A cou­ple emerged from two heavy doors at the National Arts Centre (Human Resources entrance) as I was on the 95 today, pass­ing down the Mackenzie King Bridge. One was a woman, very slen­der, who looked as if she was in her early thir­ties but was prob­a­bly in her late thir­ties. The man was what some­one would con­sider an appro­pri­ate match, being slightly taller than her, and dressed in the same half-casual jeans-with-overcoat style.

For a moment, they stood out­side the doors, appro­pri­ately adorn­ing their shuf­fled coats and scarves accord­ing to the late win­ter weather. They looked as if they had emerged from the res­o­lu­tion of an emo­tional fight, or some very guilty sex in a broom closet.

Their first steps were almost lan­guid, but I could tell that it wasn’t a phys­i­cal exhaus­tion. They were pac­ing each other out, wait­ing for the other per­son to talk first, and their foot­steps were how they sub­con­sciously spoke to each other. It was as if they both knew that they had done some­thing wrong. Whether it was inten­tional or not was unclear, but it was cer­tain that nei­ther per­son was more at fault than the other.

They con­tin­ued walk­ing together, west­bound, with that slight dis­tance between them that’s reserved for cou­ples who are either try­ing to hide their phys­i­cal long­ing for the other or try­ing to express their angry emo­tions. I could tell that the silence was com­fort­able, as nei­ther of them spoke, because there weren’t any right words to be said at that moment.

I watched them in fas­ci­na­tion as they con­tin­ued down the street with their hands in their own pock­ets. Each of them under­stood exactly what the other was think­ing, but were hes­i­tant to say any­thing before know­ing how the other felt first. When they spoke next, it would be in one-word sen­tences. Their faces showed how much they had been through together, and how much was at risk at that very moment.

But it was how their silence spoke vol­umes of how well they knew each other that made me won­der if I would ever feel the same.