Sol

We'd met at the night market, in the gap. I remember it the way you remember the important things, in detail and out of order. She was buying tangerines and arguing about the price and losing on purpose, you could tell she was losing on purpose because she was enjoying it too much. She had a laugh that arrived before the joke did. We talked for four hours. We walked the whole length of the canal and back. She told me she worked nights and slept days and that was why I'd never see her on the grid timeline, and at the time that sounded like an ordinary thing a person says. Now it sounds like a warning she was trying to give me gently. At the end of the four hours she wrote her contact code on my hand, actual ink, and said the grid loses things sometimes, keep it somewhere it can't reach. I washed my hands the next morning before I understood. I have not forgiven myself for that yet.