Signal Fires

by Dani Shapiro

Sarah is probably waiting at the curb in her bright orange down jacket and the angora hat Mimi knitted for her. Jumping up and down to keep warm. Theo, his jacket unzipped, head bare. Legs poking out of gym shorts straight from basketball practice. You’ll catch your death of cold!

In the space between them, there is a whole lost world: street names, phone numbers, summer barbecues, broken bones, family dinners, shadows on walls, stolen turns, dappled light playing against floorboards. French toast sizzling in an iron skillet. Pages of homework strewn across the dining room table. Beethoven quartets on Saturday afternoons. The smell of black cavendish tobacco.

It isn’t misery that loves company—no, no. Happiness loves company, and misery—misery just wants to be left alone. Their small group of friends had begun to fray, divided between the lucky and the unlucky. The lucky ones—untouched, unscathed so far by the myriad possible cruelties of life—were attending opera and eating noodles in fish sauce.

This, Mimi thinks. This right here. The two of them, their quiet home. Their shared history. Everything they have built together, for better and for worse.

But they don’t move. They stay like this, two bodies so at home with each other that it is as if each of them had grown and shifted to accommodate the other’s shape over the years, like two grafted trees.