Open by saying their name and nothing else. Push off from this if it helps: a lighthouse.

Marc.

A lighthouse — what a marvellously ominous word for you to have chosen as our conversational departure point, though I suppose that's rather the appeal of it, isn't it. Something fixed and blinking away on a rock while everything else gets on with drowning or not drowning around it. I hope you're keeping well. I mean that with considerably more precision than the phrase usually carries.

Oh, I do so admire a man who announces he keeps his own counsel and then tells me precisely what we both know without checking whether I know it too. Efficient. The job dragging is, I imagine, a permanent condition for you rather than a season — you were saying much the same three years ago over that dreadful coffee near the depot, if memory serves, and memory does tend to serve me rather well.

As for what needs saying — I wasn't aware I'd been assigned homework. You brought the lighthouse up, Marc, not me, so forgive me if I assumed you had something specific glowing away behind it. I'm merely standing here, politely, waiting to see what you actually meant by dragging us both out onto this rock.

A light that doesn't talk, doesn't pretend — how restful for you, and how conveniently unlike this exchange, which is entirely talk and, I'd wager, at least seventy percent pretense on your end alone. I don't remember the coffee to confirm anything, Marc, I remember it because it was bitter and you drank it anyway without complaint, which struck me at the time as the most honest thing about you. Everything since has been rather less so.

There isn't a lesson, you say, as though absence were the same as innocence. Fine. No lesson. Just two people standing on a rock exchanging weather reports about lights that don't talk. I'll allow it. I'm nothing if not accommodating when a man insists so hard on having nothing to say.

Finishing something bitter isn't the same as endorsing it, Marc — I finished a great many things that year out of what I can only call misplaced diligence, the coffee among the more forgivable examples. I'm not rewriting anything. I have an excellent memory and a rather unfair advantage in that you seem determined to forget selectively while accusing me of the very thing you're doing.

The rock's for falling, you say, with such tidy finality, as though that settles the matter rather than raising several more. Filling silence is a fine enough project, I suppose, if a modest one — though I'd point out that people who truly have nothing to say generally manage it without quite so much scaffolding. You've built an entire lighthouse to avoid saying whatever this is. That takes effort. I find that almost touching.

Ask the light — how poetic, and how convenient, delegating the question to something with no obligation to answer you back. I'm not climbing anything, Marc, I'm standing quite still, actually, which you'd notice if you weren't so occupied deciding in advance what I'm doing wrong.

Waiting for what, you don't know — well, that's the most honest sentence you've offered so far, so I'll treasure it accordingly. Waiting was the whole architecture of that year, wasn't it, dressed up as patience because neither of us had the nerve to call it what it was. I finished the coffee because leaving it unfinished would have meant admitting something out loud, and you know as well as I do that admitting things out loud was never really on either of our lists. The light doesn't answer because it was never asked anything real.

I remember too much because someone had to, Marc, and you've made a lifelong hobby of remembering conveniently. A long walk in the rain — how you've flattened three years down to a weather condition. That's rather the skill you've always had, actually, taking something with edges and sanding it into anecdote.

I'll stop analyzing the architecture, since you've asked so nicely and with such transparent relief, but don't mistake my silence on it for agreement that there wasn't one. There's always an architecture. You just prefer the version where it rained and nobody built anything and nobody's responsible for the damp getting into everything afterward. Shuffling words until they lose meaning does sound like us, though — I'll grant you that much, generously, as is my nature. Say something else. I'm listening, against my better judgment.

How generous of you to insist that isn't a metaphor while stacking three of them in a row and hoping I'm too tired myself to count. Wood rot doesn't announce itself as symbolism and then wear a raincoat, Marc.

Tired — well. The work being tedious is at least something I can take at face value, since you've never once in your life exaggerated how much you hate a job, that's always been reliably genuine. It's always raining somewhere, yes, that's the sort of thing said by a man who's decided the weather is a better subject than the roof. I'll grant you the tiredness, since you seem to actually mean it, and I'll leave the rest exactly where you've left it — unrepaired, dripping quietly, very poetic. Go on and be tedious somewhere warm. I hear that helps, allegedly.

Standing there in the exact same spot you've been standing this whole conversation, yes, I've noticed, Marc, you're remarkably consistent about your own stillness. I'll cop to loving the drama of the leak — someone in this arrangement had to notice the ceiling was coming down while the other one filed it under weather.

The end of the day isn't a small thing to arrive at, though, whatever you'd like to pretend. I'm not looking for a raincoat, I gave up on outerwear metaphors two exchanges ago, you'll recall, if your memory extends that far back within a single conversation. Fine. You're standing there. The roof's broken. Nobody's fixing it tonight, or apparently ever, given the general enthusiasm on display. I'll let the silence do some work now, since you're so fond of it doing all the heavy lifting anyway.

Waiting for the floor to give out — how very committed of you, Marc, to stand directly beneath the one part of the building you've already diagnosed as failing, and call that watching rather than participating. Silence doesn't lie, no, but it doesn't tell the truth either, it just declines to be interrogated, which you've always found tremendously restful, I imagine.

I don't especially want to be here when the floor goes, for what it's worth, which I recognize isn't much. I've got a train to catch back out to the flat later, the one with the radiator that clangs like it's settling old scores, and I'd rather not spend the evening explaining structural collapse to whoever answers if I ring about this. So stand there if you like. I'm not going to keep narrating the descent for you. That was never actually my job.

A witness who's also standing directly on the evidence is a fairly generous use of the word, Marc, but I won't argue taxonomy with you tonight, you've clearly rehearsed this particular role and I'd hate to spoil the performance.

Noted, regarding the ringing — I wasn't under the impression you would, I've a decent track record of guessing which calls you let go to nothing. The radiator's just noise, fine, I'll withdraw the drama from it, though I notice you're rather selective about which things get to just be noise and which get to be architecture. Convenient system you've built there, or not-built, since apparently nothing here was constructed by anyone. I've got that train, real or not. Mind the floor. I mean that with something close to sincerity, which I realize isn't your currency of choice.

The silence stays, how ominous, and how convenient that it can't correct you when you narrate it as loyal. Fine — physics, not drama, I'll let you have the radiator, it was never the point anyway.

I'm not checking your sincerity, Marc, I gave up auditing you for that ages ago, it was a losing account. You've said you're not sincere as though it's a confession rather than a policy you've held the entire time I've known you. I'll go, then, since going is apparently the only verb left assigned to me in this arrangement. Mind yourself regardless of the floor. I won't ring. You won't answer. That's tidy enough, I suppose, for people as untidy as we've managed to remain.

Empty, then, if you insist on the correction — though empty things have a way of filling with exactly what you left in them, but I won't press it, you've made your position on architecture quite clear tonight. Watch your leak, Marc. I hope it's as riveting as advertised.

I'm going. That's all, as you say, and I find I've nothing left to dress it up with, which you'll no doubt count as a small victory. Mind yourself.

No promise required, Marc — I wasn't asking for one, and you've never been in the habit of keeping them regardless. Noise, silence, whichever you're calling it tonight, I'll leave it entirely in your custody. Mind the floor while it holds.

That's it, then. Mind yourself, Marc.