Night

He let the door swing gently open in front of him, the screen slightly protesting on its old hinges as he stepped out onto the porch.  The frogs were in full throat, the fireflies alighting across the deep dark lawn and a few moths stirred and danced against the porch light.

He held a cigar in his right hand to stave off the mosquitos and in his left hand was a double pour of bourbon with no ice to dampen the taste.

Right now she was in a perfectly pressurized airplane hurtling across the Atlantic, much closer to the stars then he was, her arc away from him, just a red-blinking streamlined piece of metal flying at 38,000 feet above a coal black ocean.  He imagined she was sleeping.

He hoped she was, pulling a sip from his drink and then inhaling a bit of the cigar to keep the bugs away.

Somewhere Pandora was playing...a Chris Botti radio station that he had hoped she would like...she had enjoyed one song but he wasn't ready to declare victory yet.

Instead he just watched the high contrails of blinking lights above him, wondering where the people were flying.  Heading away.

He enjoyed this time of the evening, when it was relatively still...his mind a calm room...a thought of her could walk in like somebody exiting a shower in a towel...a pleasant disruption.  A surprise.  Strolling languidly around, he narrowed his thoughts to just such an image...just murmuring of conversations...nothing heavy.  All light.

He tried to think about how far away she was from him, the speed of the airplane and the curvature of the earth and realized the math was too hard.  Super far was where he landed on an answer.  He wondered if she could see outside or if it was jet black.  

Probably sleeping he hoped again.

He returned to the thought of her walking around in his mind again and closed his eyes, the frogs and the crickets and the trumpet music soothing him as his cigar gently glared orange and his bourbon swirled brown in his glass, a color of her eyes and yet another reminder of her on this perfect summer night.