by Trelaine Ito

Creative Nonfiction Contest Runner Up

We used to walk every night, Kevin and I.

Just two lost souls in seemingly empty streets, a thin layer of nature blanketing parked cars, stagnant and immobile. As we stroll through the middle of dark roads, birds somewhere in nearby trees lament, it seems, at the silence. We rarely see other people, leaving us alone to talk freely (and sometimes shout, in jest, of course), presenting animatedly the nothingness of our days or attempting to elicit meaning behind our isolation, then complaining about our jobs and apartments, jabbing fingers into the night, waving hands wildly in the air as visual exclamation points.

We stop to take the same pictures of the Capitol in the rain or under moonlight, and end our excursions on nearby street corners or in our respective front yards to tie up the many conversation threads left open, following them to unknown conclusions, never wanting to end until we succumb to exhaustion and promise to return to each unfinished thread the next night. But we never really return to our old stories because loneliness, it seems, produces endless tales, as if spending a day trapped with your thoughts only makes you want to express each one vocally in so much detail as to breathe life into them. And with our consistent talks, we unconsciously piece together mosaics of each other’s life—distinct stories interlaced over months, shaped with narratives, and refined with smatterings of our past—creating the most complete picture of the other’s truest self.

.·゜゜·　　·゜゜·．

Every night Kevin would end by saying “See you tomorrow.”

Our walks became habits, midnight rituals for which we (or maybe just I, in secret) impatiently waited as the daylight’s hours dragged through a long, wasted summer. At night, we livened up our city, pretending to be reporters in the field, presenting to an absent audience secrets as we saw them—museums with eerie music (clear signs of the occult), or mysterious ice cream trucks parked along the Nation Mall (Serving whom? We were ready to find out!), or memorials darkened by broken lights (Governmental neglect? Or signals for unknown?).

The weather amused us with its frequent surprises (“Porch weather!” we’d scream at thunderstorms after mistaken forecasts), as did the infinite roaches scurrying across the sidewalks, fleeing from our falling steps. We provided a public service, noting the geyser of water spewing out of a broken sprinkler on 15th Street, or highlighting various government buildings’ rainbow visages honoring Pride Month. The aches of an uncharacteristically quiet city spilled out into the streets, and we were there to report on them to the world. 

Always with an undercurrent of seriousness, I tried to drag Kevin’s laughter out (successful more often than not). He was our first audience member, a focus group of one, judging the worth of our content. I told him we could make it big, that we were creators and comedians, that we had a gift, that together we could live happier lives, pursuing this project: KLTI News, Snapchat’s DC affiliate. 

I knew I was funnier than him because, pretty regularly, I’d make Kevin guffaw—not a subtle chuckle but a full-bellied, open-mouthed laugh where he’d bend over while jumping backwards, wearing a wide, toothy grin and clapping exactly once. But Kevin did his best as a news anchor, embodying a level of solemnity necessary for effective parody.

“Good evening, Washington. Tonight’s top story: Ghosts? Or just an overactive imagination? Have we encountered proof of the beyond? Or are we beyond sanity? We go live to our reporter in the field for more. Trelaine, over to you.”

Kevin, at first, only agreed to be recorded after I begged him,  but following our first few nights, he became the one to initiate most of our reports—“One-take Kevin,” he’d insist on being called, even as my phone filled with his outtakes.

.·゜゜·　　·゜゜·．

Two years passed by, and with nearly complete mosaics in hand, we continued walking and talking and reporting, just two wild and loud companions in the midnight streets. 

I thought we’d always spend our nights walking, but as the pandemic eased, our routines started to shift, to decay, shedding their former stability as our old lives emerged from their cocoons. 

We didn’t have enough time for long walks anymore, truncating them as if performing a perfunctory task. Slowly, we started to see other walkers—first as pairs of residents with similar ideas then as gaggles of tourists breaking through the formerly still nights.

We were no longer truly alone. 

Bars reopened and concerts returned and there were other things to do. It was now safe (or safer, at least) to see friends and strangers alike again. We made plans separately.

Still, every night, I asked him to walk.

“Ok,” he obliged, but less and less willingly. He’d try to cancel and I, sensing a burgeoning distance, would actively gaslight him. 

He was never really a friend or he was being selfish, I’d yell (through text with multiple exclamation points and the occasional all caps). Then, in a flash of regret, I’d apologize. Our closeness made me afraid that if he was pulling away, I’d be alone again, abandoned. So I preemptively pushed him away (but was that really what I wanted? No. And so I’d pull him back). I needed him and his time and his audience. I wanted to be the only one who made him laugh. I was mad, it seemed, that we truly weren’t the only two souls left in this world. Back to normalcy was the enemy, one whom I couldn’t defeat. So I chose, instead, to fight Kevin. To take out my anger—at change, at being stuck, at loneliness, and ultimately at myself—on him, believing that we were an unbreakable duo.  Spiraling into the Scylla and Charybdis of aggression and regret, shouting accusations meant to dictate his time, I’d attack him in desperation, and then immediately beg for forgiveness.

“I’m sorry,” I’d repeat over and over again.

In self-pity I’d splay our one-sided feuds on social media, daring our mutual friends to take his side. Then I’d ask him to walk.

“Ok,” he’d reply.

On nights when he saw his other friends, I’d wallow (aware entirely of the hypocrisy, given that I saw my own friends without him, even after he asked to be invited, as if wanting to keep him to myself). I confronted him night after night until finally, in a moment of frustration, he shouted, “You’re treating me like your boyfriend.”

He paused for a breath as I stared at him, stunned by the truth, unwilling to admit that, maybe, he was right.

Finally, he muttered under his breath, “You can’t control what I do.”

He walked me home but left in silence.

.·゜゜·　　·゜゜·．

We haven’t walked since. 

The comfort of speaking to Kevin every day begins to dissolve. As the streets fill again with harmonies of other people’s conversations, my apartment takes on the quiet. Twice boosted, I return to society, making an effort not to be home every night. I imagine loneliness manifests differently for me than him, that he derives comfort from himself (while I’m repulsed by my own mosaic).

We stop speaking. And as I rebuild my connections with other friends, they sometimes ask about our reports.

“When will KLTI return?”

I pause. I had spotted Kevin recently at an event. I invited him to an after party on a friend’s nearby roof. Finding time to speak alone, he, “a little drunker than expected,” spoke more candidly than maybe he intended, confessing the finality of our separation.

“Maybe in two years, we’ll be back to normal, but until then…”

His voice trailed off as I stopped hearing his words, turning instead to stare out into the cityscape.

“I’m not trying to be cruel. I just don’t want to be around you right now.”

The next night I text him: “Walk?”

“No,” he replies. “I think we’re done with walks.”

Two years will end up being a lifetime—just as the past two years have been its own contained existence, the happiest, most stable period of my life.  A time when I, through conversation and reports, both uncovered and constructed a truest self. And then, with my own hands, shattered it.

In the interim, Kevin maintains his silence (a series of blue messages, unbroken, exposes my desperate attempts to conjure a reply).

Outside our windows, we both have trees. 

“It’s barely midnight and those damned birds started up again,” I text Kevin. 

I stare at my phone for the next hour. No response. 

The birds continue singing, as if lamenting the silence.