7:27 p.m

The worst part of every work trip is packing for the return. It’s my own fault, really; I always pack a week's worth of clothes for a three-day trip and possess no sense of urgency. But old men don’t learn new habits, so yet again I find myself with clothes strewn about the room and barely an hour before my flight takes off. There won’t even be time to shower; I’ll spend five hours squeezed between two strangers, wondering if they can smell my sweat.

As I bend to grab a discarded pair of boxers, my phone begins to buzz from the nightstand. On impulse, I snatch up the phone. A grinning girl, her two front teeth missing, smiles up at me. The heavy, ever-present guilt that only a child can stir is all that makes me answer.

“Hi, sweetie.”

“Hi, Dad.”

I wait for her to say something, phone pressed between my shoulder and ear as I rush around the room throwing clothes into my suitcase. After a few static seconds, it’s clear I am expected to speak first. “Is something wrong?”

“There used to be a whole village that got torn down to make Central Park. Did you know that?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “It makes sense; there had to be something there before the park, but I always assumed it was grassland or trees or something like that. Not that they wiped out all these people's lives and started fresh. Can you believe that?”

She said all of this with the righteous indignation of the young, a fire so palpable you would think her home had been buried under the park. Part of me wanted to warn my daughter that to care so very deeply about everything was nothing but an unending wound. The rest was focused on forcing my suitcase to zip, and I figured there was still time for her to grow out of this constant appetite to know more, more, more. “Wow. I’ll have to take you one day, you can tell me more about it. ”

“Dad, can I ask you something?”

“Sure, sure,” I said, bearing all my weight down on my suitcase.

“What time is it there?”

“7:27. Why?”

“A.m or p.m?”

“P.m. Why?” The question came out more sharply than I’d meant, but my daughter didn’t seem to notice.

“It’s only four here. Isn’t that weird? You’re in one time. Me and Mom are here in another. We might as well be on different planets.”

Even though she can’t see it, I give her an indulgent smile. “I’ll be back on your planet by the time you wake up. I’ll see you tomorrow, alright?”

She’s silent for a moment long enough that I worry she has more questions to ask, but she only says, “Sure. Bye, Dad.”

On my final sweep of the hotel room, I notice what looks like a small creature curled up on the floor, but turns out to be a pair of lacy underwear. I take a picture of it stretched between my fingers, before kicking it back underneath the bed and leaving. While I ride the elevator down, I scroll through my contacts until I find Cara Anthony. Our carefully pruned text history is a work of beauty. Clean, sterile, professional. To anyone who looked through the conversation, not that anyone has bothered to, it would seem entirely insignificant. I send a short message, just for the thrill of erasing it an instant later.

“I think you left something…” Then I sent the picture of the underwear.

By the time I’m checked out, she’s responded, “Those were a gift. I’ll have new ones next time.”

I don’t respond, wipe the chat clean again, and head outside. It was a loud night, the kind you can disappear into. That’s what I love about big cities. Everywhere you go, you’re surrounded by buildings that stretch towards the stars, and crowds of people so massive they become a single creature. Eventually, you reach a point where mass tips over into meaninglessness. Enough people, enough noise, enough mistakes, and they can absorb each other. The cars, too, so many screeching cars, always in a rush to get somewhere else. To where? Where else could you possibly be going if not here? This city, where people spend their whole lives trying to get, can you believe there are people trying to leave it?

As a cab pulls up in front of me, I wonder if anyone is watching right now, seeing a tall man in a rumpled suit rushing to get into a car and thinking, why the hell would he ever leave here? The entire cab ride, I tried to think of what I might answer, but by the time I stepped onto the curb, I still had nothing. I checked my phone. 8:25 p.m. Twenty-one minutes left, and one missed call from my wife. A different kind of guilt, this one a painful burning, made me call her back as I jogged into the airport.

“Hey, honey. Sorry, I’m running behind-”

“Why would you do this?”

Someone bumped into me from behind as I came to a sudden stop. “What are you talking about?”

There was a long pause, then a disappointed sigh. “All I’m asking is why. I’m not interested in hearing anything else.”

“How am I even supposed to answer that? I don’t know what’s happening right now.”

Another pause, this one longer, this one final. I strained to hear anything on the other end, crying or breathing. Briefly, I think I hear a whispered question, but when surrounded by so much silence, it’s impossible to tell. I know I should say something, fill this empty hole, but no words come to me.

She fills the silence instead, “You stay right where you are. Don’t bother coming back here.”

The call drops, the silence ends, and I pull my ear from my phone screen. Instead of my wife's contact, my homescreen stares back at me just as the time winks to 8:27 p.m.