My Cardboard Balcony

It's A Date by Belinda Roddie We kissed over lukewarm bowls of soup at the tiny bistro that was probably going to close down in the next four months, as the owner was getting old, and her bones were beginning to poke through the folds of her skirt as she creaked her way across the outside dining area. We kissed when it was dark enough so that the spindly lamps glowed orange, because when they did that, you could see our silhouettes moving, but not our faces, and not the idiosyncratic fidgeting of our hands slipping under each other's black coats. We kissed once we knew that our parents wouldn't care anymore about the consequences, and we knew that God had given up on saving us, and we knew that the facade of civil society was pulling off its decaying mask to reveal a decaying laugh on its decaying lips. Theater has a funny way of reminding us of just that: That it's all theater, and the man in charge of drawing the curtain across the sta

The heatwave was near its end by the time my wife finally acquiesced and purchased an air conditioning unit for our window. As the sun set, however, we could see sheets of fog billowing across the gray lips of the bay. Small sailboats had settled onto the water, and I gave my significant one of my signature "looks." "What?" she snapped. "We'll use it for the next time it gets hot as balls."