I took the apartment keys from the left pocket of my jeans and reached for the right one. Empty. I checked the back pockets, my hands suddenly cold. Still empty. I touched the right pocket again. The fabric lay flat against my thigh.
“I lost it.”
I don’t know where I lost the garbage card. Maybe in the supermarket, where I scanned three pieces of discounted coconut chocolate cake. Maybe when I rode past the bus stop. The wind blew the shiny leaves aside for a second, and the orange letters on the electronic board said Bus 9 would arrive in five minutes. Maybe when I checked the colors of nail polish. Maybe when I put down a heavy mug covered in flourishes and picked up a stainless cup with a light green rim.
But there was no point imagining where the card had gone. I rushed upstairs, emptied the grocery bag onto the dining table, and opened the website to apply for a new one.
A notice popped up: “After the application, the old card will be invalid even if found.”
“Who would end up like that?” I laughed and clicked “pay.”
I rode to the movie theatre after a few bites of chocolate cake. My freshly painted nails were still slightly sticky. If I brought them close to my face, I could still smell the sharp scent of nail polish. As I rode down the tree-lined road beside the church, I heard the first stroke of six echo through the air and took off my earphones.
The movie was called The Choral, a British historical film set during World War I, about a small-town choir preparing for a performance. The best scene was the performance at sunset. The burnished-gold light of the setting sun fell across the singers’ puffed cheeks, parted lips, and eyes fixed ahead.
All eyes, onstage and off, were on a young soldier with only one arm, except for another man in uniform sitting in a wheelchair with bandages over his eyes.
At the end of the story, three young boys were sent off to war. They had once jumped naked into the lake on hot summer days, making the girls who were dangling their feet in the water laugh. When the photographer, an old man from the choir, pressed the shutter for the last group photo before they boarded the train, something glistened softly in his small eyes set in a plump face.
The boys smiled widely and waved from the station as the train began to move. It got faster and faster, their hands sinking lower and lower, and then the eyes.
The lights came on. My friend and I rubbed our eyes. Riding home through the slightly chilly evening air, I told her about a Shostakovich concert I had gone to a year ago, where I met a couple named Susan and Otto.
During the intermission, we talked for a long time, and Otto bought me a drink.
After the climax of the last string quartet, the music receded into silence. The bows lifted from the strings as if in relief, while the final notes still lingered in the air. The applause went on and on. Susan and I looked at each other, and something shimmered in her blue eyes and my dark ones.
Before we left, they exchanged contact information with me.
I sent them an email after the concert to say thank you. Susan replied with a much longer one: “Thanks for your message, Dillie.
We arrived home okay after the concert.
Especially the last quartet was really emotional for me.
It was written in 1944, the year I was born, when my dad was still in Europe.
He was in the army’s medical section because he wouldn’t carry a weapon.
And it took more than a year before everybody finally returned to the US.
I was thirteen months old when he came back to his family, work, and study.”
My friend and I said goodbye to each other. I bent down to open the mailbox and saw a magazine lying inside. As I pulled it out, a familiar card slipped free with a sharp little sound and landed right in front of me.