We Used to Walk

by Trelaine Ito

I

We used to walk every night, Kevin and I, just two explorers in the desolate frontier of seemingly empty urban neighborhoods and city streets.

A thin layer of nature blanketed parked cars, abandoned in the haste of the pandemic. As we strolled through the middle of dark roads, birds somewhere in nearby trees lamented, it seemed, at the silence.

“Those damned birds again!” Kevin would complain, pointing out the disembodied avian voices echoing in the darkness. “They always start chirping so early in the morning. And right outside my window!”

“Yeah, same,” I’d agree. But, secretly, I liked that a chorus of birdsongs accompanied our walks.

We rarely saw other people, leaving us alone to talk freely (and sometimes shout, in jest, at least at first), to wave our hands in excitement or keel over, consumed by laughter. We reenacted for each other the nothingness of our days, using our walks to animate the sterile lockdown.

We attempted to draw some deeper life lessons from our daily isolation through shared complaints about our jobs, our apartments, our mutual friends, our aspirations for when the world returned to normal. We’d talk about the loneliness of our pre-pandemic lives. Even when we were surrounded by friends or when we attended all of the social gatherings, there was often an internal separation from others. As we spoke, we’d gesticulate wildly, jabbing fingers into the night as visual exclamation points, as of pointing directly at God and saying, “This is what you left me with?”

We’d stop to take the same pictures of the Capitol in the rain or under a full moon. We’d frequently end our walks on nearby street corners or in our respective front yards to tie up the many conversation threads left open, following them to unknown conclusions, never wanting to complete our nightly ritual until we truly succumbed to exhaustion with promises to return to each unfinished thread the next night. But we never really returned to our old stories because loneliness, it seemed, produced endless tales, as if spending a day trapped with your thoughts only made you want to express each one vocally in so much detail as if to breathe life into them all.

It was with our consistent talks that we, unconsciously at first, started to piece together mosaics of each other’s life—distinct stories interlaced over months, shaped with narratives, and refined with smatterings of our past—creating, in the end, the most complete picture of the other’s truest self.

II

Every night Kevin would end by saying “See you tomorrow.”

Our walks became habits that we (or maybe just I) impatiently waited for as the day’s hours dragged through a long, wasted summer. One night, for no particular reason other than needing a creative outlet, we pretended to be reporters in the field, presenting to an absent audience our empty city’s secret as we saw them—museums with eerie music (clear signs of the occult), or mysterious ice cream trucks parked along the Nation Mall (Serving whom? We were ready to find out!), or memorials darkened by broken lights (Governmental neglect? Or signals for unknown?).

The weather amused us with its frequent surprises (“Porch weather!” we’d scream at thunderstorms after mistaken forecasts), as did the infinite roaches scurrying across the sidewalks, fleeing from our falling steps. We provided a public service, noting the geyser of water spewing out of a broken sprinkler on 15th Street, or highlighting various government buildings’ rainbow visages honoring Pride Month. The aches of an uncharacteristically quiet city spilled out into the streets, and we were there to report on them to the world. 

Always with an undercurrent of seriousness, I tried to drag Kevin’s laughter out (successfully, more often than not). He was our first audience member, a focus group of one, judging the worth of our content. I told him we could make it big, that we were creators and comedians, that we had a gift, that together we could live happier lives, pursuing this project: KLTI News, Snapchat’s DC affiliate. 

I knew I was funnier than him because, pretty regularly, I’d make Kevin guffaw—not a subtle chuckle but a full-bellied, open-mouthed laugh where he’d bend over while jumping backwards, wearing a wide, toothy grin and clapping exactly once. But Kevin did his best as a news anchor, embodying a level of solemnity necessary for effective parody.

“Good evening, Washington. Tonight’s top story: Ghosts? Or just an overactive imagination? Have we encountered proof of the beyond? Or are we beyond sanity? We go live to our reporter in the field for more. Trelaine, over to you.”

Kevin, at first, only agreed to be recorded after I begged him, but following our first few nights, he became the one to initiate most of our reports. “Are you going to record?” he’d say, smoothing out his shirts as he readied himself in a TV reporter’s stance, hands held in front of him, a somber expression pulled across his face.

“Good evening, Washington. I’m here on the National Mall where there is a suspicious food truck following us around. Are we about to be abducted? Or are they going to surprise us with a million dollars? We go live to our reporter in the field for more. Trelaine, over to you.”

I’d hand him my phone to record my segment, but before I did, I’d sometimes ask, “Are you good with that?” (Especially if he was a little off his game.)

He’d often resist. “One-take Kevin,” he’d insist on being called. But eventually my phone was filled with countless outtakes.

III

For two years, we walked and talked and reported. We were two wild and loud companions in the midnight streets, each with nearly complete mosaics of the other.

I thought we’d continue to spend every night walking, even as the world reopened. But as the pandemic eased, our routines started to shift, to decay, shedding their former stability as our old lives reemerged from their cocoons. 

We didn’t have enough time for long walks anymore, truncating them as if performing a perfunctory task. Slowly, we started to see other walkers—first as pairs of residents with similar ideas then as gaggles of tourists breaking through the formerly still nights.

We were no longer truly alone. 

Bars reopened and concerts returned and there were other things to do. It was now safe (or safer, at least) to see friends and strangers alike again. We made plans separately.

Still, every night, I asked him to walk.

“Ok,” he obliged, but less and less willingly.

He started canceling our walks. At first a few times and then with an accelerating frequency. And I, sensing a burgeoning distance, would actively gaslight him. I’d accuse him of never really being a friend, or I’d say he was being selfish. I’d yell (through text with multiple exclamation points and the occasional all caps).

Then, in a flash of regret, I’d apologize. Our closeness made me afraid that if he was pulling away, I’d feel lonely again. I’d be abandoned like the cars in the early months, left behind in the haste of a changing world.

I preemptively pushed him away (but was that really what I wanted? No. And so I’d pull him back again). I desperately needed him, his time and his audience and his presence. I wanted to be the only one who made him laugh. I was mad, it seemed, that we truly weren’t the only two explorers left in this world.

Normalcy was the new, undefeatable enemy who would inevitably win the day. So, I chose, instead, to fight Kevin. To take out my anger—at change, at being stuck, at loneliness, and ultimately at myself—on him, believing that we were an unbreakable duo. Spiraling into the Scylla and Charybdis of aggression and regret, shouting accusations meant to dictate his time, I’d attack him in desperation, and then immediately beg for forgiveness.

“I’m sorry,” I’d repeat over and over again.

In self-pity I’d splay our one-sided feuds on social media, daring our mutual friends to take his side. Then I’d ask him to walk.

“Ok,” he’d reply.

On nights when he saw his other friends, I’d wallow (aware entirely of the hypocrisy, given that I saw my own friends without him, even after he asked to be invited, as if wanting to keep him to myself). I confronted him night after night until finally, in a moment of frustration, he shouted, “You’re treating me like your boyfriend.”

He paused for a breath as I stared at him, stunned by the truth, unwilling to admit that, maybe, he had a point. But what is a true friend if not platonic companion? I could understand his confusion, but I was unable to articulate the difference.

Finally, he muttered under his breath, “You can’t control what I do.”

He walked me home but left in silence.

IV

We haven’t walked since. 

I’ve started to forget the comfort of his voice, of our shared lamentations—someone who truly understood me, who simply with the act of being present would say, “Yes, I’ve experienced the same exact thing.”

As the harmonies of other people’s conversations begin to swell through the once empty streets, I return to the quiet isolation of my basement apartment. At some point, Kevin and I stop speaking. I imagine it’s because loneliness manifests differently for me than him, that he can stand to be on his own while I’m repulsed by my own mosaic, as if I am only capable of being disappointed in the reflection of my truest self, as if it’s face is haunted by perpetual regret.

I make an effort not to be home every night, but it’s difficult, if only because I neglected (in some ways minor, but for many it was substantial) most other friendship in favor of Kevin and our walks. Still, I am at least trying to leave my house, to replace one nightly ritual with other, more familiar ones—it’s much easier to return to late night bar hopping than it should be.

And as I rebuild my connections with other friends, they sometimes ask about our reports.

“When will KLTI return?”

I pause. I spotted Kevin recently at an event. He was standing across the room, so I walked through the crowd and invited him to an after party on a friend’s nearby roof. This was my olive branch moment, my attempt to mend our fractured friendship. He showed up later in the night, and for a while I glimpsed our old selves, the ones who used to walk, yawn, and emerge from their hibernation. But when we found time to speak alone, he, “a little drunker than expected,” spoke more candidly than maybe he intended, confessing the finality of our separation.

“Maybe in two years, we’ll be back to normal, but until then…”

His voice trailed off as I stopped hearing his words, turning instead to stare out into the cityscape.

“I’m not trying to be cruel. I just don’t want to be around you right now.”

(Ironically, we walked home together at the end of the night, but neither of us spoke, the final conversion of our once raucous strolls into something eerily muted, as if we had reverted to being strangers.)

The next night, I texted him, Walk?

No, he replied. I think we’re done with walks.

V

Two years will end up being a lifetime—just as the past two pandemic years have been its own contained existence, the happiest, most stable period of my life.  A time when I, through conversations and news reports, both uncovered and constructed the truest version of a happy friendship. And then, with my own hands, shattered it.

In the interim, Kevin maintains his separation (a series of blue messages, unbroken, exposes my desperate attempts to conjure a reply). I’ve stopped trying to reach out. Well, mostly. The other day, I looked out my window at the tree where the birds would often perch and sing. And as they began their calls and responses, I texted Kevin. 

It’s barely midnight and those damned birds started up again,

I stared at my phone for the next hour. No response. 

The birds continued to sing, as if lamenting the silence.

*Originally published online by Papers Publishing.

BIO: Trelaine is originally from Hawaii, but, true to form, he saw the line where the sky meets the sea, and it called him, so he currently lives and works in Washington, D.C. He enjoys origami and washing dishes and taking pictures of clouds and sunsets (but never sunrises because he’s not a morning person).