It was dusk. Outside birds were making their noisy debut and dogs barking idiotic barks for no reason. The cars  coming in and out of the parking lot, police sirens in the distance and the elevator’s sound through the building walls filled the room with  sounds.
He woke up . Perhaps, he could not tell, perhaps he was not even asleep but got lost again in a tough and then suddenly lost it. He may not have slept all night.
In his bed and aside him , half naked, there was a young girl. Her sight did not surprise him even tho he could not connect to the hours before. He remembered every detail of the evening and every detail seemed far away in the distance, belonging to somebody else’s life. And in between, nothing, no bridge to connect him.
He looked at her as she slept, at the childish smile on her face, her smooth lines, the sheets wrapped around her fragile body. This also reminded him of the fact that he was to lazy to turn on the heating last night and the room was cold. In fact an excuse to himself,  the heating system made a small noise that bothered him. As any sound did nowadays. Even in complete silence in the middle of the night he could hear a background sound inside his head, small pieces and patterns like an old modem machine.There was no stopping to that, only that pause when he managed to sleep.
He tucked the girl and made sure she was not cold.
But in reality even while looking at her and observing, he was actually looking beyond , towards nothing, towards a big  void that occupied the same position in space as the one her details had.
What did she see in him, how did they end up like that ? Why now, why when it was all rendered valueless, why not before, why at all and why this way  ? The timing everything happened in his life seemed almost funny if he toughed about it for a little. But he didn’t too much anymore.
The girl gave a slight sigh beyond the point of recognition and took  his left arm around her chest and neck. Her face lay a more visible smile. He looked some more at her and could only see her sins and in her sins he saw his own. If there was a feeling left inside it was guilt. Without logic, without meaning, the one thing worse than any pain , pure guilt.

He wanted to cry. He wanted to feel something that he couldn’t. Anything. He wanted the pain that made his life miserable for years, he wanted to feel the warmth that lay aside him and give it back. He concentrated on his tear glands, perhaps if he could make the tears come out physically the feeling will follow. He struggled to smile as she just smiled and realized he almost forgot how to control the muscles for that. His hand was still around her and with that tried imagining someone else in her place, the one person that in the end would have made sense. With no reference that thought also slipped away very fast.

The noise was getting louder and louder, the sounds, the images, the walls of the room and the girl , reality itself became just that. Meaningless, vague, mechanical.

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, a thing he knew he couldn’t at this point.
A possibility arose again  in his head , a scenario  that seemed more natural than anything else. In fact his eyes caught a spark for a few seconds. And the scenario unfolded…

He gets up very quietly not to disturb her, slowly removing his arm from her chest. He puts on whatever cloches finds around. Leaves the phone on the bed table, 2 hours now before the 8:30 scheduled ring time. As he stands by the door he turns around and whispers something loud enough to know he said it but silent enough not to be heard :
– I have to get out a little… bye.
The girl whispers something in her sleep as if she heard him, something that doesn’t mean anything except by the way she says it. It had a beautiful feel to it, a sound soft and gentle in the sea of noise.
The door closes silently behind him.
Soon the sun rose and with its first ray,  for a short time there was silence. The world stood still.