Where would you go? Cook again?”

He shook his head. “Can’t pass a drug test.”

She didn’t answer.

He flicked ash off the cigarette. “It’s not romantic, Dana. It’s just where I ended up.Same shit, different street. Everywhere is the same.”

“Not everywhere,” she said.

He looked at her, expression unreadable.

He stood up fast, sharper than usual.

“Go to the bedroom,” he said.

She hated being told what to do, but his voice left no space for argument. She didn’t push it.

He nodded toward the broken partition.

She stepped behind it.

A sleeping bag lay over flattened cardboard. Blankets were piled at one end, and a few worn clothes were scattered across them. She wouldn’t have called it a bedroom, but apparently he did.

A man’s voice echoed from farther down, loud and slurred. None of the words made sense. It wasn’t Serge.

She stayed still.

The voice kept going, climbed for a moment, then drifted farther off.

He stepped behind the partition.

She looked up. He met her eyes and gave a small nod.

She went back for her cup, returned with it, and pulled out her phone. She found the Ravel and let it play, low but clear.

“Dance with me,” she said.

He didn’t answer. Just stepped closer.

They stood together in the narrow space, her hand on his shoulder, his hand steady at her back. They moved slowly near the sleeping bag, not in rhythm, not out of it either.

Nothing about it made sense. Not the song, not the room, not the way they held each other near a sleeping bag pressed into concrete.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.

After a while, he said, “You should go.”

“Yeah,” she said and slipped her phone into her coat pocket.

He just sat down again, same spot, same posture, as if none of it had happened.

She walked home through streets that felt scraped clean of anything useful. Every sound seemed to carry too far. The wine sat thick in her throat.

At home, she stepped into a cold shower.

She dried her hair but didn’t bother with the rest.

The towel hung loose around her shoulders as she opened a window and let the night air in.

Then she slid down the wall and sat beneath it, bare legs pulled in, the floor cold against her skin.

The day passed without shape. She moved through it, but nothing held.

She didn’t check the time when she left the office.

At the underpass, a man she’d never seen before dragged a bag toward the curb. His face didn’t carry malice, only fatigue.

“They cleared it this morning,” he said. “All of it.”

“Where’d they go?”

He shrugged. “Farther down, maybe the river.”

She thanked him though he was already walking away.

The air under the bridge felt off. The hum above was louder now, stripped of rhythm. She stood for a long time, listening, waiting for a sound that wasn’t coming back.

At home, she left the lights off. The city glowed through the blinds, white patterns moving across the walls. She opened a bottle of wine and poured it into a mug. The first sip tasted clean. She hated it for that.

Her phone vibrated. Messages rolled in. Friends asking about dinner. A coworker sending a file. She set it face down.

Later, she searched his name, though she had nothing to search with. Just Serge. No last name. No city. No record. The results offered strangers. None of them right.

She closed the laptop and sat on the floor. The hum from the bridge was still in her ears. She could almost hear him say the word tomorrow. It hung in the air, untethered, like smoke that never burned.

She slept near the window and dreamed that his table and bedroom remained untouched, held in place as traffic continued to move overhead and people wandered past below, their voices lifting and scattering without aim. The next day folded in on itself. The office hummed as it always did. Dana moved through it aimlessly, words leaving her mouth and landing on the wrong surfaces she didn’t care to fix.

When the sun began to fade against the glass, she closed her computer and walked out without saying goodbye. Her body found the familiar path before she named it. The bridge stood empty. The concrete looked bleached where the table had been. She sat on the ground and watched for a long time, shoes passing, strangers hurrying, her attention lingering on the question of which of them once looked at him and then away, which now performed the same small erasure with her, which continued chasing a life that still presented itself as real.

A man passed with a bag of cans that rattled like bones. He glanced at her once and kept moving. The world refused to slow long enough for grief to take shape. She made her way home and poured wine from the fridge and drank until it lost its taste. She imagined him somewhere farther south. Her phone rested on the table, the screen dim. She lifted it, scrolled through faces turned toward light, advertisements threading between them, her own slogans rising back at her, each message repeating a promise she already knew was a lie.

She closed the screen. Her reflection refused to look away while the noise of the street traveled upward through the glass, a living pulse that wouldn’t fade.