the guy says we should eat out tonight, but in queens. it’s code and when i do not answer him immediately, he tells me “come on,” like i am this dense about what this is between us.
in this malaysian greasy spoon, in a table behind us, some six or eight people keep on talking but no one seems to be listening to anybody in particular. there is a hallucinatory shrillness to their conversation, as if great news, a holy annunciation of sort, is unleashed amongst them.
driving home, the guy asks me to change the EZ pass tag on his car with another one he takes out from his pocket. after i did it, my hand grazes his right thigh, that part where his hair is prodigious. he lights a cigarette then cracks the window open. sometimes, when we drive along a stretch where there is no street light, i could see thin wisps of smoke rise from the burning end of his cigarette, quickening in the dark but never materializing to anything.