To the north the wind stirred, turning over leaf, leaf, leaf, leaf, a scattered rustling. The wind curled around Jacob, sitting on a park bench with an unlit cigarette. He wore a long black coat that accentuated his height because he liked to tower over people. He wore snug black sneakers because he liked it when people overlooked him. He reveled in contradiction. He was married in an imposingly ornate Catholic church by an ancient priest whose raiment outshone his own; it was probably the worst day of his life.
Is that behind me now, he wondered.
It was a dry autumn, but the clouds above pooled darkly. The brisk crunch of the leaves underfoot would soon give way to a slippery wet rot, before even the trees stood bare.
"Won't be long," he said to an empty street. It refused to answer, so he walked east into the city.
Hours later, he still had the cigarette. "Got a light?" he said to a man sitting on the curbside. The man passed him a tattered matchbook. He struck one flimsy cardboard match, and the flame curled back toward his fingers before the cigarette began to glow, burning his fingers a little. He inhaled once, blew the smoke out slowly. Then he threw the barely-touched cigarette on the ground and stamped it out. The man on the sidewalk looked horrified. Jacob stared a challenge at him, then took off down the street.
He needed something to occupy his hands, so he tore a vibrant red leaf from a maple tree as he walked past. He twirled it angrily between his fingers and glared at the other pedestrians.
Every girl he passed was Christine, her hips swaying and her hair swinging. Every guy was that fucker Roger.
Jacob walked out onto the steel bridge. "Stay off tracks," the sign said, and he did. The camera he knew was hidden somewhere would normally demand he disobey, but he wasn't in the mood. He leaned against the rail overlooking the dark water, probably polluted, and dropped the leaf. It circled down, down, until it touched the river. If this is love, he thought, fuck it. He continued west.
It wasn't as if he took marriage lightly. If anything, he was more committed than most. More than Christine ever had been. When she came to confess to him he was more than willing to listen, but the more he heard the more he was convinced that it wouldn't stop there. She hadn't even realized what marriage meant, what it meant to be constant and faithful. "A month," he had wanted to yell, "We've been married a month." Instead, he had walked out of their tiny apartment and onto the leaf-strewn streets.
A month, he realized as he came into the industrial district, was as long as they had known each other before getting married. Everyone said it was too fast, and now he knew they had been right. It wasn't too fast for him, of course, but Christine hadn't been ready. He should have seen that from the beginning. They had met at a bar and hit it off immediately, he an insurance representative, she a physical therapist. Barely a week had passed before they were confiding in each other. She revealed the insecurities she had nurtured ever since dumping her old boyfriend; he let slip that he'd never even been in a relationship that he considered romantic. The next week he was sleeping at her flat every night, living together all but officially, and three weeks after that they eloped. A week was a long time.
The funny thing is, he thought, a month is no fucking time at all. He looked at his watch. 9:00, it said. The silhouettes of the factories and warehouses encircling him blended almost indistinguishably into the night gloom. Solitary streetlights glimmered at intervals, but did nothing to pick out the features of their surroundings. He walked slowly now. The first few raindrops fell, and he took refuge at a bus stop. They'd only come every hour at this time of night, he thought. He took out his phone and rested it on his lap.
The rain grew steadily heavier, until it pounded desperately on the roof of the shelter. His fingers entered Christine's number from memory, tentatively, and pressed "Call." He lifted the phone to his ear.
He heard Christine answer the call, but she didn't say anything.
"Christine?"
Silence.
"I'm sorry. Do you want to talk?"
There was a pause before she answered, quietly, "Yeah."
"I'm downtown. Can you pick me up?"
"I'll be right there."