"Not bad. I've got some records coming. They'll be in the mail. Old ones, not ones I bought. They were in someone else's place for a while, and now they're coming back."
"What records?"
"Springsteen mostly. Some other stuff." I looked at the lamp. "Nebraska.The River. The kind of thing you listen to at a certain time of night."
"Two in the morning."
"Yeah."
A beat of quiet.
"They were being held for me," I said.
I heard the past tense. Pratt heard it too.
I didn't explain it.
"Anyway," I said.
Neither of us picked up the slack
After a moment, Pratt got up and went to the kitchen. I heard water running. He came back with two glasses and set one in front of me.
I picked it up and drank half of it.
"Did you eat dinner?"
I hadn't. Food hadn't been on my mind earlier.
"No."
He stood. "Come on."
We went out.
He didn't have us go far. It was a place on Randolph that I'd walked past a hundred times without going in. It was a diner that stayed open twenty-four hours.
We got a booth near the back. Menus came, and we ordered fast.
Before the food arrived, I started talking the way I always did when a room got too quiet.
"Boston drivers," I said, "operate on a principle that I have never seen articulated but that everyone there understands. The road is not a shared resource. It's a series of individual negotiations, and each one has a winner. The lights are suggestions, and the lanes are too. The concept of a turn signal is—" I picked up my fork. "Not realistic."
"You miss it," Pratt said.
"The driving?"
"Boston."
I looked at my plate. "Parts of it."
He didn't push.
"The water," I said. "You can't replicate that. Chicago's got the lake, but it's not the same thing. Boston has the ocean, and then inside that a harbor with all that history. Somewhere deep down, those boxes of tea are probably still there."
I turned my fork upside down. "In summers, it's great. The city gets hot, but that ocean breeze is always there at the shore."
The restaurant was mostly empty by the time we were finishing our food.
