Dusk

Dusk came and the room got even grayer and darker.

Stanley let go of her foot. She pulled it back, but not far.

-You have good hands, she said.

-I used to work with them. Before I tried to write.

-You wrote?

-Tried, Stanley corrected. Grad school, even.

She shifted on the cushion. Interested.

-What stopped you?

-A critic, he said. -Ju---- Cr----. You know her?

-The film critic?

-She taught a workshop. I submitted a piece about a bar. I thought it was gritty. Real.

Lena smiled.

-Let me guess. It wasn't.

-I described a pack of cigarettes on the counter, Stanley said. I called them Marlboro Red.

She laughed.

-What did she say?

-She held the paper up, Stanley said. She asked the class: "Who wrote this?"

He tried to mimic the voice.

-I raised my hand.

-She said: "Marlboro Red? As opposed to what? Marlboro Green? Blue? It’s lazy. It’s a commercial, not a description.”

Lena laughed harder.

-She tore me apart, Stanley said. Over a little brand placement.

-She was right, Lena said. It is lazy.

-I know. That’s why I stopped, he said, putting his hand in his pocket to twirl his Nokia.

-Because of one critic?

-Because she saw through the mask, Stanley said. She saw I was pretending to be tough.

Lena stopped laughing. She looked at him.

-We all pretend to be tough sometimes.

The room was almost black now, the boxy light of from the streetlamps and passing cars painting the wall.

Stanley reached into the bag again. He pulled out another book.

-“Dance the Eagle to Sleep,” he said. Marge Piercy.

Lena squinted.

-Another feminist? she asked.

-Dystopian, Stanley said. Teenage revolutionaries. More 70s stuff.

He flipped the pages. He knew the passage. He had marked it. It wasn't about the revolution. It was about the characters finding solace in each other.

-Read, she said.

Stanley read. He kept his voice steady, it was a charged passage.

Stanley stopped reading. It was quiet. Lena didn't move. She was staring at his hands.

-That was... graphic, she said.

-It’s honest, Stanley said.

-It’s unexpected, she said. For a book about politics.

-Politics is about people, Stanley said. And people need touch.

She looked up at him.

-Is that what you think? she asked.

-I think we're all starved.

He put the book down on the table and sat back on the couch next to her.