It’s amazing the amount of drivel that fills a TV screen after 1 a.m. Stephanie thought to herself as she pumped the channel button on her remote and watched a series of dismal choices roll by. This was no trivial matter. She had always had a problematic relationship with night time silences, and so finding the right distraction was essential. Several decades earlier, she could overcome the night through the strains of New York City’s last great progressive rock station. She spent so much time listening to one overnight DJ that the two of them used to exchange Christmas cards. Somewhere along the line though, the radio lost its magical nocturnal powers. The rock station went Top 40. The sports talk station that replaced it on her playlist was a constant reminder of the failings of the only sports team she really cared about. Eventually, she had abandoned the radio and returned to finding nocturnal solace the way she had when her anxieties were fewer and her life experience shorter— late night television.
Of course, tonight was different. On this rarest of nights, she was seeking a way to stay awake rather than to fall asleep. She had a task to fulfill and time was running out. An unmet challenge, evinced by a mostly empty page on her laptop, had been mocking her for the past four days. So far, all she had been able to produce was a total of six words. “What can one say about Will?” With only hours to go before she was scheduled to speak at his memorial service, she still had no idea how to answer her own question.
Once upon a time, the challenge would have been to tame the torrent of words she could say about Will. Over the course of about 15 years, he had played so many roles in her life, including three years as her lover. When they separated, for reasons she now refuses to recall, it wasn’t rancor that created a chasm. It was just the humdrum shifting of priorities that occur when people part. For the past decade or so, their relationship consisted of vague exchanges on social media that were replete with promises to “get together one day.” Though Stephanie had gradually acknowledged that “one day” was never coming, it seems Will never made that deduction. The fact that he had requested she speak at any memorial that might be held after his passing confirmed that. Now she grieved mostly because, once Will was erased, any incarnation of “one day” had been erased as well. How could their priorities have gotten so out of sync?
Stephanie hit the television remote another time. She was seeking not just adrenaline, but also a way to stave off the toxic bile of regret rising within her. Yet, it seemed late night TVs ability to be a soothing voice in the darkness had also gone the way of the pet rock and Tab. As a teen, she could tune into the black and white films screened on “The Late Late Show,” a program that featured a signature opening graphic of lights going off within an apartment building. She smiled briefly in the knowledge that, just like in that graphic, hers might be the only light still on in the spare brick building where she lived. It’s like she managed to take refuge in the fleeting image of that building. However, “The Late Late Show” had also left her and now she was truly alone in the dark.
Click. Would listening to NY1 discuss the Met Gala help her get this task done? Probably not. Before red carpet shows became television staples, she and Will did enjoy poking fun at some of the more outlandish fashion looks at awards shows, particularly those worn by celebrities whose fame we couldn’t fathom. But, as much as she loved Will’s acerbic wit at moments like those, this was not the side of him she wanted to share.
Getting up to stretch her legs, Liz stopped to look out the window. The thickest part of the night was upon the city, a time when fears often melded with dreams, and the darkness could be warm and inviting to nocturnal creatures like herself…and Will. Before their shifting relationship navigated them into the same bed, they would often chat on the phone in the wee morning hours, usually about which rerun of the Mary Tyler Moore show was on that night, or what interesting observation Tom Snyder had just made on the “Tomorrow” show. Their standard closing words to each other at the end of these calls were “Turn off the set.” Those words acknowledged more than the powering down of a mechanical device. It mourned the sad temporary break of the connection between them, thus making the phrase resonate more than “I love you” ever could.
Now, remembering those words in Will’s warm baritone sparked the direction she had been seeking. With a final click on the remote, the set went blank. The silence of the night she usually worked so hard to avoid suddenly hummed with memories of Will and the ticking clock beat of the old “Late Late Show” theme song. “What can one say about Will?” might be too broad a question to answer, but she could share who Will was at 1 a.m. on a random morning. And it made her miss him just a little bit less.
Lois Anne DeLong is a freelance writer living in Queens, New York, and is an active member of Woodside Writers, a literary forum that meets weekly. Her stories have appeared in Dear Booze and DarkWinter Literary Journal. In her free time, DeLong enjoys going to the theatre, singing show tunes in piano bars, and suffering along with her beloved New York Mets.