Sat on the metro car, she watched the Potomac pass by as dusk fell on the line. She leaned her head against the plexi-glass window and felt a distinct smear of product against the pane. Her hand lurched into her clutch and fumbled for her phone. It was a tiresome day.

A handful of people got off on Arlington Cemetery station. A man in an ill-fitting plaid shirt and faded khakis; the sound of his complicated lanyard clacked against the buttons of his shirt syncopated his 4/4 step towards the platform doors. Once Arlington was a property of the confederate general Robert E. Lee, beyond his treason against the U.S. for slavery, the bastard didn’t pay his taxes as well. The government thought it would be fitting to honor the Union war-dead with a high hill looking over the capitol while also denying their Confederate traitor his home. The first military burial there was William Christman, he died at the age of 19 from measles while serving in Pennsylvania’s 67th Infantry. She knew this because as a child her uncle took her, the Whitmans boys, Jane Redmond, and Mikey Carter on a walking tour. On that November Saturday they were all still children, they were all happy, not yet burdened with the melancholy of maturity. There were so many Novembers between that Saturday and now. Jane moved to New Jersey to study fashion, the Whitmans moved to Germany, and Mikey died in Afghanistan. She was the only one left from that walk through the glory and graves, but that was about to change. She would escape the gravity of this place.

Turning the key on the triple set locks of her apartment door she meandered the remnants of her one bedroom. The dust ceaseless clouding her book jackets, the stains of the laminate counters in her kitchen. Never again would she listen to the gasps of the aching ceiling. In the three years she spent living there she never once found out, not for lack of trying of course, who Timothy was – or why his name was written inside the tank of her toilet. His name became a meme amongst her girlfriends, a prayer for a successful night out.

“Let’s find Timothy tonight!”

She had told her landlord she wouldn’t renew her lease, the pre-furnished basement suite felt more and more like a roadside motel as parts of herself disappeared to craigslist and Facebook market buyers. Was this practicable? She toyed with her insecurity as she inspected the apartment. Here she had decent rent, a place to cook and host friends, she had built a small life but her own. Of course thriving is never easy here, not for most, she had to work at it – at work and at home. What would her shift manager say when she didn’t show up to open? What would her girlfriends say when she decamped with this boy? Would they call her a fool as she was deleted from their group chat? Her apartment would be scooped up by some Georgetown student within days. Victor and Rebecca would double or triple the rent and it would still be a bargain for a trust fund kid. Rebecca had a sharp tongue whenever they crossed paths outside.

“Glad to see you’re making the most of our recycling bin Madeline.”

“How bold of you to go sleeveless Madie. I could never.”

There would be no longing for Rebecca’s commentary after she left.

This new home, not yet seen, would come for her after the trip. They would cross the great continent together and settle in Oklahoma. She wouldn’t be Madie anymore, she would be Madeline, with respect on her name. She wouldn’t be trapped in a life of quiet desperation like her mother had been. Even now, in her adulthood and having taken so many defense courses, she worried on every walk home from the metro-station of malefactors. The lurking violence that is any unassuming man on the street, “like walking through a bear cage,” her kickboxing instructor said. She knew it all gave her heartburn. As a girl she watched her father come home screaming drunk for her mother, ruining all manner of décor, but her never reached for her. He would threaten her compliance but would stop short on lurching his palm back on account of her being “a girl.” With no one to protect her, she learned to protect herself as best she could. When her mother passed, his drinking worsened, she left school early, and eventually found herself here. A decade and a half spent panicked for hours between pay periods, learning to make a feast from crumbs for want of a life she saw on network television. That unending fear and timidity for living wore on her more however, she was weary of living if this is all living meant for her. Once or twice a month, if the paychecks granted, she and her friends would gather on a Saturday night, cobbling the remnants of their wages, they’d buy into wine, and snacks, and other stimulants before crowding into a bus and finding any ladies’ night venue where they could peel drinks off priapism brain-ed boys and dance out the agony of girlhood. She would take to these nights like mass until dawn before lurching vape-coated to a Sunday side-hustle, sometimes arriving still in her club attire. The novelty of this celebration wore thinner as years so too wore on. What once was a party of ten whittled down to five, sometimes three. This hard living was about to be behind her, this undesirable and undeserved life was being left behind.

She would find something greater with Ron. Ron was gentle eyed, hard-working, genuine. She would abscond with this coarse haired boy as he drove off to some new place the Army wanted him. She remembered the first time she saw him on her phone, running her fingers over the text of his biography like book spines in a library, photos of him in a throng of combat uniformed men, walking a massive dog, holding a trout. It seemed like a few weeks ago, she saw him standing at the bar sipping a beer eyeing his phone with the other hand. He found her gaze and put his phone away, adjusting his cap and gripping her tightly with a hug. In the coming dates they would get to know each other until he started meeting her after any of her myriad jobs. He would drive her home in his pick-up truck or take her on whatever errands she had left for the day. He brought her to see the newest Fast and Furious movie, she felt spoiled as he walked her into the Alamo Drafthouse just before it started “the seats are reserved just for us” he said as he ordered a burger and fries. He didn’t hide that they were dating, his Instagram profile showed her, his hand around her hip. When he sang along to the radio while they drove he’d look at her when he crooned pet names in the lyrics. It was fun. For the first time in a long time something was fun. Being wanted and romanced. Sat on the couch or supine in bed, he would tell her stories about far off countries he’d been. He told her the names of the missions he had served in, though none of them made quite much sense to her. He had crossed the planet a dozen times over and she hadn’t left the tri-state area. Eventually, Victor and Rebecca found out she was seeing him and forbade her to have overnight guests.

“We can hear you making noise at all hours.” Victor chided via WhatsApp.

One evening Rebecca confronted Ron as he stood on the sidewalk having a cigarette, after that she almost always stayed overnight at his.

Dusk forfeited into night, the smear of her fingers where she keyed the code on her phone disfigured her reflection in the glass. She had two messages in drafts. One was for her group chat, the other was for her father. She loved her friends more than she could ever care about her father but she felt obligated to let all parties know she wouldn’t ever be coming back. Her dad was slower now, the drinking wore him down. He would miss her, but only in so much that she reminded him of who he used to be. The only tether to living that kept him enduring. She would miss her friends however, when she was sick with COVID – no doubt from some unmasked customer, they UberEats’d her soup and shared their streaming passwords. Another day, they had a garden party in the National Arboretum settled next to the Corinthian columns in the Eclipse Meadow – she briefly dated a boy who worked at the Department of Agriculture. She remembered the Anthropologie sundress she found in a Rosslyn thrift store and how everyone said the sunflower print looked lovely on her.

She couldn’t wait much longer now, sitting in the bay window looking up into the street, letting Victor’s indica from above drift to meet her. She could hear the jazz playing upstairs, that meant it was a spaghetti night when he would cook for Rebecca. She remembered how her mother would make spaghetti on Thursdays, and put a meatball on top of the noodles like a sundae cherry. Having sold off her lamps, the shadows grew tall and cast the room into dull greys. The pianist was taking a solo upstairs. She recalled how her father hated jazz, stomping to the radio whenever it played while complaining

“Enough of that jungle music! I hate this crap as much as I hate rap.”

The defeated face of her mother, saintly dressing the TV trays for supper, how life had defeated her through her father, through toil, through mundanity. Her mother’s soft defusing of her father reverbed against her memories.

“Sweetie Bear, our first date was at a jazz bar. Our first dance? Be nice.”

She shot to her feet fearing what awaited her. She needed to get out of this place. Ron would get her out of this place. He would buy her new life, respect, maybe even a love worth living for. Why should she settle for the gloom that cursed her mother? She shouldn’t. Ron would hold her close with open arms, and escape her away from his black hole.

She held her luggage close in the late day, stuffed like fish in a school inside the metro car. He bought a ticket for her to come along. They agreed she would stay awhile, feel things out, and maybe – MAYBE stay for good. The metro doors opened wide and dozens of people poured out like water on the platform. The black ceiling of the sky reached down before being repelled by the burning white florescence of Washington National Airport. The gullwing overhead of the metro station, the yellow-red hue of caution and brake lights, the din of travelers coming and going.

He was waiting for her at Terminal 2, the American Airlines desk. A drop of water fell from the concrete above, she touched her cheek to wipe it away. Her skin felt cold, foreign. She reached out beyond the veil to find her mother for guidance, for motivation. The clatter of the terminal, of flights and baggage, of passengers and alerts. This liminal space where who she was reached its terminus and who Ron would grant her to be was not quite yet. In a few hours she would be in Oklahoma with him. The ticket was printed. Escape from this place was there for the taking. Her unsurety rose up like a hand from the grave, holding her in place.

A chime sounded overhead as an announcer prescribed passengers flying to Will Rogers World Airport to report to gate D35. She saw him looking around for her near the security checkpoint.

“All passengers, flight AA549 please report to gate D35.”

She tumbled through all of the space of the skies. He was calling her, he would suffocate her. She squeezed her phone in her palm despite it vibrating incessantly.

“RON ♡” the screen read.

No. No, it could never be. She would never leave this place. That midnight grave hand holding her to the tile floor, she watched Ron’s head and eyes dart rapidly as he held his phone to his ear. She could hear his heart cry

“Madie? Madie!”

The agents ushered him into the queue for security. He stared at his phone one last time before pressing the red button and settling it into his jeans pocket. Corpse like bloodless in her face, she watched him slip into the crowd. Her expression not registering him as anyone different or anyone else on the street.