ith their stomachs full of whisky and laughter trapped inside their throats they ran. Through dewy grass, dark green in the moonlight, to the tall chain-link fence that he had said would be nothing at all to jump. Small potatoes.

The cold metal did not feel so cold on the bottoms of her feet, which were calloused and brown from weeks of flip flops and sand and dancing on the worn wood of porches. At the top there was that pivotal moment, the one she was never quite sure how to handle.

“Legs first!” he yelled from below her. He was already on the ground lighting a cigarette. Its orange tip looked like one of those fish she had once seen in an aquarium, the ones that glowed in the dark water. As he pulled and exhaled it swam upwards and descended, swam upwards and descended again.

Ok. Left leg over. Heel on cold metal. Right leg over. Easier than it seemed, she thought. She hurried down the length of the fence and onto grainy concrete.

He smiled and glanced around. The water was still and quiet. He was in his element, she could tell. Most alive when he was trespassing, tip-toeing, on the edge of something. When no one was around and he shouldn’t be either, but he was.

And she didn’t care, with the whisky coursing the rivers of her veins. She kissed his neck and peeled off her clothes quickly. The water was cold against her fingers when she touched its surface. “Ooo, its cold” she said warily.

“What did you expect?” he asked, laughing.

“Shut up.” She dived in.

They had met in a warehouse, stomping next to each other as the band banged and screamed and wailed. “Where are you from?” she had asked. “Where aren’t I from?” he countered, offering her a light. He did it in one swoop, too, grabbing the lighter from his pocket and flicking it on in one easy movement. She liked him.

He needed a place to crash, he said. For a while. “I’ve got a couch,” she’d told him, smiling. Sometimes he cooked her dinner, sometimes he slept all day. Sometimes he was gone. But then she knew he’d be back because he left his stuff; his sleeping bag, his backpack, his drawing pad. Seeing his things sitting so quietly on her floor always made her feel relieved, a relief that was like a warm glowing liquid filling her chest cavity.

Don’t think too much about this, she told herself. Keep your head on.

She was treading water now, keeping her mouth below the surface. He sat on the pool’s border, thin legs crossed. In the darkness he was a gray silhouette against a vast blackness. She felt at once as though they were lost, as if the grass and the fence they had traveled over were gone now. She wanted talking, which was familiar. Not this silence.

“Danny, there are no stars tonight.”

“What?”

“There are no stars.”

“Too much pollution here,” he said. “Fucking exhaust fumes between us and those stars. We’ve got Hummers and laptops and TV dinners and people forget all about those stars.” His head was turned to the left, as if he were listening for something. He sounded tired.

“I like swimming naked,” she said, pushing off the wall with her feet and feeling the rush of water around her shoulders as she catapulted through it. “I wish we could do it all the time. You don’t have to worry about your top falling off or whether or not your hips are too fat. It’s all out there. No secrets.”

He turned his eyes back to her. “Sure, I wouldn’t advise you to try it out during the day though. Although you’d make me real proud.”

“Yeah, but who’d bail me out of jail? Not your broke ass.”

He raised his eyebrows at her and smiled. She like the way his teeth gleamed. Wolf-like. She thought it was funny, that kind of thing. Falling in love, but more with somebody’s teeth than with somebody.

He climbed up the ladder of the diving board. At the top he walked out to its edge, lifted his arms above his head and prepared to jump off. And then they heard it, the low moan of a train whistle in the distance. His head jerked towards the sound, and she felt herself suck air in and she knew. And the world was suddenly huge and unfathomable, and she was all alone in the freezing water, watching him leave. Because the leaving would start right now and it wouldn’t stop until she woke up tomorrow morning, alone, and he was sitting amidst crates and barrels, smoking cigarettes and watching America roll past.