There was something unspoken, somehow. It was either too sensitive to talk about, or so obvious no words were needed, which was good, because I for one had no words to speak of such things.

But we hung out in the lounge in first floor northeast, which we usually had to ourselves, watching games on the lawn through the bay window, wondering aloud sometimes if we had ever found all the light switches for when the sun got low behind us. It was a pleasant way to spend spare moments, and many that we couldn’t spare, for a semester.

And we graduated, flung out of academia along very different trajectories, and somehow the obligation to stay in touch lapsed. When Ann wasn’t there in front of me, knowing, looking through me, somehow it was harder to talk to her, or to anyone else.

And so, as Renee put it in one of her stories, work harder, feel a little less bad. Fill the vacuum with stuff you have to do anyway.

“Oh, but…” Ann interrupted.

“Oh, but?” said Becca. “Sounds like another story there.”

“But Halloween,” said Ann.

“You may tell that one if you wish,” I said. “Or another time, perhaps.”

“It kind of applies, though,” said Ann.

So, right. How to say this, any of this, without embarrassing myself, Ann, and all of you…

Come Halloween a bunch of the kids organized a costume party, off campus. In those days it wasn’t illegal for undergrads to drink and we did. But first, there’s the question of what to wear, and even before that, what’s this holiday thing about anyway.

And there was that look again, like duh, you thought I already knew the answer to that one, for people like us, at least. People for whom every day is dress-up day, whatever comes out of our closets is drag of some kind or another. Now, finally, here’s a holiday where it’s okay to dress up as anything that strikes your fancy.

So…

Ann filled up the ensuing silence. “So we went as each other. Everybody who knew either of us knew were kind of an item, knew what kinds of stuff we both wore…”

We went, as she said, as each other. We went through each others’ closets. Ann’s not exactly girly, but there were a few skirts that were somehow characteristic. And a tunic thing and some undies with suitable stuffing.

And from my collection a pair of worn-out jeans with a Swiss flag patch on the rump, and her choice of t-shirts. I was the kind of person who couldn’t let humorous shirts go by, on their way to cultural oblivion. Everybody knew if there was something to be figured out about a shirt slogan seen on camera, I would be wearing it in a few days.

Another silence.

Well, let me say this. It was suggestive of various kinds of things that could never happen in real life. Well, they could, and nowadays they do, but it required years of preparation and rethinking everything about my life and…

Yeah, not being helpful. But there was Ann, dressed as me, looking at me inhabiting clothes she had loaned me, with that slogan on her flattened chest. And so we did. Like zombies obeying advertising jingles, but we saw through the clothes, the drag, the pretense, to who we really were, and acted out that script instead of the usual one marked Dating.

And somehow, like being on stage in a particularly intense Method Acting scene, where the conjured emotion was more uncovered than djinned up, we saw each other again for the first time.

It was… magical. Maybe more to the point, using words I learned later, it was sort of sacramental. Inward and spiritual grace flowing from outward and physical signs, to quote somebody’s catechism.

And then we went back to being college kids, playing the hand nature had dealt us, whether we liked the game or not.

And THEN we graduated, flung off on different tangents, if Ann will let me go there.

Ann nodded, but she was looking at me the same way she had when we were twenty. Which would be fifty-some odd years ago now. Except that, instead of staring at her open-mouthed, I smiled for her.