Sometimes, you need to get outside. Dodge the drunks stumbling through the halls, the people standing and waiting for their groups, the familiar faces. Maybe because it’s snowing outside, and you don’t want to miss it, when the sky aches the same orange as you do.
This isn’t your scene, but there’s no one to back you up, so you smile and nod. Fake kisses and obligatory hugs, thinking, “I don’t know you, and I never will”. A façade to appear normal, when memories come flooding back. Sitting alone at a table, wondering why you came in the first place. Times without a person to make you a promise. Moments with other people’s wives, because he’s secure like that, and wishing for nothing else. Walking these halls alone the way you’re doing now. Memories you wish were a little more distant. Maybe you’ll come back one day, and break even, or maybe even come out ahead.
Sometimes you need to take a picture of something, anything, because nothing you see here is how you feel, and it’s the only way you can scream.
Maybe it’s not so much outside, where you’re running, as away.
Can’t tell you how many fire escapes, stairwells, attics, and rooftops have served this purpose for me.
That reminds me of the scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, when Paul Varjak and José da Silva Pereira escape the ridiculous party down a fire escape. There was always a certain romanticism in it.