It was the one I'd used to film Theo.
It sat on the shelf where I'd put it three years ago, after I'd finally stopped pretending I might use it again. The case was dusty. I hadn't touched it since the last time I'd edited the footage of Theo at the piano, laughing at something I'd said, and looking into the lens like he could see straight through it to me.
Eventually, I deleted those files. Kept the lens.
Couldn't explain why I was reaching for it now, wiping the dust off with my sleeve and checking the glass.
Still perfect. Still sharp.
I told myself it was practical. The 85mm was the best portrait lens I owned, and Thunder Bay was a human-interest piece. I'd be shooting faces.
The lens went into the bag.
I checked my bank account. The number was three digits shorter than comfort and two digits longer than panic. The deposit from this job would buy me another month, maybe six weeks if I ate like a grad student.
"Three days," I muttered, zipping the gear bag. "Maybe five. I can survive five."
On my way out, I passed the stack of mail on the entry table. Three envelopes, slightly fanned, edges not quite aligned. I straightened them without thinking. Squared the corners. Adjusted until they sat in a perfect pile, flush with the edge of the table.
Old habit. Control the environment when you can't control the outcome.
I caught myself doing it and stopped, hand still on the envelopes.
It's a job. Just a job.
I picked up my bags and walked out before the apartment could stop me.
O'Hare was its usual self: fluorescent purgatory with a Cinnabon.
Behind a family of five, I shuffled through TSA, my gear bag heavy on my shoulder and my boarding pass pulled up on a phone at 14% battery. Gate B17. Forty minutes until boarding.
I found a seat near the windows—sight lines to the gate, the habit of someone who'd developed preferences about airports. A toddler three rows down was having a meltdown about something critical. Goldfish crackers, maybe.
I pulled out my headphones.
Music helped me survive the liminal spaces—airports and hotel rooms. I hit shuffle.
First song: something electronic and forgettable. Fine.
Second song: an old Radiohead track I'd overplayed in my twenties. I skipped halfway through.
Third song.
The guitar came in first. Soft, almost tentative. A fingerpicked pattern I knew the way I knew my own handwriting.
My thumb was on the skip button before the first vocal line.
Don't be sentimental. You're a grown man on a work trip. It's only sound.
I didn't press skip.
Maybe because I was tired or because the toddler had finally stopped screaming, and the silence was too loud. Maybe because some part of me—the part I'd spent five years trying to bury—wanted to know whether it still hurt.
The vocals came in. That voice, high and aching, singing about being blindsided.
It still hurt.
I closed my eyes.
