Fight 5.2

     The shouting came from the white house to my right. They were all white houses, or off white houses. It was St Patrick’s Day and a Thursday and about 10 pm. Albany was already drunk. Children crossed slowly in the middle of the street, cop cars idled at stoplights, and the fluorescent lights of the dollar pizza place on the corner illuminated a swarm of white legs like moths around a porch light.

    All the houses looked the same. Full recycling cans sat on the island of grass between the street and the cracked sidewalk. The shouting came from the house with the garage in the back of the driveway with its lights on. I could make out a small gathering of people I couldn’t see but for the red light of a burning spliff.

     We were walking to the bar I believe. My friends moved ahead, their arms swaying but I stopped to listen to the man yell at this girl. I stopped and tapped the toe of my boots on the cement. It was warm for March but I still shivered in my t-shirt.

      He was screaming now. Something about her being out late or the dress she was wearing. I can’t remember. I couldn’t see who they were but they had given themselves a considerable distance from their friends, making their way down the driveway and away out of the light. His back was to me. He suddenly got very quite.

     I put the bottle I was walking with down on the lawn. I bopped a bit on my toes.

     “Oh you’re gonna cry like a bitch,” she said. “That’s right. This is how it always goes. I do something and you get upset and cry like a baby. You do not deserve me.”

      He was still backing up and she was right, I could hear him quietly crying. I picked my beer up off the mixture of thin dirt and grass and I left. I walked without really knowing where I was going, I was told the bar was on Edwards but I couldn’t read the signs. She was right. He was crying. A soft whimper, like a dog yipping in its sleep. Its legs twitching slightly but its deep breaths making its chest expand and contract on the floor.

     I wonder why I had left. But all the houses looked the same. So I finished my beer and kept walking.