Equinox Morning

Ben woke up with a crick in his neck and a stone floor printing its pattern into his hip. Forty-two years old and he'd slept on a floor like a college kid. He lay still for a minute and let his eyes adjust to the gray light coming through the cracked iron door of the old surveyor's vault.

Lucille was beside him, still asleep, thirty-five and curled up under his jacket with her back against the wall. Her breathing was slow and even. And there, on the round rock in the middle of the floor, the egg was still standing. Straight up. Perfect. The sun had moved a whole night and the thing hadn't tipped.

He sat up slow, joints popping one after the other, and looked around the chamber. His dented silver flask was lying near the doorway where somebody had kicked it in the dark. The little ship engraved on the side caught the light. He picked it up and shook it. Maybe a swallow left.

He remembered the night in pieces. The equinox gathering up on the hill, the guy with the fire drum, the woman who kept explaining the benchmark to anybody who'd stand still. And Lucille, in a green work jacket, laughing at his dumb joke about industrial pumps. He'd asked her what she did and she said she tended a hyperbaric chamber at the clinic, and he'd said, honest to God, "So you babysit a pressure cooker," and she'd laughed so hard she had to grab his arm.

Then the walk down here. The door already ajar, the way it always is, people said. The egg balanced on the rock for the equinox, and the two of them sitting on the floor passing his flask back and forth, a few sips each and nothing more, like two people skipping class. They were grown adults, sober enough to say so, and they both knew it, and they'd talked about it plain before anything happened.

He remembered asking her. That was the part that stuck with him. He'd said, "Can I kiss you?" like a nervous man, and she'd said, "I was starting to worry you'd never ask." And then later, in the dark with the door open to the cool air, she'd said, "Slow, okay? I like slow," and he'd said, "Slow I can do."

He'd taken his time with her. He'd used his fingers first, and the lube from his travel bag, the little bottle he carried for no good reason for three years. She'd guided his hand and told him what she liked, no shyness about it. "There. Right there. Yeah." He'd put the condom on when she handed it to him from her jacket pocket, and she'd smiled at his raised eyebrows and said, "I came prepared. You want me to do it?" And he'd said yes, and she had, slow, watching his face the whole time.

He shook the flask again and felt something funny in his chest. Nostalgia, almost. But for what? For a night that ended eight hours ago? That was a new one. He'd had one-night stands before, a few, the last one four years back with a woman from a trade show in Denver, and he never once woke up the next morning wanting to keep anything. He usually woke up wanting a large coffee and a quick exit.

This morning he didn't want to exit.

Lucille stirred. He heard her jacket rustle and then her voice, thick with sleep. "You're still here."

"Apparently."

She sat up and pushed her hair out of her face. She saw the flask in his hand and smiled. "I figured you'd sneak out and be gone by sunrise. Guys who carry flasks like that always strike me as sneaker-outers."

"It was my dad's," he said. "I don't sneak. I limp. Floor's rough on a man my age."

She laughed and scooted over next to him, shoulder against his shoulder. She was warm. "So what's the plan, Ben? You going to catch your flight and forget my name by Ohio?"

"Benjamin. Nobody's called me Benjamin since my grandmother died."

"Benjamin, then." She bumped him with her elbow. "Well?"

He turned the flask over in his hands. "I don't fly out till tomorrow. I've got one more sales call in Nablus today and then I'm just... here."

"Here's good," she said. "There's a bakery in the village that opens at seven. The man makes bread with za'atar and it's stupid good."

He looked at the egg on the rock. Still standing. "How does it even do that?"

"Equinox. The pull is even in both directions, or that's the story. Old surveyors cut this chamber so the light hits the benchmark dead center twice a year. The egg thing's probably a trick of the floor being perfectly level. But I like the story better."

"Me too," he said, and he meant it.

She was quiet a minute. Then, "You went somewhere just now. I watched it happen. Where'd you go?"

He almost lied. He was good at lying, it was half his job. But she'd spent the night being straight with him about what she wanted and what she didn't, and it felt like owing her the same coin.

"My job's on the rocks," he said. "Fourth bad quarter in a row. My regional manager called before the gathering and left a message I haven't played yet. I know what it says though. They put guys like me on a plan, and the plan is a polite way of firing you in six months."

"Industrial equipment," she said. "That's what you said last night."

"Pressure vessels, actually." He laughed, short and dry. "Which is funny, because you run a pressure chamber and I sell pressure vessels and last night we..."

"Put two things under pressure," she said, and grinned. "Sorry. Bad joke. Go on."

"That's it, mostly. Forty-two, never married, last real relationship ended three years ago, and now maybe no job either. I sat down next to you last night partly because you were the best thing in that crowd and partly because I didn't want to think about the voicemail."

"And the egg," she said, pointing. "Don't sell the egg short."

"And the egg," he admitted.

She took the flask out of his hands, tipped the last swallow into her mouth, and capped it. "You know what I did before I moved here? Two years ago?"

"Something with pressure, I'm guessing."

"I worked a chamber in a hospital up north. My boyfriend ran the compressors. We lasted a year. When we broke up I took the first job posting that got me out of the country, and it was here. I didn't have a plan either. Some mornings I eat breakfast standing up over the sink and think, well, this is a life, I guess." She shrugged. "It's not a terrible life. But I know the feeling you've got. Like the floor's about to tilt."

"The egg doesn't tilt," he said.

"The egg doesn't pay rent," she said, and they both laughed.

The light through the door was turning gold. She leaned her head on his shoulder and he let her, and after a while she said, "Last night was good, Ben. I say that plain so you don't go building some story in your head where I was just being polite. You asked. You listened. You took your time. You had lube in a travel bag like some kind of boy scout and you used it right." She snorted. "Most guys fumble around like they're afraid of me. You didn't."

"You told me what you wanted. That's half of it. Most of the work's already done when somebody just tells you."

"Well," she said, "don't tell the whole village I said you were good. I have a reputation as a terrible judge of men to maintain."

He laughed and his chest did that thing again, the warm pang, the one that felt almost like grief for something that hadn't ended yet. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"What's today? I've lost track."

"Saturday," she said. "March the twentieth. The equinox was yesterday at sundown, technically, but the egg doesn't care about technicalities."

"Saturday. Okay." He did the arithmetic in his head. Sales call in Nablus