Pretty

Night no longer welcomes us. Amber and I used to lose ourselves in the then-unfamiliar roads and paths in our new town, ending up on strangers' farms, talking under falling stars. This is foreign to us now, our waking scheduled before 7 am and our map of this town settled. If you dropped me within five miles of my apartment, I could be somewhere I recognized within a ten-minute walk.

Last night, an ambulance ba-wooped in our development after I had settled into bed. I threw on insufficient clothes -- for modesty, if not the heat -- sure I would see my neighbor wheeled out of his apartment for the last time. (He is elderly, has terminal cancer, and gives little consideration to fighting his alcoholism. It will happen too soon.)

But no. The ambulance turned on the lights and siren to facilitate turning around. Tykes on trikes infest my development at all hours of late. Adorable though they are, they are also small and daring enough to end up under tires.

I was left in exercise pants, an alpaca hoodie, and not a stitch more. The hill across from us glittered with green flashes. At first, I was surprised that fireflies were out, but then I remembered that it was July. The bugs have every right to the summer night. I am the interloper in their domain. They are right to keep far away from my greedy clutches, as though I could hope to steal a little glow from them by contact.

Amber and I go to Clermont for Fourth of July fireworks, though neither of us overwhelms with patriotism these days. Our country has spent at least a decade seeming less like the city on the hill and more like, as someone put it, a developing country in a Gucci belt (one that may have a hate symbol as the buckle now).

After patronizing the only food truck -- we were promised plurality -- we lounge on the lawn among several hundred strangers, eating, monitoring children, or engaging in small games. A woman repeatedly shouts to everyone that there is a Black child playing near the wood and who does this Black child belong to -- making clear that she uses the word only because this is a public space but not because she wishes to.

"It's like a family party," Amber says.

"Except we don't know any of these people."

"Right, just like at a family party."

I do not hesitate to love Amber in the daylight, after I get home from dealing with my juvenile delinquents, before she leaves for work to try to save animals. We have always made time for one another. This precious, commonplace time has involved moonlight far less than it had. She murmurs every 9 pm that it is past her bedtime, though she is often waylaid by pet care. I doubt she meets a tenth of 9 PMs under bedsheets. I have always felt a fraction guilty if I am even tangentially the cause of her being outside of the bed when this hour rolls around, even though my blood craves drive-in popcorn and watered-down, overpriced drinks at clubs.

This evening, as day dips behind the gentle curve of the mountains, I see her more clearly. I can delve more deeply into a corner of our love I do not often have a circumstance to visit. She is younger here, as though daylight and moonlight Amber age at their own paces.

She insists we get something from the ice cream truck (not a food truck) over my caloric objections. (I log all my food and do not relish the expense.) She is placated by her first Choco Taco, though she is sure we could make it better as she offers me a bite. (Bites of food offered by one's lover contain no calories.) My Good Humor Bar has ten fewer calories, which might be a lesson to me somehow.

The fireworks are scheduled for 9:30. We have hours yet, so we roam the property, its gardens especially. Amber is frolicsome and light. When classes end for the semester, she demonstrates so palpable a relief that our apartment brightens, though it may in part be that she at once turns to one home improvement task or other to fill what might otherwise be idle, relaxed hours.

My wife mentions the names of some plants. I nod, but they are gone from my mind with haste, leaving little impression.

"I could be saying anything," she says. "You wouldn't know."

I spend a few minutes in a bit, telling her about the Widow's Tears, Convolvuli, and Purple Eyes, before pointing out a clump of what I assure her are Clitorises.

She laughs. "Those are wild grapes."

"So, you mean to say I still haven't found them?"

We settle on a hill as the sky grows too dark for wandering.

It is away from the throng of parents with their kids, beside a near encampment of late middle-aged, earthy people who, in short order, take out a guitar and fiddle and erupt into folk songs. I can't say this only happens at night -- it couldn't possibly -- but it happens more by moonlight and happens now.

Amber purloins my alpaca hoodie to cover herself for modesty's sake -- its best use. Tonight, the only ones who would pay attention to her pale legs beneath her cranberry dress are the mosquitos and me. I'm unsure whose nip is a more significant threat to her, but she presses her head on my lap and whispers, "Night-night." It isn't even 9 pm.

I promise to wake her when the fireworks start. From our vantage point, we can see obscured explosions far away, behind tall hills. These are not ours, but 9:30 comes and goes with no fanfare, then ten. Amber wishes to be in bed, so she says she wants to go, then relents we ought to wait a little longer, having already spent the time and money on this sunk cost.

We reach the clot of children, parents soothing their sprogs as they yank them to the parking lot unsatisfied. We wait but only participate in the funk of tension of other people demanding to know where the main event is.

It comes out that the fireworks are tied to the conclusions of a minor league baseball game -- something not mentioned in the advertising or when we paid our admission -- and the teams were in no rush for a conclusion. We are home when the fireworks start around eleven and see nothing, but the night with Amber was far from wasted.

last watched: The Sandman
reading: In the Dust of This Planet